If you’ve noticed, the only truly successful people are risk takers. The problem is that there are a lot of risk takers who have failed miserably. So what’s the difference?

Successful risk takers have a formula and a few tricks up their sleeve.

First, consider what your instincts are telling you. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink” the author explains that we often know immediately whether something is a good or bad idea – and how we’re usually right. The first step to taking the right risk is to tune into your instincts and learn to trust them.

Next, balance your instincts with reality and common sense. While it might be the best decision to go into debt to start your own business, if you’re on the verge of losing your house, it may be best to shelf the business until things are more stable. This is the difference between a leaping before you look and a calculated risk.

Third, remember that a little risk taking goes a long way. The most successful people balance their instincts with common sense, take the risk and then work hard to get where they want to go.

There is something magical and empowering about risk taking, but too often people feel if they take risk after risk, everything will just sort of work out. People who take risks successfully tend to be confident and believe that taking the right risk and working hard will result in getting to where they want to go. They are tenacious.

Finally, in my book “Unlocking the Secrets of the Successful Career Seeker” I talk about how important it is to practice risk taking. Start small so you can test what works and doesn’t work for you. Sometimes people will take a huge risk the first time out, see it end in disaster and then never take another risk – staying stuck in a life they don’t want.

Why not get started right now? Think of a baby step you can take – something that will move you one step closer to your goal but won’t be too big of a problem if it doesn’t work out? And let me know how it works out!

The holidays offer a great time to connect with clients, potential clients and business associates but it can also be very tricky. It goes beyond just not wanting to offend people. The holidays offer perhaps the very best time to align with your client so they see how you can help them.

Thanksgiving isn’t universal and Hanukkah comes early this year. So if you send a holiday card December 15th, it still looks like a “Christmas” card simply because of WHEN you send it. Of course, you can wait until New Year’s but then people can feel like it’s an after-thought.

Sending a card specific to a certain holiday can be off-putting to some. And even referring to a feeling of gratitude indicates a specific belief. So what’s the solution?

Good business is all about deepening our relationships with those we work with. And the way we do that is by showing how our values align with the values of those we work with. Allowing people to really know who we are can help create strong bonds.

My client Rachel asked me about this the other day. She pondered, “If I value my faith deeply and want people to know that I celebrate Hanukkah this time of year, should I send out a card that is a clear representation of my faith?”

I suggested that while some people see that as simply an expression of what she believes, others can feel it’s pushy – assuming that they celebrate the same holiday she does.

Instead, I suggested Rachel send a generic card and include a story.

Stories provide a connection and even if someone has a different belief, they can relate to you through those feelings evoked in your story. It ties them back to a time when they felt the same way.

It’s even better if your story ties into your work. As a marketing strategist, I help people overcome challenges with getting the word out about their business. So I might share a story about a mentor who sent me a Christmas poem that helped me push by a challenge.

Rachel is a healer and she shared her story with me. Her Jewish grandmother was in Poland during WWII and as a nurse, she tended to people during a time when it was nearly impossible to find medical help.

Rachel told me that one day as a teen-ager she was foraging around in the attic and found her grandmother’s notes on healing. She sat down with her mother who explained that her grandmother had disappeared in Poland towards the end of the war. No one knows what happened to her.

That is what inspired Rachel to be a healer and she when she uses her grandmother’s notes, she feels her grandmother lives on.

THAT is a powerful story and I gave her a resounding “YES!” when she asked if it was okay.

Even if people don’t celebrate the same holiday, this story will draw people closer to Rachel because she’s letting them get to know her more deeply. It also tells them how seriously she takes her work and that she can help them by utilizing healing modalities that have stood the test of time.

However you celebrate this season, I would like to wish you the most joyous and prosperous December.

If you struggle with procrastination, you’re not alone. Procrastination keeps us from realizing our goals, finishing huge projects that cost enormous amounts of time and energy and can even hurt our relationships when those we love feel blown off or disregarded.

A common theme among procrastinators is the desire for perfection. People often procrastinate because they’re worried about doing something wrong. They want to do a good job the first time out, but they can’t do a good job until they practice a few times. So they’re stuck in a really miserable place.

The solution: Baby steps. Psychologists call it desensitization.

Procrastinators who are perfectionists tend to work themselves up to taking on some huge project to prove something to themselves. This only augments the misery, making it much worse. And then, the guilt and self-criticism really takes off.

Instead of sabotaging yourself in this way, choose something small.

Here’s an exercise that can help.

Create a list of all the things you’ve been putting off. It’s best if you put this in a journal so you can easily find it again. Scraps of paper can easily become misplaced and then it’s really hard to get started!

Once you have a few things on your list, take a look. Think about how it would feel to move forward with item #1. On a scale of 1 – 10, how much discomfort comes up for you? Write that number next to item #1. Continue with this through your list and take breaks whenever necessary. (Use the scale in a way that makes sense to you. 1 can indicate the most or least discomfort.)

Next, pull out your calendar. Find a day – once each month – to address things on your list. It can be just a couple of hours or all day or an entire weekend. When that time rolls around, pull out your list and take a look. Find something that weighs in as “not that uncomfortable” and something that looks manageable. Get everything you need together and jump in to get started.

Regardless of how much you do, take time to celebrate. Perfectionists often struggle with seeing what they’ve already done – opting instead to beat themselves up for what didn’t go right or for things they haven’t yet finished. No wonder you put things off! It’s like you’re punished every time you take a step forward!

So give yourself a pat on the back when you head in the right direction.

And instead of thinking about how hard it is to get started, consider how great it will feel when you’ve finished the job.

If nothing on your list appeals to you, it’s time to consider if you’ve got too many shoulds and have to’s on your list. If so, it may be time to pare those down. What can you delegate or let go of? What are some things on your list that you think you “should” do but you don’t really need to do?

The best list, of course, is one filled with things you enjoy doing. When everything on your list is something you look forward to doing, procrastination becomes a thing of the past.

Procrastinators struggle, I believe, because they’re often perfectionists but also because their lives are overflowing with things they don’t want to do. When you feel like you need to do everything perfectly, you can’t do much before life starts to feel completely overwhelming.

So pull out your “to do” list. If you don’t have one, make one up – write down all the things you need to do, all the things you think you should do and everything you feel is expected of you. Let it flow. Try to think of 100 things.

Now, go back over the list – quickly – and circle those things that inspire you. What do you want to do? If nothing stands out, add some things. What would you enjoy doing? How do you want to spend your time?

Look over your list again and get in touch with the feeling. How do you feel about each thing on that list? What would happen if you delegated or crossed off any items that drained your energy?

Right about now, the self-critical voice in your head is saying that’s impossible. It’s not.

In fact, the people who make the most money in their respective fields, who are the happiest in their lives and the most successful in their relationships do the things they love to do.

A lot of procrastinators are perfectionists. They feel that those who earn the most do the most perfect work. That can be true in certain fields, but in the vast scheme of things, the people who earn the most money and enjoy their jobs the most are intimately familiar with doing things “good enough.”

The time it takes to get from good enough to perfect is about ten times what it takes to go from start to good enough. And the real bear is that while it may feel just about perfect to the perfectionist, to others, the difference between good enough and perfect is not particularly noticeable.

Take a day – just one day – to do whatever you feel inspired to do and see how it goes. You may fear that you’ll lay on the couch all day. That’s unlikely to happen, but if it does, perhaps that’s just what you needed.

Most people who do this exercise find that they get done exactly what needs to get done and at the end of the day, they feel great.

Give it a try and then e-mail me to tell me how it turns out.

If you want to stop procrastinating once and for all, check out my LIVE learning pod – “The Underappreciated Art of Procrastination.” You’ll learn what your procrastination habit is trying to tell you and how to turn it around from self-sabotage to outrageous success.

When you put things off and procrastinate, you may ask yourself “What’s wrong with me?” I would contend that you’re asking the wrong question. There’s nothing wrong with you other than perhaps not tapping into your inner compass.

That inner compass is your intuition and it tells you when you’re on the right track and when you’re headed in a direction that isn’t going to help you get to where you want to be. When we procrastinate, it’s often that inner guidance coming online to help us out but we’ve been trained to believe that it’s actually a weakness on our part – laziness or an unwillingness to do what we should. And so we find ourselves asking “What’s wrong with me?”

This past week I was reading Patricia Lynn Reilly’s book “Be Full of Yourself!” where she explores this question in depth. It made me consider how often we talk to ourselves in this unproductive and damaging way.

Instead of asking “what’s wrong with me?” think about what’s going on that’s causing you to procrastinate. What’s at the root of it? What is your intuition telling you?

Sometimes you’ll have something on your list for weeks and you’ll beat yourself over not getting it done. Then later on you’ll find that list and realize that those things were completely unnecessary or that if you’d followed that path, you wouldn’t be going the right way. Something you thought you “should” do may not be a good fit for you and somewhere inside you know that.

Take a few minutes to take a breath and tune in – go inside for the answers.

Calling ourselves names keeps us stuck, unproductive and in the victim mindset. It can be painful to move from this place into taking responsibility, but it is such a power position. We are immediately able to change our course and chart a new one.

By tapping into the answers within – knowing why we procrastinate – we leave with at least the beginning of a new way of thinking. By asking “why?” we can more easily get to “what next?” and from there we can paint a new picture for ourselves.

Procrastinating can damage your relationships, make you feel pretty crummy about yourself and impact your business negatively.

There are the obvious problems – you don’t pay your bills on time and your credit rating slips or you put off finding an office space and you lose clients. But there are other less obvious ways that procrastination can creep in and wreak havoc on your business.

One of the biggest things that business people put off is learning something new. And we beat ourselves up mercilessly for it.

Instead, tune into your intuition. What’s it telling you? You probably do like to learn all sorts of new things when the topic is of interest to you. You just don’t like learning things that are boring to you. So ask yourself – “What does this new information mean?” How can you work with what you’re learning so you can move forward? Brainstorm the solutions.

Do you really need to learn this or is it a should? If you need to learn it, is there an easier way to go about it – some sort of Cliff Notes option? Could someone else learn it and translate it for you? Do you need a class where it’s explained to you – or do you work better by actually trying things yourself?

Don’t be afraid to ask for help from people you need – either to have them help you brainstorm or to get to the end goal.

In the current economy, we’re almost afraid to reach out because we feel people are dealing with so much already, but the truth is that people like to feel needed and appreciated. Reaching out and offering an opportunity to feel needed, to do meaningful work and to help out can be just what a friend needs to feel uplifted.

Now more than ever it’s important for us to network with one another, to collaborate and help each other out because the real cost of procrastination is truly quite high.

For more on procrastination click here.