Badge of Honor Syndrome

I don’t know when this happened, but I’ve noticed that people taking pride in not taking care of themselves. In their eyes, it’s a good thing to not get enough sleep. Gorging on fast food or grabbing lunch from a vending machine means that they are working hard. You hear these people bragging about not having time to work out. For them, not having a vacation or even several days off is a sign of success. Spending time with family often becomes a casualty in this particularly skewed world view.  A lack of self-care becomes a badge of honor that they wear with pride.

I get it. America is built on the Puritan work ethic. Work is often more than a source of income. It becomes a central part of our identity. Even if you are just working a 40 hour work week, we spend more of our waking hours at work than we do with family.

Yet, is it really worth it? I’ve seen people with Badge of Honor syndrome lose their marriages, strain the relationship with their kids and even have strokes and panic attacks at work. I even had one boss who bragged about working through her health crisis.

The manager who lost her marriage, lost her precious job six months later. The one who sacrificed time with her kids for this massive project she was working on, didn’t receive the accolades or the promotion she wanted. The boss with the health crisis was forced out of her job and continues to overwork herself at her new job.

All of these women get a lot of satisfaction from their work. While satisfaction of work is a priority, it shouldn’t be the only one. You should have a life outside of work and taking care of yourself makes your work life and the rest of your life run that much more smoothly.

A life well lived is the real Badge of Honor.

Tonight's Show: It's about the Money Honey!

The fourth Get It Together Girl! workbook, It's about the Money, Honey - Stretching Your Dollars Makes Sense will be released in the coming weeks. In preparation for that, tonight's show is all about money,making the most of it and keeping it from ruining your relationship.

Rob Drury with the Association of Christian Advisors will talk about everything from managing a household budget to saving for retirement and building up college funds. Next up Diane Tegarden, author of Budgeting on a Dime, will discuss how money can impact your relationship and how changing your money habits can improve your relationships!

Want to call in with questions, the live show airs tonight at 8:00 PM (Eastern). Call (917) 889-3205. You can always catch the recorded show in the archive. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/getittogethergirl

In Harmony

If you want it, you have to act on it. Actions are essential to making things happen; but so is thinking. If you want true success, you can’t have one without the other.

What you think about, you bring about. During an interview on my show, Kevin Darne, author of My Cat Won’t Bark: A Relationship Epiphany, and I discussed some of the mistakes people make in online dating. He said often people, instead of describing what they are looking for in a potential partner, list all of the qualities they don’t want. To potential dates this comes across as negative and sometimes bitter. Ironically, this focus on the undesirable increases the likelihood of pushing away the very people they’d be most interested in meeting.

The universe works in the same way. Emphasize the negative and you’ll repel the good. Your thoughts, feelings and actions should be congruent. In other words, your thoughts, feelings and actions should be in harmony with one another. If your actions are positive but your thoughts and feelings are negative (or even ambivalent), you will not attract the result you are looking for.

Case in point, you work hard, putting in the overtime and saving your money; but your thoughts focus on not having enough and you always talk about being broke. Your actions are taking you one step forward while your thoughts and feelings are taking you two steps back. No wonder you aren’t having the success you’d hoped for!

Tonight's Show: Get Your Body Back!

When diagnosed with Type II Diabetes at the age of 41, Dr. Tom Yarema didn’t just want to live with it, he wanted to change his diagnosis entirely. Now, he helps others fight and win against what he feels is American’s most despicable chronic disease: obesity.

He is the author of Eat, Taste, Heal and the nationwide telemedicine program, Get Your Body Back. As a guest on Get It Together Girl, he’ll talk about the power of food, and how we can get our bodies back and by extension, get our lives back.

Your Words Matter

The Good Book says life and death are in the power of the tongue – but how many of us really know what that means?

We say, “I’m broke.” “I hate my job.” “Men are crap” and then we are amazed when we don’t have any money, have a job we despise and have no relationship or (a bad one). It’s not just that we say the words; we compound the words by adding the feelings. We feel the lack, the frustration and the loneliness that intensifies the result we are getting.

So what should we do to change? We have to do more than change our words; we have to change the emotions we are feeling as well. A lot of people don’t believe in affirmations because it sounds as if we are lying to ourselves. After all, how can you claim abundance when you are looking at a negative balance in your checking account?

Affirm something you can believe to begin to turn the tides. Instead of broke, affirm “Money is coming my way.” While your mind might revolt against you saying that all men are wonderful, it would be open to something like “All men aren’t crap. There are some great men out there.” Say it and believe it. Get excited about it!

Change your words and change your focus. Focus on what is going right. Focus on what you have right now. Maybe you don’t have the financial abundance you want, but you have your health and you have a great family.

Things begin to change when you begin to change.

Tonight's Show: Boost Your Confidence, Change Your Life!

American women (and a significant number of women in Western society) have serious body image issues. This manifests in a variety of ways. We hear about anorexics and bulimics and women binge eat. We see the magazines and entertainment shows that ridicule women for being a size 6 and who extol the virtues of the practically impossible to achieve and maintain, Size Zero.

Yet the multitude of women who experience body image and acceptance issues suffer in silence. They refuse to see a doctor for fear of taking off their clothes. They fear complete sexual intimacy because of possible rejection. They dread shopping for clothes or trips to the beach. They fund the multi-billion dollar beauty industry! Their dissatisfaction shows up in a lack of confidence, unhappiness, depression, and relationship frustrations.

Our two guests confront these issues head on and help women learn to love themselves, gain confidence and embrace life on their terms. Keri Kight is the author of You’re Gorgeous: How to Love Your Body in a Perfection Obsessed Society. No matter where you are when you stand on the scale, she is dedicated to helping women (and men) can create the lives of their dreams, and it all starts with building their confidence.

Nicole LaBonde wears a lot of hats: fitness instructor, entrepreneur and public speaking coach; but regardless of the hat she is wearing, her mission is the same – to help women build their confidence. She is dedicated to helping women take back their power through their bodies, voices and mindset.

This is going to be a powerful hour and one the women – and girls – in your life should hear. 

Lessons Well Learned

Failure is necessary. We learn more form mistakes, missteps and setbacks than we learn from our successes. Failure is never pretty or planned, but when failure happens, it is what happens next that makes the difference between ultimate success or permanent defeat. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

Failure Happens. This isn't a pessimistic or negative statement. It's a reality. The road to success is never a straight and smooth ride. There are curves, uphill and downhill passages, detours and roadblocks. When you start on your journey to success, expect these things and don't be surprised by them. In fact, you should have some plans in place to handle the most likely setbacks to occur.

Naysayers Take Notice: When you experience a setback, there will be people there to tell you that they told you so or that they knew it was going to happen. They wanted to see you go down and once you fall down, there goal is to keep you there. Always have a few people around you that will help you back up with encouragement and support.

Learn the Lesson: Why did things not go as planned? What can you do differently? Were there signs and signals along the way that you ignored? Within each failure is at least one lesson you can learn to make things better the next time around. Learn those lessons and you are setting yourself up for success

Setbacks are Temporary: True failures are permanent. To truly fail, you have to give up and stop trying. If you fall down and get back up and persevere you will eventually succeed. But that success will never happen is you give up.

Tonight's Show: What Men Do Well and Why Cats Don't Bark

Get It Together Girl is all about helping women 'get it together'. And men, are a big thing that a lot of us need to work on. This show is dedicated to what men do well and some of the major relationship differences between the sexes.

Nick Theophilou is the author of the eBook 10 Things that Men Do Well. After hearing years of male-bashing, Theophilou sought to bring some balance to the male image by finding and focusing on some things that  men are getting right. Join us as we discuss men being better mates, bromances and fatherhood!

Kevin Darne is the author of My Cat Won't Bark (A Relationship Epiphany). In his book, he advocates entering a relationship with complete awareness, realistic expectations and self-empowerment. We're going to focus on his tips for online dating, the different types of cheaters and his Recipe for Relationship Happiness!

This will be a provocative and proactive hour. You won't want to miss it!

How to Manage Your Time Better (in less than 5 minutes)