Millions of women are in the world, with millions of tasks they must get done daily. But you are only one person. You cannot do it all. So prioritize what gets done and what gets pushed to the next day or delegated to someone.

1. Examine your day’s to-do list and begin with an essential item on your list.

My colleague Karen Stally calls this eating your frog. There is a book by Brian Tracey titled Eat That Frog. Wendy Cole does workshops where she hands out chocolate frogs. 

A frog is your biggest, most important task. It is the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you do not do something about it first. It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your results at this moment.

There is a psychological reason you want to do it this way. When you do the critical projects first and complete them, it gives you a burst of feel-good hormones, and it makes you feel more energized and more like tackling other items on your list.

Eating the frog requir...

One of the most empowering things women do for our children is to teach them to be independent and to be able to make decisions and take actions on their own. This independence will raise their self-esteem and enable them to handle any situation confidently.

Here are eight effective and fun ways to help your child become more independent.

1. Enlist your child’s help. Tell them that you have observed that there are things they can do on their own that you have been doing for them. Then ask for their support in allowing you to let them carry out those activities. This makes it seem like they are helping you change, not the other way around. It also fosters cooperation.
2. Look for occasions to create more independence. Make a list of things you believe your child could do independently. Then have the child select which ones they feel they would like to do. This empowers them to make decisions independently and try to do more things without your help.
3. Do not try to hand over all the...

When we are little girls, it seems all we can think about is growing up and becoming independent adults—being independent means being in charge of your own life and making your own decisions. But as you grow, you might tend to become a bit fearful of becoming an adult. These fears are common, and nearly everyone has felt them at some time or another in their lives.

There are five aspects of this fear of adulthood and independence.

1. You are breaking away from parents and other relationships that have been comforting and secure. You may feel that things have changed and can never go back to the way things were. This is a normal and healthy change as you build your own identity as an adult and decide where your life leads. New relationships will form as you find people you have things in common with, and old relationships may fall away as you move in a new and different direction.
2. The experience of leaving childhood comfort is a powerful pull to stick with the “fantasy” over the
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Women should all strive for healthy independence in our lives because it gives us many other freedoms that collectively can create a successful, fulfilling life.

Here are four of those freedoms and how they can affect your life:

1. External Influences - Becoming free from external influences allows you to make your own decisions and happily own the outcomes. When you have healthy self-esteem, you will rely on yourself for decisions and choices. You will not look externally for validation, and you will not constantly second-guess yourself. You will have an intelligent basis for your preferences, and you will not bend to culture, society, religion, or background. You will be able to think for yourself in all situations.
2. Internal Reactions - You are not emotionally reactive when free from internal reactions. You have reasoned reactions to situations rather than knee-jerk emotional reactions. You think about things. You weigh options, benefits, and drawbacks. You educate yourself
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Your ego considers independence very important. And your ego has a precise definition of independence - doing things your way without help from anyone else and liking it. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you consider it, the way ego wants things done is rarely how things happen in real life.

But that does not prevent the ego from rearing its ugly head and causing many problems.

When you meet someone who sparks your desire and heart, your ego feels incredibly threatened. After all, this would not feel so good if you were complete and whole on your own, right? So, ego puts up a fight when things are going great and lies to you about why you are feeling so happy.

Maybe it shows you that you are weak if you depend on someone this much. Or it means that if you were truly independent, you would not need the company of another. You might begin believing that you are codependent when really, you are just in love!

The ego has many tricks up its sleeve for ke...

Independence is a skill that not every woman possesses at birth. Of course, everyone has to become somewhat independent as they grow up towards adulthood, but it is far easier for some to accept their independence than others. Evading independence as an adult creates problems in many different areas of your life, especially as you enter into professional and personal interactions.

Learn to:

• be your own strongest supporter – vital to success in any area of life.

It can be challenging for some women to realize they are responsible for any life occurrences—choices made shape your life. Your decisions develop your direction. Being practical about this is beneficial and necessary. When you know you can rely on and take total care of yourself, you can accomplish anything.

• stand on our own two feet – although trust is not always detrimental.

It is healthy to be able to trust and rely on others. What you should not do is leave your potential for joy in someone else’s h...

You cannot talk about independence in life without mentioning financial freedom. Becoming an adult comes with many responsibilities, not the least of which is making your own money and learning to provide for yourself appropriately.

Learning how to budget your money is also essential. As you enter adulthood, learning to budget and pay your bills every month on time will allow you to build strong credit.

And just about every major purchase you will make will look to your credit score and credit report as representative of how consistently you pay your bills and utilize your available credit.

Here are five ways to grow your financial independence:

1. Learn to live within your means. What this means is, do not spend all the money you make. When you bring home your paycheck, you will have bills that you must pay first to make sure you are on time. After that, you can decide what to do with the rest.
2. Learn to create a realistic budget and stick to it. By utilizing a budget, you
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One of the most challenging aspects of independence is that many people today fear it. They fear to be in control of their own life because that means that you cannot place blame - for anything - on anyone but yourself: scary prospect, that.

But society today has a confused outlook on what independence truly is. Freedom is not about you hardening yourself, suppressing who you are, and never letting anyone help you. Surprised?

Dependence and independence are pretty misunderstood.

• Independent does not mean you are narcissistic and anti-social, overly-driven and aggressive.
• Dependence does not mean you are weak, spineless, or cannot do anything for yourself.

First of all, society hints that depending on anyone is a sign of weakness. Anytime you get involved with another, and you begin to feel as if you can rely on them (a significant definition of dependence), others may make you feel as if you are doing something wrong.

This is not the case. But if you listen to that l...

Relying on others to shape who we are is the basis of codependence. It is, in effect, creating our feelings and behaviors around something external, rather than figuring out for ourselves what our feelings and behaviors should be and how they should look.

“Independence is happiness.” Susan B. Anthony

Autonomy, or true independence, is the ability to make decisions based on what you have learned about the world, your experiences, perceptions, and feelings, and how you interact with the world. Independence is empowering. Codependence is stifling.

Here are five practical ways to become less codependent and grow your valuable independence:

1.  Get to know who you are inside.

There are so many approaches to do this. One is to begin journaling your thoughts and feelings about your daily activities. Then ask yourself, “Is that the truth?” and “Is that how I feel about it?” Many times, upon reflection, we find that we have simply been parroting someone else’s feelings or tho...

As our usage of technology and the internet become more prevalent, women find ourselves as a society relying more and more on it and less and less on ourselves. But technology cannot solve all problems. It is not always available, nor do we usually want it to be. There are simply parts of the human mind, body, and soul irreplaceable - by technology or anything else!

The more technology runs our world, being independent becomes both more accessible and more complex. By learning to become more personally independent, you increase your chances of success in all areas of your life. Independent refers to all aspects of your life, including career, emotional, financial, personal faith, and beliefs. Self-reliance is a skill set that comes easier to some women than others, but it is a skill that everyone can benefit from all the time.

Here are six areas of your life that are sure to become stronger once you learn to stand on your own two feet:

1. Self-Esteem

Increased confidence ...