The Following Article was Published in Cascade Arts & Entertainment, January 2003

"Extreme Self Care"

By Ann Golden Eglé, PCC , CPCC Of Golden Visions Success Coaching

Imagine what it would be like if everyone in your life, including you, took better care of themselves?

What if your partner had an hour of open, uncommitted ‘alone’ time each day to focus solely upon his or her personal needs? Imagine if all of your professional contacts were in prime physical and emotional shape from their stringent exercise routine.

When you take better care of yourself, you increase your level of energy, happiness, clarity, and productivity. You are in love with life and eager to work and to play harder. You are more creative, flexible and far more receptive to new ideas.

You’ve heard the term, perhaps even contemplated the concept of a ‘self-care’ plan once or twice yet have then gotten too busy to deal with it. You put other priorities in front of a plan to take better care of yourself. Where is the wisdom in that concept?

Whether you have a ‘self care’ plan in place right now, or not, let’s just jump to the next level! Here are some of the elements to be included in an ‘extreme self care’ plan, thus taking extremely better care of ‘you’:

Initiative—Be bold! State for certain what you want to accomplish and why!

Consistency—Repetitive activity builds self trust, confidence and momentum!

Discipline—Do what you’ve never done in order to attain what you’ve never had!

Balance—Discover a method to honor your personal, professional, social, private and spiritual worlds. These are all vital aspects of whom you are and who you are becoming!

Time Management—Create a plan, spend the time, find a system and make this work for you! You’ll be lost without it.

Focus—Stay in the moment! What do you want to create right now? What is your purpose right now?

Vision—What is your bigger picture? Who are you in the process of becoming? Make decisions based upon this person who you want to be.

Recognition—Know when your are on target and succeeding! Learn from your successes. Use them as building blocks for a strong personal foundation.

An ‘extreme self care’ plan will include each of these items in a very well thought out and executed manner. It will be written out, modified with experience and referred to often. You become the master, not the follower of how well you take care of ‘you’!

I challenge each of you to fall in love with life again! Create your own ‘extreme self care’ plan for 2003. Be ahead of the game and begin today!

Ann Golden Eglé, CPCC, PCC, owner of Golden Visions Success Coaching, LLC, can be reached at 541-385-8887 or www.goldenvisionscoaching.com. Eglé coaches executives to optimal levels of success, in business and in life. She also authors a free e-mail success "Thought of the Week", and is available to speak to your group or team!

Reprinted with permission from the Cascade Arts & Entertainment, January, 2003