Ever heard of a wedding fashion? Of course there is! Just like fashion accessories, dresses updates its yearly ins and outs, wedding trends also changes fashion. It will be good to know whats hot and new for this years wedding trends if youre planning to marry this year. A line-up might freshened your taste and give you a whole new lot of ideas in preparing your wedding day.

Beliefs and practices affects a wedding that is why lifestyle magazines, fashion designers and wedding reception planners merged to create a new and fashionable of getting married in style this 2009!

There are different beliefs and practices when it comes to planning for a wedding ceremony. Lifestyle magazines, fashion designers and even wedding reception experts and planners have fused their ideas together to come up with something new for 2009.

Wedding tokens

Gone were the bells and couple figurines as a gift to friends and guests. What 2009 got is a much advanced way of giving gifts, say a small pot of plant, or even a delicious dessert with a card bearing its recipe.

Brides and grooms have ventured to a much more artistic level and theres no stopping to what you may think of for the designs.

Receptions

Before, brides and grooms prefer a wedding ceremony held at the church but not this year! Although its good, couples may now choose other places to held their wedding day. From the beach to a garden wedding, it will be more practical though to held your reception at the same location to save time and money as well.

This year, environment is the most favored theme for wedding, since the materials used are eco-friendly, and is much romantic than any other else.

Internet is in!

Internet surfing is now widely-used and is one of sources regarding any information that is needed. Eventually, it is also a good provider of tips when planning for your wedding. Internet is handy and a fast way to get ideas so it is advisable to get used surfing the internet.

Above all of these trends and creativity, the styles are going on and on and you might want yourself to be updated every time. But dont let the whole thing get to you, for your touch and personal ideas might come very handy. More importantly, do not be afraid to try new things and experiment its your day youre celebrating.

In part 1 of this series we talked about the quick fix people are looking for as opposed to taking responsibility for creating your life.

And I asked you…

So where do you start if you are ready to take responsibility for your life and create your future?

There are 4 core areas, or what I call core blueprints, that require your attention if you want to have a life that is in flow with your true passion and purpose. When you’ve created all 4 of your blueprints and you have all 4 of these areas functioning at a level that satisfies you, then your life will be more peaceful and effortless than you have ever imagined it could really be…

No magic bullet required!

In the next 4 weeks we will discuss each of these areas:

*Introspection and Discovery of Purpose *Blueprinting the Life of Your Dreams *Sales/Marketing/Communication Skills *Mentoring for Your Life and Your Business

First I’d like to have you go back and look at how you reacted to the assignment I gave you at the end of part 1. You remember, the four lines I asked you to read out loud and then look at what your reaction told you about yourself.

I’m making the assumption that you’ve at least taken one simple action towards creating your life by doing this. So how did that go for you?

What came up?

Your body reacts to your thoughts and feelings, situations real or imagined, all the time but most of the time we aren’t aware of it, or you’ll look for a pill or a drink to cover the reaction.

Why do you think people refer to your ‘gut’ reaction?

When your stomach gets butterflies or starts swirling do you reach for an antacid or do you go inside and ask yourself what’s really happening here?

Because now, in part two of this series, we’re talking about Introspection and Discovering Your Purpose.

Introspection does not require hours of meditation or trekking to Tibet. You can start very simply by just listening to what your body is telling you.

For example: When you notice your body having a reaction, take a minute and see what was just happening that you are reacting to. Was it a phone call, an email, a conversation, or seeing something you don’t want to do coming up next on your calendar?

Or was it a daydream, a thought of fear or doubt that isn’t even real?

First you have to know what is driving your life now before you can make a shift that will move you in the direction you want to go. Why randomly make changes in your life if you don’t know where you’re actually at or what your truly want?

It’s like shooting arrows at a target while someone is spinning you around instead of planting your body, taking a proper stance and aiming at your target. That would be silly, wouldn’t it? And yet you’re basically doing the same thing every day if you haven’t created your first blueprint of Introspection and Discovery of Purpose.

So how do you get started figuring out what your purpose is?

These are criteria that I use to qualify every opportunity that comes up in my life. I believe they will serve you as well as they have served my clients in the last several years.

7 Criteria for Recognizing Your Passion and Purpose

1. Doing it makes you feel good about yourself 2. You would do it for free 3. You loose all track of time when you do it 4. You love to talk about it to everyone 5. You are happy to teach others 6. If this were how you spent all your time, it would be a good thing. 7. It makes you want to get out of bed in the morning

If you are truly living your purpose and doing what you are meant to do in this life, you will easily be ale to say yes to all 7 of these criteria. And just as importantly, you will be able to confidently say no to any opportunity that doesn’t rate a resounding yes. And I mean all 7, every time.

If you say yes to 6, but 1 of these criteria is a no or a maybe for you, then say no to whatever it is. It’s not worth your time and effort to do anything that isn’t a perfect fit for you. You don’t want to be coming from a place of lack and grabbing on to something that isn’t meant for you.

I can hear all the “yes, but..” now. It doesn’t matter how good the opportunity would make you look or how much money it could bring or what your friends will say if you don’t do it. Just say no. Your life will start working on such a higher level as soon as you really embrace this concept of saying no to the good to say yes to the great.

That’s the first step to creating your life and creating the first blueprint.

You must have a place that you confidently stand in your life. Your own personal line in the sand. And only you know what that is. I can’t give it to you and neither can anyone else.

Another good tool I would suggest you use is creating your own personal manifesto. If you haven’t done that, you can go to http://LynnPierce.com and sign up for this ezine, and you’ll get an email with a special report on how to create your personal manifesto as my gift to you. I take you step by step through how to create it and how to use it. It’s a powerful tool.

To be living your blueprint of introspection and purpose you have to be in a place of abundance in terms of confidently saying no to an opportunity that may be a good one to have the space available in your life to welcome a great one.

Does that make sense?

Too often whether it’s a relationship, a job, or a dream; you’re limiting your own ability to live your purpose by fearfully holding on to things in your life that, upon introspection, you would realize are not serving you at the highest level.

The law of attraction is not the only Universal law. One that has always been a very important one in my life is the law of creating a vacuum. Nothing new and great can come into your life unless a space has been created for it to occupy.

If all the available space in your life is filled with things that are less than perfect for you, there is no room for anything better to show up.

So you can use the law of attraction and sit and wait, or you can beg and plead, or you can stand on your head, but you will not get your desired end result.

Until you let go and know that the Universe will bring into your life exactly what you need to fulfill your purpose, you’ll have no space available for it come into your life.

Have you ever been in a bad relationship and wished for a better person to come into your life, but you wouldn’t break up with the first person because you were afraid you’d be alone?

How did that work out for you? Eventually, if you suffer enough and the pain becomes great enough you’ll make the leap and leave. Then, lo and behold, someone else shows up.

That’s the way it works in every area of your life. You can always take the slow and painful route and wait to be so miserable that you make a change out of desperation or you can choose now to actively listen to your body when you have a ‘gut reaction’ and begin to create blueprint #1: Introspection and Discovery of Purpose using the tools you’ve learned here.

Next week we’ll move on to my favorite part, Blueprinting the Life of Your Dreams.

So get to work right now on discovering your purpose and creating your personal manifesto so you’ll be standing in a place of knowing who you are, where you’re starting from and where you want to go so we can begin to create that life for you next week!

Until then, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Just comment on this post on my blog.

The most significant impact a person can have on their long term career earnings is to engage in salary negotiation early in their career. This will have a direct impact on the amount of earning potential they have in their future.

This might be considered whether it is your first job out of university or if it’s a mid-life job change. Further, there are financial impacts when you are in your career working for an employer that you are very happy with, of not negotiating your salary with the best timing.

Throughout your career, you may earn pay raises and promotions within the company that you work for, but for example, when the company offers scheduled raises, as many companies do, the impact of the starting salary with that company is huge.

This not only applies to your first salary and subsequent incremental raises but also to salary market differentials when you changes roles within a company. You may move into a job requiring significantly more responsibility or effort, but the salary you had beforehand can influence the starting salary of the new job.

As an example, imagine a person starting a new job as a QA analyst in a high tech company somewhere in America. Suppose that person begins with a starting salary of $45,000. Most likely that person will have to put in 6 months to a full year before they are offered their first pay raise. Suppose it is a 10% raise which would be HUGE at many employers. The employee would gain an additional $4500 per annum based on that increase.

Now imagine that same employee started at $55,000 or even higher. That same pay raise of 10% would provide the same person $5500 additional salary per year. With the first salary, the employee would still be under the $50,000 level after one full year of work and after a 10% pay raise, while in the second scenario the employee would be at over $60,000 per year after a 10% raise.

Now consider the compound effect of these two starting salaries on the employees earning potential. First let’s examine a 4 year horizon all things being equal (that is, suggesting no pay raises and no promotions). The person earning $45,000 will have earned $180,000 in gross salary in four years. The person earning $55,000 will have earned $220K in 4 years. That is a $40,000 differential just based on where the person starts in terms of salary.

Introduce the 10% raise after year one and consider the impact as the person continues through their career. The person with a better salary in the beginning will always be ahead of the person with the lower starting salary, ceteris parabis (i.e. same job, same performance). The person with the higher salary negotiation will be inching ahead faster than the person starting with the lower salary. This impact accelerates with each passing year assuming the same % annual pay raise for each.

When negotiating a pay raise, if an employee earning $50,000 earns a 5% raise without negotiating anything extra, that might acceptable. Now consider the impact if the person gets a 15% pay raise because they have been a superstar in the job and they have all the supporting market facts and a performance record to justify it. That employee will have negotiated compensation - $7,500 in an increase versus just accepting $2500. Project that 10 years into the future, and there is a blatant $50,000 impact on the person’s earnings.

Experts feel it goes without saying that it is better to try negotiating a raise or an improvement to one’s total compensation package than to simply accept what is offered. The first offer is often the lowest offer and can be negotiated higher. This salary negotiation must be done with tact and must be well founded with a supporting case for the pay increase.

It must also consider factors such as market, company guidelines, and professional performance. However when done well, it can really pay off. Remember to consider the value of all factors of compensation when asking for an increase. Some people truly value time and quality of life, while others are willing to venture out and accept stock options in lieu of extra salary.

However, when it comes to salary negotiation, don’t be afraid to consider asking for more salary.

One of the biggest challenges with a wedding is to have everything come together perfectly for your special day.  With months of planning completed, it would be sad to miss something truly important that would ruin your day, right?

Well that is exactly what happened to our marriage ceremony when we forgot about the wedding favors.  We had previously discussed with our Mackay marriage celebrant that we wanted to give each of our guest seashell key chains and we were able to find a company that sold them.  The catch was that we needed to order in advance – in fact, it needed to be done a couple of months in advance.

It wasn’t until we arrived at our wedding location that we realized that we had completely forgot about them – which was a terrible disappointment to us.  We felt horrible that we didn’t give our guests anything to remember our special day – sadly our perfect wedding didn’t turn out perfect at all.

We recently went to a fundraiser at my son’s school and the grand prize drawing for the evening was a trip for four to Florida and WDW hopper tickets. I never in a million years would have dreamed that we would win, but that is exactly what happened.

We have started planning our trip and I was trying to find some Disney ticket information, as we have three children and would need to be buying both another plane ticket and another ticket to the amusement park.

Luckily for me, though, there was a brochure with the prize that had a number I could call for more info. I was told that it would be no problem to add one more child to the trip and it is only going to end up costing us an extra six hundred dollars.

We can’t wait to go and I am so excited because I never win anything.

When I moved to the city, it was a big adjustment. I had grown up in a small town and I felt completely lost and swallowed up at the immensity of the city. I was pretty sheltered at first because I was scared to leave my apartment, except to go to work.

My mom told me that I was going to have to go out if I was hoping to make some friends. I decided that I was going to find local singles on the computer and then plan to meet, as I felt this was actually safer than wandering the streets alone.

I signed up to a few free online dating sites and I got the results that I was looking for. I am not in love, but I have made some incredible friends. I also go out in the evenings and my friends have helped me to embrace the city life, rather than shy away from it.

Do you ever pickup a book to read, and you just can’t seem to put it down until you are done?  Well, it hasn’t happened to me very often in my life, but it sure has today.

You see, earlier today, I went down to the bookstore to buy a book recommended to me by a colleague.  He is a big shot stock trader, and he has been trading the QQQQ for the past year with amazing results.  In fact, he is on track to retire in about two years, at the ripe "old" age of 35 - now wouldn’t we all love that!

So, I bought the book that he suggested to me and I sat down to read for ten minutes.  Well, those ten minutes turned into about six hours now, and I just finished reading the book.  Not only was it a stimulating read, but I think that I will follow the trading systems outlined in the book and retire a lot younger.

I will have to make sure to thank him for recommending this wonderful book once I get back from my holidays - I think he might have just changed my life.

When I decided to move out of my parent’s house and get a home of my own, it was very stressful. I knew that I was very picky, but I thought it was alright to be that way, as it was my first home purchase I had ever made.

After seeing several different places, we looked at one that had the cutest sash window in the kitchen. As I tend to spend a lot of time cooking, I thought the house was perfect for me. I decided to put a bid in on it and then I had to sit and wait to find out if my offer had been accepted.

It seemed to be the longest wait of my life, but I did get the house and I am really happy to call it home. I made some cute curtains for my kitchen and put in new flooring. It is tastefully decorated and I love going to my little home after a long day of work.

When my friends and I were planning our trip to Europe, we decided that we were going to do everything in style. We looked into limousine hire for all of the stops we were going to make. We thought that if we were going to be spending the money, we would go all out.

We booked a limo hire Kent to pick us up at the airport and take us to our fancy hotel. I knew that I would feel like a celebrity riding around England in a fancy hired car and my friends agreed that this was absolutely the way to do it.

We traveled throughout Europe and had the greatest times of our lives. When it was time to head home, we got a limo hire Surrey to take us back to the airport. We felt like princesses for one last time and I would say it is the greatest trip that I have ever taken.

When my husband and I started our first company, we decided that we were going to offer a twenty-four hour toll free help desk for our customers. We were fairly new to the computer industry and we thought it would help our rapport if we were able to help our customers anytime of the day.

We soon realized that this was not a good idea, when we were getting out of bed a dozen times a night to help a customer who was having technical difficulties. It would not have been so bad if it had been legitimate problems with our software or hosting accounts, but a lot of the questions were really stupid and it made us grumpy to have been dragged out of bed for it.

We now have people that are hired to handle all of our toll free service calls. It saves up some time for us and we are now able to get a good night’s sleep.