Sandra Beck

This author has written 33 articles
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Empowerment is the through-line in of all Sandra Beck’s work. Whether she is coaching a company owner to a million dollar commission goal, training a stay-at-home mom to perform SEO on web sites, or speaking to a group of women who are in recovery, Sandra's message is about what is possible and how to create the circumstances of your choosing.

For more information, please visit www.sandrabeck.com

9 Lessons for A Happy Life

I would offer my 9 steps to a happy life.... 1. Build something that you believe in - a relationship, a family, a company or a project. Focus on what you can do today to get where you want to be. 2. Learn the art of letting go. You will have to let go of friends, family, beloved pets, money and objects during your lifetime and sooner you accept change the easier life becomes. 3. Smiles and compliments are free and they make all the difference in the world as our connections with people are relational and have a ripple…

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- We don’t always have to know why. Spending too much time on the why takes away from figuring out what to do next.

Broke? Burned out? Depressed? Try investing in Yourself

I have had the luxury of speaking before large groups of people lately. Seems people want to hear what I have to say, which is really funny because I generally prefer to read in the tub or walk in the mountains. I usually listen to what the universe tells me before sitting down to write, and the universe speaks to me when people email me, call me, talk to me after an event of ask me questions and tells me what to talk about.  “I don’t have any money. My book isn’t selling. I’m working three jobs. Nobody is...blah blah…

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Unanswered Prayers can be the Best Gifts

Over the past month, I was subjected to an evaluation. It got me thinking about the mistakes I made in the past, the mistakes I am making currently and the mistakes I will make in the future because I am human. I always say, “When we know better, we do better.” My wise wing-man told me today, “Man, I can mess up a lotta stuff too– just human nature: make mistakes, learn, try again, fall down, get up, move on, life’s learning cycle.” It took me 40 years to learn this and I’m still learning. I have made a career…

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Bouncing with Style: Thinking about Thoughts

I have been reading about thoughts lately. I know that sounds a bit weird, but when I was in court a few weeks ago I watched this grandmother talking to her grown grand-daughter about how thinking too much gets her in trouble. I remember my own mother telling me that in my teens. “Thinking is good,” she said to me, “but, thinking too much will get you in trouble.” I have also been quiet lately - talking less since my radio shows are pre-recorded for the summer months – and listening more. I listen for message from the universe, from…

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Bouncing with Style: Getting Back on Track

A few weeks ago I was on a roll. I was working out, eating healthy, working hard and parenting at my best. Then a truck came again, in the form of an ex-relationship rearing its ugly head, and ran me over. It knocked out one of my kids and flattened the other. So I found myself in “Stop! Assess! Manage! Survive!” for a few weeks while I guided our tippy family ship into safe waters. It took all I had to keep a baseline going in my business, handling the emotional fallout for my kids, and you guessed it –…

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Bouncing with Style: Toxic Ex-Partners

Last night I was on a panel of experts talking about toxic relationships. One of the experts identified 6 or 7 things people do in a toxic “ex” relationship.  No one falls neatly into one category and people can and often do exhibit more than one of these toxic behaviors. The only problem I had with her presentation was that it was filled with psycho-babble-ease that left me stumped with the fancy terms. So I put it in terms that we can all understand and have a good chuckle! The Big Buttinski This person interferes with your new relationship. It…

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Bouncing with Style: Better Boundaries

Yesterday I read a book about boundaries. Why? I had to for one of my upcoming shows.  Much to my delight, I started understanding what that bandied-about term meant in relation to me, my family and friends, and my kids. Even my dogs will benefit from my reading the material. We hear a lot in the media about boundaries. Gotta set boundaries. That’s a boundary violation. I have firm boundaries.  I have no boundaries. But what does that really mean? I started thinking about how boundaries are being erased as we groove into a society where personal choice often trumps the rights…

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Bouncing with Style: Aren’t You Embarrassed?

"Aren’t you embarrassed? You are embarrassing yourself and your family." Anonymous Gmail and Baseball Mom. I’m going to be brutally honest: the email in my inbox knocked me on my tush as did the comments from the mom at my son’s baseball game’s. For 5 years, I have spoken frankly on the air what it’s like to be cheated on, suffer through a traumatic divorce and foreclosure, and bury my mother after a long term battle with breast cancer. Additionally, my words written and spoken reached over 1 million people – quantified by Google, iTunes and the Texas based radio…

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Bouncing with Style: Feelings are Not Truths

One of the fun parts of keeping a journal is you can look back and reflect, sure, but you can also look back and laugh. When I was in the death throes of my marriage, counseling that I thought was to save our marriage after my husband’s latest affair and he thought was the way to get out of our marriage, I journaled a lot. Now, years later, with two active voracious readers underfoot in elementary school, I thought I better check out these journals in case my kids open them. Boy! If flames could have leapt from the pages…

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Bouncing with Style: Where Do I Start?

Recently, I was asked by a group of women in recovery: How do you start? Where do you start? What do you do first? What does it mean to take care of yourself? This is not that uncommon a reaction, especially from women coming out of long-term marriages or having spent the last decade raising small children. We as women, and men too, get so enmeshed in the needs and wants of others that they get totally disconnected from who are they are. What they want and need is so under-exercised that if you ask one of these people what…

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Doing the Right Thing When the Wrong Thing Happens

We have all heard the phrase Life isn’t fair. Some of us who have read the Bible are familiar with the story of Job. In the Book of Job, Job is presented as a family man who lives a good and prosperous life, but is eventually beset with horrendous disasters that take away all he has, including his family, his health, and his property. Job struggles to understand his situation and begins a long search for the right path that will get him out of his extremely difficult situation. Against all odds, with God’s help, Job is restored to a…

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Brainiac #1 Cover

Bouncing with Style: Live Smarter

I always thought I was pretty smart. But then I took a look at what I was doing to my body, my mind and my soul on a daily basis. We are constantly inundated with messages from television, magazines, the Internet and family as well as so-called well-meaning friends. Recently, I started to take an internal temperature check on my gut. When I stopped “thinking”, and started thinking about what I was “feeling”, I noticed that some things that sounded right did not feel right. Of course, I had to slow down and limit my sensory input for this to…

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Bouncing with Style: Play Your Position

First of all, let me clarify that after playing grade-school and high school soccer, it was shocking to me as to how little I retained about the sport other than keep your feet behind the line when throwing in the ball. But as in all things, God has a reason for what we need to know. I have become an avid sport’s mom for a couple of reasons. I like to watch the kids grow and learn. I like the competition and formation of character through team sports. And sports gives me a chance to see my kids when they…

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Apples

Bouncing with Style: Confidence Builds in Chunks

No, I am not talking about Chunky Monkey or Rocky Road Ice Cream. I am talking about the way confidence is built after a blow, a series of blows or just plain life disaster. When life runs you over like an out of control ice cream truck at a local park knocking over patrons and passerby alike, you have to recover. It doesn't matter if the truck was aiming for you. Good people get knocked down all the time. For some of us that means burying a loved one, moving on from divorce, losing a home or recovering from financial…

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Bouncing with Style: Mistress-B-Gone

By Sandra Beck. I have been reading the comments on my posts and the email I get from men and women all over the world-- I love it. One of the things that comes up again and again is how awful we feel when we encounter our ex-husband’s mistress – even years later because the wounds of infidelity and broken trust run deep. This is especially challenging when she was your friend. I know this happened to me and it happens to men. I know they tell me feel just as bad as we do when we are betrayed, but…

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Bouncing with Style: Mean Girls Have Affairs

By Sandra Beck. Since my husband left me for a local woman shortly after we moved here, I will be the first to admit I didn’t exactly rush out to make new friends in my neighborhood. It was more like combat when I picked up my kids from school. Stay mission focused. Don’t make eye contact. Extract the kids and get out of there with a helpful tailwind. Foolishly I thought my ex had hooked up with the only mean girl in town. She did mean things to me through my kids. She redressed my kid on the first day…

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French Fries

Bouncing with Style: What Do French Fries Have to Do with Forgiveness?

After writing many posts and articles about forgiveness, I started to get sick of my own pontificating and advice. When I get sick of myself, I head to the nearest fast food chain, get myself a large diet coke and sit down to write.   Sometimes I get French fries. Sometimes I don’t. Well this is a stupid topic, I can hear you say, but it’s not. It’s vitally important to your recovery from whatever it is you are struggling with. Some people go to the gym. Some people go to church. I like to go to brightly lit, clean and…

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Bouncing with Style: Being Better Than His Mistress

If I had a dollar for everyone who told me I needed to take care of myself during the divorce and my recovery, well, I would have no debt from my divorce and recovery… In reality it took me 5 years to pay off my legal, foreclosure, and therapy bills. What’s money, right? What’s money?! It’s what I need to live!!! I need it to pay my electric bill. I need it to buy lunches and braces and dog food. People who say “What’s money?” are stupid. While I was adjusting to my broke single parent lifestyle, I would see…

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Bouncing with Style: Life after Love Tanks

Head Trash. Baggage. Beat up. Rode Hard. Put away wet. No matter what you call it, there seems to be a lot of stuff going on in my head post divorce. Some of the thoughts rolling around in the ol' noggin have to do with the unbelievable array of choices out there today for this 40-something single mom of two active little boys. I have total baggage. I have a head full of trash, which my wingman pointed out this week. I personally like to call it matching luggage. Just like I am not divorced... I'm recycled. Yeah well, even…

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Bouncing With Style: Fail Forward

Who falls into their mom's grave? Me. It was my crashing moment of glory to signify the end of a terrible year. I had suffered through a nasty divorce from a cheating, balding BurgerMeister-MeisterBurger while raising my two little boys three thousand miles from my family as I built my own Girl Power company. I went through a foreclosure, buried my mom from breast cancer, and my two little dogs died a month apart. At some point, I started to giggle. No one would believe this. Even writing this, I have to shake my head. I had truly become the Bad-luck…

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