NATIONAL ADOPTION MONTH: Outstanding Leaders Awarded

100 current and former foster youth receive national honor for personal achievement and community service.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – One hundred young people who have been in foster care were named Outstanding Young Leaders of 2009 in celebration of National Foster Care Month. The recipients from all across the U.S. were honored by FosterClub, the national network for youth in foster care, for their leadership, accomplishments, educational achievement, and community service

“Advocating for better policies – and lives – for children and youth in foster care is my passion,” said Wilfredo Soto, a 19 year old Outstanding Young Leader from Connecticut. “As a foster youth, I know what it feels like to be abandoned, stigmatized and traumatized. I am dedicated to creating positive change for children who have experienced what I have.”

Photographs and personal stories of each of the 100 Outstanding Young Leaders can be viewed on the FosterClub website at: www.fosterclub.org. The Young Leaders include:

• 21 year old Kimberly Snodgrass. After shuffling in and out of foster care, Kimberly was adopted at age 16. Although she did not attend school full-time until age 11, Kimberly graduated from high school with honors and is currently a senior at UC-Irvine. She has written two books on her experiences in foster care and has been accepted to Harvard University, where she hopes to receive a Masters degree in Education and work in the non-profit sector helping foster youth. “Look out for Kimberly,” her nominator said. “She WILL be making a difference.”

• 16 year old George White. George entered foster care at age 2 after his father died. Though he has 13 siblings, he has not seen them in many years. A high school junior, George is an aspiring film-maker who has shot and directed videos for Apl.De.Ap of the Black Eyed Peas and for the nonprofit organization Peace4Kids.

• 20 year old Cedric Riley. Cedric spent 7 years in Ohio’s foster care system before being adopted. Cedric has received more than $150,000 in academic scholarships at Ohio State University. He often serves as a motivational speaker and in 2008 Cedric hosted a statewide rally titled “Success Is a Choice.” Cedric says “I’ve dedicated my life to making a difference in the lives of foster youth by providing hope and encouragement through my life story.”

“Despite the hardships and setbacks these Outstanding Young Leaders faced, they have already achieved great success. As importantly, these inspiring young people are committed to making a difference for the children and youth still in foster care,” said Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA), chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Income Security and Family Support Subcommittee which has jurisdiction over the nation’s child welfare system. “They serve as tremendously effective mentors and role models for youth still in foster care and are working hard to improve the foster care system and the lives and futures of the children in its care.” McDermott has been a dedicated advocate for foster children and introduced and championed the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act that was signed into law last year and represented the most significant reform in the child welfare system in over a decade.

“What motivates me is knowing that my success is not about me. My success, my story and my hard work will pave the way so that others can have a chance to reach their dreams,” said Keisha Shelton, a Howard University junior and Outstanding Young Leader. “Just because we are in foster care, we shouldn’t get an unfair shot at life...We deserve more.”

Foster care was designed as a temporary solution to remove children from abuse and neglect, but children often languish in foster care before returning to their families, joining new adoptive families or living permanently with relative caregivers. More than 26,000 young people “aged out” of foster care last year without a permanent family to rely upon. Research reveals that many youth who “age out” of foster experience homelessness, unemployment, incarceration or illness – fewer than 3% of youth who age out of foster care graduate from college and nearly 1 in 5 become homeless.

For more information about FosterClub’s Outstanding Young Leaders and to read the bios of the 2009 recipients, visit www.fosterclub.org.

ABOUT FOSTERCLUB: FosterClub is the national network for young people in foster care. FosterClub's mission is to improve life for young people in foster care through a national network that is built for youth and powered by youth. The organization is founded on the principle that young people in and from foster care deserve to be connected, informed, inspired and represented. At the FosterClub Web site, www.fosterclub.org, youth ask questions and get answers. They discover other successful former foster youth, share opinions about their foster care experience, get recognition for overcoming obstacles, and connect with supportive adults.

GETTING INVOLVED:

November is National Adoption Month. Please consider the opportunity to adopt, foster, mentor, or be an advocate for children in foster care. You may also have the desire to provide clothing or supplies to foster children, you can do that through Clothing Our Youth. We collect gift cards and share them with a designated charity which provides supplies, free of charge, to foster parents for the children. Today is the perfect day to donate.

Get A Grip! Get Movin'.

“There are no short cuts to any place worth going.” ~Beverly Sills

Discipline and Self-Control

Excerpt from, Long Island Hypnotherapy

“Many people have the mistaken idea that if you work out a lot, or practice your craft for eight hours per day, you have discipline and self-control. Not necessarily. Discipline is the ability to continue to do something that you would rather not do! It’s easy to sit on the couch and watch TV for hours at a time if you like to do that. But try to get someone with lots of energy and no interest in TV to sit there for hours staring at the screen. Now that would take discipline and lots of self-control.

Discipline is what enables people to be successful in many areas of life. It is easy to achieve success in those areas that we enjoy and that come to us naturally. Attaining a high degree of success in areas that we don't really like, but must participate in requires discipline. For many people going to work every day requires discipline. If you ask one hundred people if they like to go to work most of them would say they would rather not. It is rare to find people who would actually choose to go to work if they had the choice of doing other things and still receive a pay check!”

Be a Magnet for What You Want

“Personality is to a man what perfume is to a flower.” -Charles Schwab

In Life, relationship, business, and your career you are attracting different people, things, and opportunities. You are also repelling the Life, relationship, business, and career you want. How? The simple answer is personality, presence, and magnetism. In all parts of Life your personality out shines your knowledge and abilities. How do you become a magnet for the things that you want? Here are three ways to being a Magnet for What You Want.

1. Be a Possibility Hound
Keep your thoughts focused on the things that are possible in with each day, week, and month. When you meet new people think of what is possible for them out of meeting you and you meeting them. What interests do you have that you can share? Treat them as you would a King or Queen, they have your full attention.

2. Excellence Focused
Being a person who strives from excellence at all times and encourages others to do the same is one of the most attractive qualities in a personality. Let it be noted, there is a measurable difference between showing excellence through example and assisting people in achieving excellence and being controlling or overbearing to have excellence appear.

3. Effective Communication
Effective speaking and communication send your magnetism meter higher than you might think. People who are able to get their ideas and thoughts across are able to attract the people and things they want in Life. The ability to also listen to others communication and repeat it back to them is a key to letting others know you were listening to their communication. People have risen to great heights of personal achievement because of their ability to sell themselves and their ideas through dramatization of speech. The most important factor in effective speech is a thorough knowledge of the subject on which you are speaking. All the rules of effective speaking can be stated in one sentence. Know what you want to say, say it with all the emotional feeling at your command, and then sit down.


Your success in getting what you want, selling yourself, and your idea is 98% personality and 2% knowledge. It has been said that “some people have so much personality, presence, and magnetism that they brighten a room when they come in. Others have so little, that they brighten the room when they leave”. Apply the three ways to be a magnet and you will begin to see the things you want materialize. You will be the one to brighten the room and have your dreams realized.

Think Big, Play Big, or Go Home!

Think Big, Play Big, or Go Home!

Sometimes we get caught up in the things of Life that seem to be real! Really, the truth is that they are usually small things that we allow to take over our Mind, over shadow our goals, and become the foundation of excuses. Excuses serve our ability to deny our own greatness. Why not cut the excuses and Play Big?

Cutting the excuses takes believing that there is an alternative to what you see, believe, hear, or are told. Excuses serve to shift responsibility from you. Not taking responsibility blocks acknowledgement of the natural power given to you. EXCUSES=NO POWER. It would seem that deflecting the responsibility to someone else would free you up to live a Life of freedom, power, and full self-expression. It just so happens that the opposite occurs. There is no freedom, no power, and seldom is there full self-expression. How then can you think big and play big to create a Life you love?

Have you ever talked to a child? We naturally think big and play big. My son loves Superheroes, animated charaters, and all things adventurous. He has not yet blocked that part of himself as an adult has learned and believes is necessary. When he walks up to an automatic door he believes he has the power to open it and acts as though he is! As we speak about where he wants to go in the World, he talks about China. His mind takes him to places and envision things that are Big, if he is editing his thoughts I would love to see the full vision. However, as adults we edit through what we have been told is possible, who we think we are, who we think others are, what we think is possible, and how long we think it will take to achieve our goal. Your natural power is only released when you are willing to give up your perceptions, beliefs, and excuses. Allow yourself to dream the dream which you thought could never happen and begin looking at how to create it. That includes people, places, finances, etc. Let it live!

To play big all the same rules apply, think about how to have what you want created. Playing bug takes action and unless you are willing to invite other kids into the sandbox you are playing small. Expanding your circle, including others into game moves the ball down the court with speed. An without you knowing it, the game becomes fun, assists others in developing their game, and even brigns you a few friends and associates that want to play the game of Life with you. Playing small only serves to keep you from living a Life of freedom, power, and full self-expression.

Remember playing with a group of children when you were young? If you were playing a team sport you expected them to come in with the thoughts of winning and winning BIG or you would be ready to send them home! The same can be said for you now with the people who are in your circle. Do they THINK BIG and PLAY BIG? The question can easily be internalized. Do you THINK BIG and PLAY BIG? If not, then what are you gonna do. Go home or get on the court?

http://www.enterprisinglife.com/

There is a Limit!

As a coach I enjoy spending time talking about what is possible and how to achieve dreams. Manifesting what you want is a conversation that can get into hocus-pocus kind of stuff. Being on a Law of Attraction call today it occured to me that there are limits to what you can achieve. The limits exist in your mind, they exist in my mind.

T. Harv Eker worte a book called Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. There is a conversation about a "financial thermostat". Donald Trump is reported to have gone bankrupt to the tune of $975 million dollars in 1990, no whether or not he actually did is a source of many questions. The point is that whether or not he did be was in debt to the point it was even speculated! What Donald Trump knew was that he may have been down, but not out. Here we are in 2008, he has written a book called The Art of the Comeback (1997) for a reason, Trump: Think Like a Billionaire: Everything You Need to Know About Success, Real Estate, and Life (2004), and is now reportedly worth $3 billion. Trump has set his "financial thermostat" to BILLION, not million, or thousand, or hundred! He cannot be a thousandaire, his thermostat does not even register "THOUSAND", unless is being multiplied by "MILLION" or "BILLION".

Our thermostats can be reset, just like in a home. Most of us never think about our "thermostat", we often inherit ours. There are those that transend the setting. How do you reset it? Resting the thermostat begins within. We must reset our inner thought patterns and ways of Being first. Checking what we think, challenging what the things we have been told are true or false, and testing the waters of Life for self. A thermostat can be set on automatic, which is how we usually go through Life. Now, the reseting of the thermostat only happens when someone conscious of the internal temperature chooses to alter it! Who can alter it? YOU. The only limit that is set is YOURS.

Limits can become overcome by stating it. In my training it has been called declaring. Declarations are announcements made with authority with the express intention of manifesting and proclaming a choice. We do it everyday without thinking about it because it has been such a part our lives. Making a declaration usually involves other people. And most people resist letting other poeple in on the Life changing, thought altering things of Life for fear or resistance to being accountable. I, too, am guilty as charged. When we release limits in all areas of Life we begin to reset the thermostat of Life.

The last link to resetting the thermostat is two-fold using the words of Life and speaking with people who use words of Life. Words of Life are those words that speak encouragement, perseverance, accomplishment, accountability, and drive. These are things that forward what you are up to, they are words that push you closer to your goal, they leave no doubt that you are moving forward, and they keep you focused on what you want to accomplish. There are hurdles to every goal, however, it does matter what you say to yourself and what you allow to be said to you! Check to see what you say that limits you and who you listen to that limit you as well. Rest your thermostat with the words you say, hear, and those who surround you.

There are limits to everything, the limits that we set. Reset the thermostat!

King Solomon Unleashed It!

When I woke up this morning, I thought the same things I've been thinking for the past week, "I should be getting up to walk right now". Then, I proceeded to get a little more sleep, turn on the television, and "rest". As a person who takes pride in coaching people to success, it was my day to coach myself to success. Don't we rationalize our own actions well enough that it all seems like the truth!? Well, I went out to get my exercise donning my shorts, shoes, and long sleeve shirt.

When I returned, I sat down ate breakfast and opened a magazine that featured an article entitled "Lessons form the Richest Man Who Ever Lived," by John C. Maxwell, DM. Who is the richest man who ever lived? First, let me say that I was reared in a Christian family, by a divorced single mother of three. My father was more spiritual than religious, without a doubt. Yes, I believe in God, at the same time I cannot be considered a Bible totin', fire 'n' brimstone, hallelujah, Christian. My relationship with God is defined in one word faith. And I've said that to say, the article was about King Solomon who ascended the throne of Israel at the age of twelve, around 974 B.C. The story goes that God appeared to Solomon and offered to grant him one desire. Solomon was concerned for his inexperience and ability to rule, he asked for wisdom to lead the people of Israel. God being impressed by Solomon's unselfishness blessed him with wisdom and wealth. His wisdom, wealth, and success grew beyond his imagination.

Solomon has been seen as a King who was wise, wealthy, and successful because of his diligence in all he did. Ruler from allover requested his wisdom. In the article I saw that there are areas of Life in which I have not been diligent. I've had money and I have not had money. I have had love and lost love. I have had success and I have lost success. However, what I understand is that I have the power to bring it all back to me. Yes, the law of attraction and all of that, at the same time, it is being diligent.

Maxwell made three great points that as a personal and business development professional, I tell my clients and practice personally:
1. Wake up to Reality. Procrastination is the best friend of Some Day and the cousin of Never Ever. We think that we have time on our side. The fact is that if you are not living you are dying. Each day we are closer to one or the other literally and figuratively. Literally, we get closer to death. Figuratively, each day is a choice to either unleash our destiny or cover it up in shame, self-doubt, ignorance, or fear. "Days of inaction add together into unproductive weeks. Weeks of idleness accumulate as meaningless months and wasted years, which are the fruitless products of life filled with regret and sorrow." Give your dreams the opportunity flourish, you may surprise yourself that they can become reality.

2. Define Your Vision. If you have not created a vision for your Life, where are you going? It is easy to just live, go to work, come, home, watch TV, eat, go to bed, and get back up and do it all over again. Yet, you may feel trapped and suffocated. What is your vision? Epictetus wrote "First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do." It takes first having a vision, then creating the plan to get there. Vision sparks initiative and action. Define your vision, unleash your Life.

3. Effectively partner with others. John Donne, a English preacher and poet was born the third of seven children. By the age of ten, he experienced the death of his father and three sisters. Much of his early life was spent in poverty, depending on the generosity of wealthy friends. It was him who said, "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent." it is entirely understandable where he might have received the understanding that in Life you need others to make things happen. There is no one person who has their dreams come true without first including others in their dreams. It is important to develop a loyal, responsible, and talented group or friends and partners. Having "social capital" will rocket you to greatness!

Living life with purpose and diligence with what God has given you begins your journey to richness, wisdom, and wealth. What I have learned is that to get where I want to go I must first seek wisdom, be diligent in following God-given vision, stay rooted in reality, and involved others in developing our lives. That is what Unleashing Life is about!