Greetings!

This week we made it to Spring in North America - the season of hope when new life starts to push up out of the ground, when trees wake up and bloom, and the sun returns to warming us up a bit. With the tragic events in Japan recently, as well as New Zealand - events that demonstrate how connected we are - there is good reason to remember to have hope.

One way of doing that is by cultivating your brilliance and making a contribution to the world only you can make. Contributions of money to someone else's causes or work, or a project of your own? For whom? And what form will it take?

If it might take the form of a book into which you might pour your wisdom and experience to share with the world or just a limited audience or future family members, check out our resource section. If you've ever even thought about writing a book, the two brilliant women showcased there can definitely help you do it!

Maybe you have some other form of brilliance to share.  You can start by upping your game by just 10% and witness your own growth.  There is always somewhere new to go with any part of your life. Or maybe there is something you do so well that you can teach others to do it.  Our legacy story this issue is about some amazing women who started out to support and collaborate with one another and put together a model that now influences generations of young women in the STEM professions. (See more below!)

Enjoy the returning warmth (or the beginning of fall if you're in the southern hemisphere)! It's another season of change as this beautiful world, our "Spaceship Earth" keeps rolling around.

Cheers!
Dolly

Join us on Facebook! And on Twitter: @dollygarlo and @elizabethcrouch

Back to Top

Back to Top

THE GIFT OF 10%

Just about a year ago, a wise friend talked with me about increasing her business revenue by 10% - not by 25 to 100% or by ‘making 6 to 7 figures in sales’ as we frequently hear about these days. Just 10%. That got my attention. That’s a powerful, doable number. I started thinking about 10% in different ways, in different areas of my own life.

Sure it’s important to be 100% committed to your values, your purpose in life, your chosen relationships and your business. But very few people actually do everything 100% all of the time. It’s impossible. But, could you stay on track with your work and life – and create improvements – by making only 10% adjustments to your focus, schedule, investments or business innovation at any given point during the day, week or month?  

We’re already familiar with the notion of 10% in some parts of life. One sound guiding financial principle is to ‘pay yourself first’ for savings and investment with 10% right off the top of our earnings. Another is for giving to our community. Some spiritual organizations ask for stewardship contributions or tithing of 10%. However, tithing has a broader definition. To tithe also means a voluntary gift or a tax of 10% of annual earnings.   

Let’s think about 10% in some different ways too. One of the most common things clients say is how busy they are, how little time they have to do everyday things, fit in time for physical activity, complete work projects or innovate in their business.

Places where you could add 10% ~

Your Physical Self:

• Get healthier nutrition by adding 10% more fruits and vegetables to your daily diet
• Get really physical now – add 10% to your movement each day with stretching and strengthening. Or add a sport, maybe even dancing, into your life.  If you’re a desk chair dumpling ( or a couch potato ), start moving now. Make a commitment to move 10% of each hour ... that’s just six minutes. Your bones and joints, your back and neck, and of course your heart will love you!  
• Self care opportunities are abundant, however we seem to save them up for special occasions instead of integrating them into our daily or weekly lives. Start by looking at your daily and weekly schedule to see where you can fill in just 10% more for you.
  

Business and work:

• You want to make more personal contacts but how will you do that when your schedule is already so full?  If you’re already making 10 business calls weekly, add 1 just one more. It could mean adding 10% more to your financial bottom line, or more!
• Add 10% ‘white space’ to your daily or weekly schedule. That’s your creative, reflective, thoughtful time for yourself and your business development.
  

You can add 10% to other work activities (social media for example) when you remove or delegate 10% somewhere else ...

Places where you could subtract 10%:  

• Emails, text messages, other disruptions – read or send 10% fewer each day. Start by deleting 10% of the newsletters or ezines you file and never read!
• Spend 10% less time reading/scanning emails.
• How do you use social media? Could you gain or recover 10% of your time for other business activities or leisure time by working on important activities for the first 10% of the day and leaving email and social media until after?
• Clean 10% of your clothes closet or garage - give away 10% of your ‘extras’
• If you have a stacks of those glossy magazines so hard to part with, start putting them in the recycling or donating them to a homeless or women’s shelter, 10% at a time
• Make a list of things you don’t like or enjoy doing. Start taking them off your schedule by ditching or delegating 10% of them over a defined time period.   
• Make a ‘Do Not Do’ list of the things that you’re not good at or drive you a little crazy – start with your top 10% on that list and delegate them. Eventually you can delegate a full 10% or more.    
  

What about business or workplace innovation? We know every business is unique, but so often we see business owners getting frustrated or discouraged about keeping their business fresh and exciting for their clients and themselves.

• 10% innovation for the biz owner. Too often owners do nothing because they think the innovation needs to be spectacular. That can be daunting, disappointing or demoralizing.  You need time for brainstorming, continuing professional education, stimulating conferences, networking, community. Get help or collaborate to add to your innovative ideas.
• 10% innovation for your clients. If you abruptly go beyond that, you may actually startle or confuse your clients or the people who follow your business and are prospective clients. You may leave them behind instead of bringing them along with you.  
  

Ten percent is not as tricky as you might think, and not as intimidating as efforts to "make millions" (especially when a 10% increase over time can get you there more easily). There is no need to worry or obsess about things. You want to enjoy your days.  Be committed but gentle. 

You just need to know what you’re currently doing and progressively add to or lessen that – considering one aspect at a time. You deserve taking that close look – and so does the world that you serve.

Here’s a helpful 10% formula:

1.    Think of one area of your life that you want to improve.
2.    Give yourself credit for what you do now and appreciate all you’ve already done.
3.    What are a couple things you could do now? Choose one or two activities that represent a 10% addition or subtraction to make a difference for your business, yourself, your world.   

You can apply this formula in any place, at any time, in your life. You get to choose, decide and take action. Start now with one thing, and see where you are in six weeks (that’s about 10% of a year from now)!  (EBC)

Back to Top

 WOMEN AND GIRLS CHANGING THE WORLD

It’s been well documented, especially in developing nations, that girls are a real natural resource and that educating them is a key to the future of a peaceful and productive world.  The Population Reference Bureau reports on numerous studies demonstrating that an investment in the education of girls improves child and maternal mortality, health, fertility rates, poverty, economic growth and a reduction in the cycle of poverty as a result of an enhanced citizenry to provide for the next generation. According to the UN Millennium Project and a 2005 report of the Task Force on Education and Gender Equality, adolescent girls have a great capacity for positively impacting their communities – they are more likely to participate in the labor force, engage in paid employment, earn more for their families over their lifetimes, and have healthier children who stay in school longer. Girls produce a higher economic return on investment in education for their communities than boys do.  

Adolescents in the U.S. lag behind other industrialized countries in according to a test administered by the Program for International Student Assessment, which focuses on science and math. The international test is run by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which involves 30 countries including the U.S. The 15 year olds here had science scores lower than the average in 16 of those countries and math scores lower than average in 23 of the leading industrial nations.  

So while educating girls in developing nations is helping to pull those countries forward, there is also a need for greater support to develop leaders in math and science for future generations in industrialized countries, especially in the U.S.

The National Network for Child Care reports that while boys tend to outperform girls in math and science and girls attitudes about those subject have become more negative, girls grades in these subject are equal to or better than those of boys. Girls can do the work.  There is a need to address it.  In 1992, manufacture Mattel Toys produced the first talking Barbie doll, whose first words were “math class is tough.”  They were also her last words as the talking Barbie was taken off the market in response to concerns from parents and teachers.

A Brilliant Solution From Women Scientists and Educators

Rather than studying and making toys that perpetuate a negative attitude not in keeping with girls’ abilities, one organization has, since 1974, been focusing on helping girls achieve and excel in math and science. Non-profit membership organization Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) in Science and Mathematics™ conducts conferences throughout the U.S. and internationally to nurture girls' interest in science and math courses, and encourage them to consider careers in science, technology, engineering, and math. Its members currently include educators, scientists, mathematicians, parents, community leaders, as well as government and corporate representatives.

They’ve been so effective that in January 2011 they were asked to give a presentation to the Non-Government Committee on the Status of Women in New York City, in partnership with UN Women. Listen to Executive Director Stacey Roberts-Ohr’s address via this UN radio link. 

The EYH Network started out as the Math/Science Network, an informal group of women scientists and educators in the San Francisco Bay Area. They got together because of a concern with low participation in math by girls. Initially, they voluntarily collaborated with one another as a form of mutual support to strengthen their own individual education programs. Great things can result when women get together in this way. 

A Revolution Evolution

To provide you with a background guide for your own ideas, here’s how it all developed from there.  It’s an incredible illustration of the power of women working together – which may inspire you to pull together your own “girl group” to produce something powerful, meaningful and lasting that truly makes a positive difference.

In the early 1970’s, at Lawrence Hall of Science (a resource center for preschool through high school science and mathematics education at University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley), Nancy Kreinberg and Rita Liff Levinson were concerned about the low number of girls in after school math and science activities.  So they created “Math For Girls,” an after school hands on math class led by women university students, who also served as role models. Their message was “Math is for girls.”

At the college and university level, Lenore Blum (now Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University), and Diane Resek (now, Professor San Francisco State University) both then at Mills College; and Len Feldman from San Jose State, were influenced by the findings of Lucy Sells, sociology graduate student at UC Berkeley, who noted that high school girls graduating without the skills to take on college math would be cut off from careers requiring it. So the three teachers created a variety of quick and effective entry routes into calculus and college mathematics.

During this time, Physicist Jean Fetter Chu, and then Associate Director for the Center for Teach and Learning at Stanford University (and wife of Steven Chu, who became U.S. Secretary of Energy in 2009), observed there were few women university professors in math and science.  So, Jean developed a training program and Teri Perl, then a PhD student in math education at Stanford, wrote the book for the program. (Dr. Perl later co-founded The Learning Company and became President of EYH).

At the middle school level, similar things were happening. Math teachers Flora Fuss from Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Middle School and Kay Gilliland from Emeryville School District, along with Jan MacDonald, a parent in the East Bay all noted girls were dropping out of math programs.  To address it, they created the “EQUAL Teacher Training Program.”

At the K-12 school level, Elizabeth Stage (now head of Lawrence Hall) saw that their curriculum also needed a major overhaul.  

This confluence of work at all levels of education came together with a simple invitation from Lawrence Hall’s Nancy and Rita, which read:

That gathering was held a month later and together the group observed that successful programs had four components:

1.    Information for girls and women about the importance of math and science to their futures
2.    Effective access to mathematics curriculum
3.    Hands on experience in actually doing and using math
4.    Role models and mentors

At Creating Legacy, we know that success leaves clues, and right on target, these women built on the fundamentals they uncovered by creating a revolution for girls in the areas of math and science, even as their own women’s movement was itself getting under way.  That revolution became the Math/Science Network.  And the Network’s first activity was “Expanding Your Horizons in Science and Math” (EYH). Nancy Kreinberg and Lenore Blum were the first two Co-Directors.

And here’s what that revolution wrought:  the first EYH conference was held in March of 1976 at Mills College and, exponentially, the second year, there were four more conferences build on the original model.

Synchronistically, shortly thereafter the group obtained a grant from The Women's Educational Equity Act (WEEA) program, (originally part of Title IV-A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended), which was enacted in 1974 to promote educational equity for girls and women, and provide funds to help education agencies and institutions meet the requirements of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.  That grant produced the following results:

• 2 films:
• The “Math/Science Connection: Educating Young Women for Today” (featuring EYH) and,
• A role model film featuring astronomer Sandra Faber, mechanical engineer Zella Jackson, veterinarian Dee Jacobson and physicist Claire Max, narrated by Rita Liff Levinson, appropriately called “Sandra, Zella, Dee and Claire: Four Women In Science”
  

• The EYH Handbook for conference coordinators, written by Joanne Koltnow, which became the initial blueprint for the EYH conferences, which have expanded into 90 different conferences in 30 states and several other countries now impacting close to a million girls!

In 1978, the Carnegie Corporation, awarded the group a two-year grant to establish a formal organization that could coordinate existing activities and resources, consolidate existing materials and information, and providing technical assistance to others wishing to institute similar Network programs. As part of a renewal grant, the original Math/Science Resource Center was founded in 1980 at Mills College in Oakland California.

In 1982, the Math/Science Network became an independent, non-profit educational organization, The EYH Network, with a Board of Directors whose members work in education, government, industry and research. Numerous separate chapters have also formed to carry out the work. The EYH Network’s professional staff and volunteer members have worked ever since to fulfill their mission of encouraging young women to pursue science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers. Originally geared at the high school level, the organization is now geared toward middle school age girls.

In addition to being good at math and science, the women who started and continue to run this organization demonstrate their abilities to cooperate to develop great things, results of real, long-lasting significance. Their work is further proof that girls are a real natural resource and the epitome of educational efforts that benefit communicate and provide that foundation for a more peaceful and productive world.

Often the most effective legacy projects start out organically – with someone noticing a problem and deciding to take action to do something about it.  Finding like minded others – kindred spirits – adds to the synergy of solution development. Putting in place some systems allows the work to be duplicated, shared and spread. 

We know women have a great capacity for creation, particularly in collaborative fashion that can result in incredible synergies, especially successful women who are ready to create something new that serves a sense of meaning and satisfaction – and that leaves a sustainable positive solution in and for the world.  We love to support their efforts, and especially to tell the stories of women who have done it ... for inspiration and to provide examples of how its done to shorten the learning curve and produce results faster and easier.   

Where would you start if you knew that something this significant and great could result?  Here’s living proof of it.  How can we help you take first steps? (DMG)

-----------------------------------------------------

[Special thanks to Dr. Teri Perl for her contributions to this article. When asked about EYH as her legacy, she replied as many do, that she didn't really think about it as a legacy (which it IS)! She added this, though:

So there's another area of work to be done ... ]

----------------------------------------

Send us an e-mail about someone you know who is living or building a legacy. We’d love to feature their story. Maybe it’s you?

Back to Top

Business Building Books – Six Figure Author Secrets 
with Lynne Klippel

We love Lynne.  She helps aspiring authors write great books, grow a sustainable business around them and serve more people, so they can transform the world – if that’s what they choose to do with their books! That's certainly a recipe for a great legacy project.

She knows writing the book is the easy part; reach and distribution – getting your message out to your intended audience – is the harder one. 

Business Building Books began in 2003. Since then, Lynne, author of 7 books herself, has taught thousands of aspiring authors from 6 of the 7 continents how to write, publish, and use their books to grow their business. It’s more than a publishing service – she also helps authors develop information products, audio programs, and home study courses.

And her multi-part teleclass – Six Figure Author Secrets – just began last night March 21st and will run through April 18th. All the classes are recorded and transcribed, so you won’t miss a thing, but sign up right away! If you think you have a book in you, and you want to know more about how to get its wisdom out into the world before you actually write it, take advantage of this comprehensive program.  Don't miss out!

Write a Book in a Weekend™ ?? YES!
with Donna Kozik

We also love Donna Kozik.  She's on a mission to produce 1,000 book authors THIS year!.  We're so amazed how possible that is with her Write A Book In A Weekend "book camp".  Dolly just completed one and can attest. "Donna really does create a context and provide you all the tools to write a book in a weekend" – ever if, as Donna says, the last thing you wrote was a high school term paper! Even if you don’t have an idea for what you want to write, Donna can help you write a book on something that is important to you.

All it takes is a proven system, easy-to-understand instructions and time dedicated to getting it done. And all you have to provide is the time.  Here’s what you get in more detail:

• A "fill in the blanks" book template you can plug your material into
• Donna’s personal resource list and tips to help fill your pages 
• Live call-in sessions the weekend of the event for laser coaching, q&a and step-by-step implementation tips so you have your book done sooner rather than later
• Recordings of each and every call so you don’t have to miss anything
• A streamlined step-by-step "Fast Start Guide"
• Ongoing email, audio and video encouragement and inspiration to keep you on track
  

Next WAB weekend is May 14-15, 2011. The sooner you sign up, the sooner you get all the goodies to get started!

Back to Top

Back to Top

WHAT WOULD HELP YOU MOST?

We are not promoting any products, programs or services this issue - only telling our stories and recommending others' work that we appreciate. Our first six-week Achieving Financial Mastery program is scheduled to start this week and we're back to work with private client coaching and strategic consultation sessions as well.

In the meanwhile, we'd love to know what you're thinking.  

• What's next for you? 
• Where would you like to go with your life or work? 
• What is the contribution you'd truly like to make from deep in your heart and based on your greatest interests or the people, places or things you love the most? 
• What might such a project look like - or where would you start?  
• What does reading the Legacy Journal bring up for you, and what would you like to do about that?

Just wondering. We'd love to know.  

Email us - click here for Dolly or click here for Elizabeth.
While we're in the midst of delivering the work we've developed, we'd love to hear from you so we know where to go next!

Back to Top

Dolly M. Garlo, RN, JD, PCC, Editor of the Legacy Journal is the Founder & Creative Partner of Creating Legacy™ — a program devoted to empowering business owners and entrepreneurially minded professionals make their positive impact in the world — with joy and meaning. For 30 + years she has supported clients in many different arenas — healthcare, law and business. Her current focus is helping clients with business and strategic marketing design, social enterprise development, professional career transition, and leadership for enlightened business owners and social entrepreneurs.

Eliza Crouch, RPT, PA-C, CPCC, is Creating Legacy’s Development Partner, a life coach and community developer with a background in physical therapy, primary care, surgery and rehabilitation medicine. After 25 years of experience developing client-focused, team medicine models to deliver healthcare services, she began using coaching skills and models to enhance and improve client-family-healthcare provider interaction. She now works with teens, young adults, physicians, emerging and established leaders in diverse professions and organizations, with a strong interest in enhancing inter generational collaboration.

Is it time for you to design your work and create an exceptional life so both reflect your personal integrity and values, greatest level of wellness, highest and best contribution, and individual sense of abundance — for which you can feel exceedingly fulfilled and grateful? We believe these are the keys to true, lasting satisfaction and happiness from which you can also "make a positive difference that lasts for generations."

And we look forward to getting to know you.

You may absolutely share this newsletter with people you think may enjoy it. When doing so, please forward it in its entirety, including our contact and copyright information.

We’d appreciate it!

The Legacy Journal newsletter is published by Dolly M. Garlo. Please send inquiries and comments to: Dolly@CreatingLegacy.com ~ www.CreatingLegacyNetwork.com

© 2011 by Thrive!! Inc., all rights reserved.