Has this ever happened to you?  You are getting ready to write one of your weekly blog posts and nothing happens. You have been staring at the screen for 10 minutes and you are drawing a complete blank.

Writer’s block, arrgghh!  Not a single usable blog post idea comes to mind. Nothing! Zilch! Nada!

If you are anything like me, you are starting to get pretty nervous right about now. You know that your readers are waiting for your blog post. You don’t want to disappoint them, yet for the life of you you can’t think of anything that would provide the value your readers are used to.

Pretty horrible feeling, isn’t it?

When I first started out in my blogging venture I often shared inspirational stories. I know, I haven’t told one in quite some time. But, there will be one coming today which was inspired by a comment that was left on my last post by one of my regular readers, Tim Singleton. (Thanks Tim for the inspiration for this blog post!)

Tim shared his disappointment about a prospect he spent money and a lot of time on, educating him about his product and then in the end, lost to his sponsor. The prospect’s reasoning, Tim’s sponsor was a “bigger deal.” Huh? Are you for real?

As suggested, I installed the WordPress Jetpack plugin a couple of weeks ago because that was the only way to update the WordPress Stats plugin I had used up until then. Little did I know what this little plugin would reveal just a short time later.

Well, on New Year’s Eve I received my first annual report titled “Your 2011 Year in Blogging.” What I found out in this report was very interesting to say the least.

For example it showed me…

If you have known me for a while, you know that I love quotes. Not a single day goes by where I don’t use them or add a couple of new ones to my collection. Motivational quotes have become a part of my daily routine.

Why are quotes so popular?

Well, for starters they inspire, motivate, encourage and empower us. They give us hope, they teach and at times they even make us laugh.

“Bessie Braddock (to Winston Churchill): Winston, you’re drunk. Churchill: Bessie, you’re ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober.”

New Year's Resolutions

It’s 6 days in to the new year. So how are you doing with those New Year’s Resolutions? Are you still keeping them, or did you throw some of them overboard already?

Statistics show that “45% of Americans usually set New Year’s Resolutions;  17% infrequently set resolutions; 38% absolutely never set resolutions.”

Latest Blog Post Makes It 100

…97…98…99…100! Here I Am 100 Blog Posts Later

I can’t believe I am writing my 100th blog post today. I started this blog back on 30 May 2009, right when I was going through one of the “down phases” of the network marketing roller coaster. (Yep, if you have been in the industry long enough you know there are ups and downs. However, the downs make the ups so much sweeter.)

By writing inspirational and motivating posts I was hoping that I could find my way up again, and maybe help inspire someone else to stay the course as well …if by chance they found my blog in the sea of millions of blogs out there, haha.

My very first blog post was “Marketing Out-Side-of-the-Box”

For the next six months nothing much really happened. I was lost out there in cyber space and nobody seemed to know that my blog even existed. My visitor count was so low that I could count the people who found my blog on one hand.

The Starfish Story

I thought it was time for another story. I love stories. Do you?

Stories have a way to connect and stay with us like nothing else ever could. They tap into our inner feelings and make us part of it. The reason why we remember stories is because they pull on our emotional strings. … They make us think and they make us feel. And it’s that feeling that helps us remember.

The story I am going to tell you today is one of my all-time favorites.

So… without further ado, here it is…

Stepping Out Of Comfort Zone

You’ve probably heard MLM trainers before recommending that you should “step out of your comfort zone.” Well, I even mention it on a few of my blog posts here at The EnlightenedNetworker.

That’s great advice! But what if you are just not quite ready?

What if you don’t feel comfortable of stepping out of your comfort zone completely and do things you are just not ready for yet. That’s okay! We’ve all been there at one point or another. It’s all part of the growing process.

Don’t panic!

Instead of freezing and doing nothing at all try to just ‘stretch your comfort zone’ a little bit. It’s much better to grow a little than not growing at all.

Just think about it … If failure wasn’t an option we would never have heard of any of the following individuals. They all failed. Some of them miserably before they reached success. For all of them failure WAS an option!

Walt Disney …. Was fired from a newspaper because he “lacked originality and had no imagination.”

Lucille Ball … had been dismissed from Drama School with a note that said, … “Wasting her time. She’s too shy to put her best foot forward.”

Harrison Ford … was fired from Columbia Pictures and told he “was never going to make it in the business.”

Michael Jordan …

Time Out!

Sometimes I feel I write this blog just as much for myself as for you, my visitors. I have been extremely busy lately. Learning new things, figuring out new WordPress plugins, and gadgets and widgets. I’m almost at the point of burnout.

You can only burn the candle at two ends for so long.

Last night, while laying in bed, unable to sleep because my mind was still going a thousand miles an hour, I remembered this story below. I love motivational and inspirational stories. Lately I’ve been putting them into custom greeting cards and sending them to my customers, team mates, friends and family.

So here’s the story …

The Mayonnaise Jar and Coffee

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar… and the coffee…

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him.  When the class began,

I have listened to a lot of leaders in my 10+ years in network marketing. Only a handful have really inspired me. Jordan Adler, my upline in SendOutCards is one of them. I listen to him every Monday when he makes his team call and then I listen again to his recordings. Jordan has the ability to paint pictures in my mind. Very vivid pictures. He makes me think. He gets my imagination flowing. He truly inspires me.

Here’s what he shared on one of his first calls of the year and I would like to share it with you.

2010 can be your best year ever. Begin to imagine what life is like living each day without regard to what things cost. Imagine what life is like knowing that when you spend your money it comes back again next month whether you go to work or not. Your bank account is overflowing. Each month, you give excessively to your favorite charities. You see money as a life giving tool that can help people. You feed your source of inspiration by donating your time to worthwhile causes because you have the time and you don’t have to work quite so hard to make your money.

You are in your perfect home with your family.
You are taking the dream trips you have always imagined.

You practice saying ‘yes’ instead of ‘we can’t afford it’. That nagging underlying fear doesn’t exist any longer. You are free. You feel empowered and alive. You have money set aside to secure your future. You have money to invest and to play with. You have more than enough money to live your life exactly the way you want it.

Money isn’t everything but it certainly makes life easier.

Let those pictures run through your mind. Imagine it to be reality. Imagine it in the present. You’re sitting at the beach feeling the warm sun on your skin and the sand between your toes. You hear the sound of the waves and the wind in the palm trees. It’s real. At this moment it is very real.

Have you ever imagined something and then it became reality? Your imagination is a very powerful tool. Keep using it to make your dreams realitiy. Imagine the life Jordan painted for you…because you deserve it!

“If you can DREAM it, you can DO it.” ~Walt Disney

Who inspires you? What does your dream life look like? Leave me your comments in the box below.

To Your Success,

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

If you want something bad enough … go get it!

When I was in grade school in Germany I wanted to take an English language class that was offered as an extra curriculum class. (Back then English and French weren’t part of the curriculum like they are now.) The Beatles just started to get real popular and I wanted to understand what they were singing. Since I had to have the permission of my teacher to take that class I went to ask her if she would allow me to go. Here’s what she told me, “Ilka,” she said, “I’m sorry but I can’t give you permission to take that class. Your grades in German are so bad you will never make it. You’ll never learn English. You can’t even speak German properly.” (Well, who at the age of 10 really does?)

I was crushed. Twice a week my friends would take “Walter & Connie” classes and I couldn’t go with them. So I saved up the money for the audio lessons – they came in the old 45 records back then – and taught myself. After I had the basics down I started translating Beatles songs with the help of a dictionary. And after that, I bought every English language book I could find in the bookstores of my hometown. I looked up the words I didn’t know in my dictionary and just kept going.  With each and every book I got better. That teacher couldn’t stop me. I was bound and determined to learn English … and I did! What’s funny is, that years later when I met my husband (he was stationed in my hometown), he had me spell-check his letters to his mom before he mailed them home.

Here’s a video of a few people you might know that didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer either. They tackled that thing that couldn’t be done and they did it!

“If you never failed you never lived”

P.S. Also see my post below … “It couldn’t be done”