
Your Path to Breakthroughs: Insights from Jan McDonald
From hopeless drunk to 30 years sober and helping hundreds of individuals and organizations unlock their 'and then some', I distill all the lessons gained from those transformational life experiences and share them with you in this space.
I invite you to explore these insights as way to help you breakthrough the challenges that are stopping you from becoming who you want to be.
“If you think you're smarter than the previous generation, consider this: Fifty years ago, the owner's manual of a car showed you how to adjust the valves. Today, it warns you not to drink the contents of the battery."
--Derric Johnson
Ever feel l...
“Life is either an adventure or nothing at all."
--Helen Keller
That is how I've been trying to approach unknowns since the pandemic.
I used to spend a huge amount of time struggling with control issues. It makes me smile to even write this, becaus...
“Comparison is the thief of joy."
― Theodore Roosevelt
At Sacred Stillness, the women's retreat that I hosted last Friday, one of the topics that came up was comparison. One of the journal prompts for our time of solitude was "who or what do I comp...
"Until we deal with our "head trash" nothing is going to change."
--Jan McDonald
Can you believe it's almost August? What happened to this year? It's almost the last quarter of 2025 and how are we doing with our goal achievement? I've been reflecti...
“You can’t always control what goes on outside, but you can always control what goes on inside.”
--Wayne Dyer
Can you tell what I've been speaking on lately? Anxiety is a major concern, not only is the workplace, but at home. Here's a part of th...
"Calmness is power. Say to your heart, "Peace be still."
--James Allen
What I'm going to share with you made no sense to me when I first heard it. When I used it in the height of rush hour traffic when I wasn't sure of my destination--it worked!...
"Emotions are neither good nor bad, it's our thinking that makes them so."
--my humble opinion
The Latin derivative for the word emotion, "emotere,' literally means energy in motion. Emotions are just energy moving through the body. They are not go...
"No one has a problem with the first mile of a journey. Even an infant could do fine for a while. But it isn't the start that matters. It's the finish line."
--Julien Smith
What? It's June already? What happened to the whole first half of the yea...
"Wave slope surfing has taught me to soar in the midst of trying circumstances."
--Jan McDonald
Dennis has been challenged with a health issue and hasn't worked since Thanksgiving. The docs (and there were many of them) have done every test and ...
If you want something in life that you've never had, you're going to have to do something you've never done."
--JD Houston
How many times have you been asked to do something you've never done before? I know that stepping out of our comfort zone ...
"Honor your commitments with integrity.”
― Les Brown
In The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork, John Maxwell writes about the Law of Countability. This law is all about being able to count on each other. One of the things that I love about teaching ...
"Watch what you tell yourself, you're likely to believe it."
—Russ Kyle
Technology can bring out the worst in me. On Friday morning, I had a couple of challenges that highjacked my positive attitude. The Head Trash began. "This shouldn't be this ha...
“Your thinking, more than anything else, shapes the way you live. It’s really true that if you change your thinking, you can change your life.”
John M...
"Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
--Shakespeare
I pulled out a book by Wayne Dyer, "The Power Of Intention," because I'm going over my 2025 goals. I've also been writing about anxiety and leadership, so I don't think i...
“Press on: nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated d...
“The imagination is literally the workshop wherein are fashioned all plans created by man.”
--Napolean Hill
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