THE BUSINESS 101 MAGAZINE FALL ISSUE 2012

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PAGE 21 Keisha Rivers-Shorty-Stressed?

Exhale! Reflect! Release! Readjust!

Page 11 BLOG FEATURE Chocolate Aquarius Single, Happy and Innovative

PAGE 22 Rhonda Nails- Dear Entreprenuer

PAGE 12 Aradia Knight-It’s Time to Take Charge of Your Bookkeeping PAGE 14 Alicia Waters- Keep Moving Forward: Just Do It PAGE 17 Meochia Stills-It’s True …Once You Go, You Know: Jamaica PAGE 18 Tina C. Hines-Creating Balance in Your Life

PAGE 34 HONOR YOUR SPIRIT Sharisa Robertson I Am A Lily of the Field with Paula Foster PAGE 37 THANKFUL

PAGE 24 FASHION INTERVIEW Keysha Best Owner of Election Elegance Boutique

PAGE 38 WRITER’S BLOCK Yvette Wilson-Bentley

PAGE 28 Hollie Sweat- Turn Excuses into Successes

PAGE 39 HEALTHWISE We Hear You!

PAGE 29 POETRY CORNER Minister Nellie A.Wosu PAGE 32 Beverly R. Imes-Waiting with Expectancy

PAGE 40 COVER FEATURE AJ Wesley – All Cracked Up PAGE 42 COACHES FEATURE Go Team

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PAGE 8 LaTersha Blakely -Self Esteem is Not Achieved from Wearing a Cute Outfit

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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. ~ Albert Einstein Mr. Einstein must have been single and happy at one time in his life, too! One day last year I learned that traveling in the same circles, visiting the same dating sites and even stopping for gas in the same store will lead to the same issues: I can't find a man! I understand one should not be looking for a man, he should find me. Well, how can he find me if I keep relying on the same methods that haven't been working since 2011?

And I understand that I should know better: you cannot keep doing the same things and expect different results. Surprisingly so many women could use a reminder, myself included. So where I go...  I'm not talking making more resolutions or launching a revolution, I'm too busy for all of that. Here's what changes I have implemented into my day-to-day routine:  Stop at another gas station on the way to work.  Slow down my paces as I enter and exit and actually say “hello” to people. (Might not work too well outside of the South though. )  Don't go for the usual lunch or dinner. Not only can I meet new people somewhere else but I also have a new dish to dish about.  Watch a different TV show. See what you're missing on one of the other 9,000 channels you've paid for.

The take-away. It's all about stepping out of your comfort hole. And I call it a hole, because it's dark and dreary if you stay there long enough. You have to be okay with trying something new if you plan on being single in Charlotte or any other US town for that matter! This ties into what I wrote about on my blog in late 2011, about doing the same thing in a new year even after promising to yourself that you would make a change. I guess I'm guilty of doing what I blasted most of you about doing! I hate when that happens...

What innovative techniques can you come up with to make being single and happy, even happier?

FALL 2012: THE BUSINESS 101 MAGAZINE

I am the Chocolate Aquarius. I am single, I am happy and I'm blogging all about it on www.singleandhappyonline.com.

I'm on Twitter, too at http://twitter.com/singleandhappy1. Oh, and I approve this message.

Single and Happy © 2011-2012 Chocolate Aquarius

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EXHALE! Breathe out. Stop for a moment and let all of the pressures leave your body, unclutter your mind and release your creative and innermost you from its grip. Take a deep breath and call it all up into your lungs and then slowly exhale—letting it all go. Give it an outlet and an escape point so you don’t boil over.

REFLECT!

Have you ever just—stopped—even for a moment?

When you do stop moving, try this exercise.

Pay attention to your shoulders, your neck, your muscles. How do they feel? Tense, bunched, tired?

Have you ever noticed that when you do finally stop, you’re holding your breath?

This is what I call “Coiled Readiness”.

Know how a rattlesnake curls itself up into a tight, tight spiral—almost holding its breath—waiting for the threat to come so it can strike?

Well you, my dear, are definitely coiled with the life you’re living. So what do you do?

RELEASE! Now Release all of the doubts, fears, hesitations, regrets and negativity from the past, present and future. Don’t hold onto it.

Think about it. Decide what needs to be done and then do something about it.

Holding onto things only slows you down.

Once you’ve examined it, learned from it and done something with it—let it go and set yourself free.

Life is a journey. Sometimes we need to take a pit-stop along the way and check out the surroundings. Try these exercises at various points in your day to get yourself reenergized. Three times a day is ideal (morning, midday and evening) but at least twice is optimum.

You’ll find that you’re more productive, more focused and more confident in what you’re doing—but more importantly, you’ll be comfortable with why you’re doing it.

Until next time, remember, “you are the success that you hope to become”!

Keisha A. Rivers-Shorty, The KARS Group LTD www.karsgroup.com

READJUST! Now that you’ve released all of the negativity and pent up energy and had a

FALL 2012: THE BUSINESS 101 MAGAZINE

If you’re anything like me or most women I know, you’re constantly on the go—picking things and people up, caring for family members, planning, leading, supporting, nurturing, cooking, cleaning, providing—the list goes on and on.

Once you’ve released and exhaled all of the “I have to’s” and “I must do’s”, then it’s time for you to Reflect. Take a moment to think about what you’re doing. Why you’re doing it. How you’re doing it. How you feel about doing it. Then think about how you might do it differently. Multi-tasking is a misnomer because you can really only do one thing at a time, so whatever you’re doing at any given moment--give it your full attention.

Think about the process but also think about how you feel—both about the process and about yourself while you’re engaged in the process.

chance to reflect upon it, now it’s time to Readjust. Many people say to refocus—but that implies that you weren’t focused to begin with, which is probably not the case.

Instead, based on your discoveries from your reflections, decide what new steps you’re going to take to enhance your life, make things easier, take the next steps in your business and expand your thinking.

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My main excuse is single motherhood.

Even though my children, a 20 year old and an independent, no nonsense 11 year old, both boys; I emphasis their gender because to most boys, mother’s of sons know what I mean, I serve a purpose. I am their cook, maid and I pay the bills to make sure the internet, cable and electricity, in that order, remains working. I make their simple needs or my perceived notion of their needs, an excuse for not pursuing my passion.

How easy was it for you to follow your dream, share your creative work, or pursue your passion? Fifteen years ago I started my journey to be an authoress. Family Affirmations, my first attempt at a novel, told by four different characters, in first person narration; Tonya, a twenty something young woman in law school, in love with love and struggling with alcohol dependency. Joyce, her sister, an uninspired, and promiscuous, always wanting what her sisters have, is a vulgar, sad character. Liz, married, nightclub owner with a young gifted daughter, has a secret that is the climax of the story; and then there is Tyrone, the only son, baby brother to Tonya, Liz and Joyce, party animal and afraid to tell his mother, a devout Christian and widow, that he prefers the carnal company of men.

Fifteen years, ten thousand characters, floppy disk and WordPerfect software later, the story is still incomplete. Writing this article reminded me that since I was 15 I enjoyed writing. I loved writing love letters, poems and as a virgin, what my imagination believed were erotic tales. I would spend entire days absorbed in books; upset, sad and lost when they ended. I found solace in jotting down ideas for my own stories in my journal.

Since the attempt at my first novel, I have started at least ten more writing projects and have not finished one. I repeat to myself, “Commit to a day of the week and spend two hours writing.” I have subscribed to blogs that I believed would be inspiring. I even set a reminder in my phone for 6:00 pm every day signaling me to “write, make a plan, and create a timeline.”

I have yet to commit to a day of the week. I read the blogs and do nothing. I dismiss the 6:00 pm alert, every day.

Since I had my oldest son I create, in my mind, rational excuses for not pursuing my

I create excuses for excuses. My excuses for not finishing a writing project are few, but effective. Research is a major excuse.

My need to research is insatiable. I research online insistently. I research books, magazines, people; I write notes and print-out resources. Instead of writing, I distract myself with research. The first excuse for my excuse: I have to protect my work. So, I researched copyright laws.

Now I have the information without the novel I researched to protect. Another query: How many pages or characters is an average novel? Answer: 40,000 characters.

More questions: publisher, self-publishing, and/or in the age of Kindles, Nooks, and ipads, eBook publishing? Oh my, more research, still, no writing.

My job is the ultimate excuse. I need the job to pay my bills, to make sure the internet, cable and electricity is working. I need the job to maintain the lifestyle we are accustomed to living. And even though showing up to that job is 80% of doing a good job, I craved praise, even if it embarrassed me. I needed to prove my job performance was above average. I needed to be Ms. Popular and make sure we all whistled while we worked. Eventually, this behavior got the best of me. I was exhausted, unhappy and overwhelmingly depressed. I resorted to self-medication, white wine, pinot grigio to be exact.

After a mental breakdown which resulted in six months of prescribed anti-depressants and a few sessions of therapy, I acknowledged that I had co-dependent tendencies. “My name is Hollie and I’m a co-dependent.” I was a people pleaser.

After a few very candid discussions with my very eccentric therapist I realized I hated my job. She had an unusual way of getting me to be honest with myself.

I still fought the feelings of hopelessness and feeling stuck. Unfortunately, fighting them made me retch every Monday morning. You see, I did not want to put “I hate my job” into the universe, because I thought it would make my life harder than it already was. But, I accepted that I resented having to travel 40 miles to a job I no longer enjoyed to make sure my children had a home and their basic needs met while my ex-husband skated child support, leached off of his parents and experimented with

various business ventures without the burden of taking care of a family. {Deep breathe…now…Exhale.} When this epiphany hit me, something my ex-husband said to me, over ten years ago during a brief, but impressionable argument, “All you aspire to do is keep a job” rang true. When he said it, I was first confused, then upset and eventually pissed all within three seconds. My job(s) supported our family and his entrepreneurial experiments. My job(s) also made sure our family had health insurance, life insurance and a retirement plan, Jackass!

I am usually pretty good at letting things go, but for some reason that statement haunted me. The moment I was honest with myself and acknowledged that I detested my job, I understood what he meant by “all you aspire to do is keep a job.” He was right. He’s still a Jackass, but he was right. I could not think beyond keeping a job. My excuses…research, motherhood, and a job I keep but detest because I’m a single mom. I’m responsible. I have to do the right thing. I do not have the luxury to be courageous and entrepreneurially experimental in order to pursue my happiness. *

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It is time for me to liberate myself from my “indirect rational excuses,” and pursue my happiness and my success story. I have completed all of the research I need to feel secure with writing a bestseller. My children do not need me as much as I believe they do. If I work hard, apply the research and put as much energy into my passion as I did my job, I can be successful doing what I love and I can quit the job I detest.

If anything I mentioned sounds familiar, before your mind and body turn into your enemy, consider the following: 1) 2)

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5) 6)

Be honest with yourself.

Honesty equals freedom.

Embrace your emotions. There is no need to fight how you truly feel. Fighting your emotions makes them harder to overcome.

Acknowledge the excuses and accept that they are real.

Address the ones that can be resolved, like my need to research.

Understand the excuses that may not be true, like my adult and pre-teen children needing my complete attention as if they are toddlers.

Stop putting all of your energy into something you no longer enjoy.

Start or continue doing what you love until it becomes profitable.

It is time for us to follow our passion and pursue our successes without excuses.

We can do it together.

You can reach out to Hollie via hchambers3566@gmail.com

FALL 2012: THE BUSINESS 101 MAGAZINE

passion. According to an article in Psychology Today, philosopher, Aaron Ben-Zeev explains that “excuses are a defense mechanism that offers an indirect rational justification” for doing something or, in my case, not doing something. See, even Ben-Zeev agrees that my excuses are rational, albeit indirect, but still rational, right? My excuses support my pragmatic attitude towards single motherhood. You know, “I have to be responsible.” And “I do not have the financial luxury to experiment and start a business.” and, “I’m too busy to write.”

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USEFUL INFO AND LINKS: http://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/hair-loss/default.htm Obesity is an excess proportion of total body fat. A person is considered obese when his or her weight is 20% or more above normal weight. The most common measure of obesity is the body mass index or BMI. A person is considered overweight if his or her BMI is between 25 and 29.9; a person is considered obese if his or her BMI is over 30. http://www.webmd.com/diet/obesity-directory http://www.webmd.com/diet/default.htm

http://exchanges.webmd.com/gynecology-exchange

Symptoms of a hypertensive emergency include:

HAIR GROWTH WEIGHT LOSS/ OBESITY VAGINAL HEALTH HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE FIBROIDS MENOPAUSE BREAST CANCER MIGRANES ACNE

http://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/default.htm

http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/default.htm http://www.webmd.com/migraines-headaches/default.htm http://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/acne/default.htm

FALL 2012: THE BUSINESS 101 MAGAZINE

RECENTLY WE ASKED WOMEN WHAT CONCERNED THEM MOST ABOUT THEIR HEALTHCARE AND HERE IS WHAT THEY SAID.

Headache or blurred vision Increasing confusion or level of consciousness Seizure Increasing chest pain Increasing shortness of breath Swelling or edema (fluid buildup in the tissues)

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