Hey ya'll, with my new book, we've been making some changes and I've changed the domain of my site to a new host. In all honesty, I haven't a clue what I'm talking about, but the bottom line is, you need to do one of the following to find my awesome new official website, because this isn't it anymore, but your computer might automatically take you here because you've been here before. Try refreshing your browser, or removing cookies, or just type in the whole url as follows. http://jaclynmhawkes.com It's weird, but it works. The new site is similar but different and has some great new treats! Thanks, Jaclyn

Hey, here is an awesome snippet from Michael Hyatt's blog (he gleaned it from David Schwartz's The Magic of Thinking Big. -Great book!) Here are seven steps to thinking big: Imagine the possibilities. Give yourself permission to dream. I remember doing this when I was writing my first book. I imagined what it would be like to be a bestselling author. I thought about what it would be like to see my book on the New York Times best sellers list. Write down your dream. This is the act that transforms a dream into a goal. Amazing things happen when you commit something to writing. I don’t fully understand how it works, but I have experienced it first-hand again and again. The phenomenon is explained in a very compelling book by Henriette Klauser called Write It Down, Make It Happen. Connect with what is at stake. This is your rationale. Unfortunately, it is a crucial step that people often omit. Before you can find your way, you must discover your why. Why is this goal important to you? What will achieving it make possible? What is at stake if you don’t? What will you lose? Your rationale provides the intellectual and emotional power to keep going when the path becomes difficult (which it will). Outline what would have to be true. Rather than merely asking how to get from where you are to where you want to go (strategy), I like asking what would have to be true for my dream to become a reality. For example, when I set a goal of hitting the best sellers list, I realized that I would have to write a compelling book, become its chief spokesperson, get major media exposure, etc. I started with the dream and worked backwards. Decide what you can do to affect the outcome. This is where you transition from the big picture to daily actions. This is where people often get derailed. They can’t see all the steps that will take them to their goal. So rather than doing something, they do nothing. You will never see the full path. The important thing is to do the next right thing. What can you do today to move you toward your dream? Determine when this will happen. Someone once said that a goal is simply a dream with a deadline. A deadline is one way to make the dream more concrete—which is exactly what thinking big is about. A deadline also creates a sense of urgency that will motivate you to take action. Force yourself to assign a “why when” date to every goal. (If you get stuck, ask yourself, What’s the worst that can happen if I don’t hit this?) Review your goals daily. When I was writing my first book, I reviewed my goals daily. I prayed over them. I determined what I needed to do today to make them a reality. It gave me a laser focus, especially when the dream looked impossible—when the publisher called to cancel the contract, when my publicist told me no one was interested in the book, when the publisher ran out of inventory right after the book hit the best sellers list. Don’t listen to that mocking little voice that tells you to be more realistic. Ignore it. You can either accept reality as it is or create it as you wish it to be. This is the essence of dreaming—and thinking big.

I survived Family Home Evening

It began as a great idea. Really. I wouldn’t kid you on such a serious medium as a blog. For Family Home Evening Monday, my eighteen year old son was going to give an overview of the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Now, tell me: What family can’t use more friends and influence? Unfortunately, things went south relatively quickly. The problem started when he began to give the overview using a Czechoslovakian accent. (You don’t even want to know how long it took me to find out how to spell that word correctly and it isn’t even called Czechoslovakia anymore!) Okay, maybe that isn’t really when the problem started because during our opening prayer, the 13-year old, that was, for some reason unbeknown to me, torqued off at the 18 year old, prayed thus, “And please help that SOME PEOPLE will learn to be more Christlike. And please help SOME PEOPLE not to kick other people under the table during the prayer.” Etc. Etc. I’m sure you know what I mean. Or does that only happen in my home? Anyway, the Czech accent was seriously, hysterically funny, if not overly conducive to learning, which may have had something to do with the fact that sometimes it was a trifle hard to understand him, in an Ahnold Schwarzenegger kind of way. (I didn’t even bother trying to figure out how to spell that one correctly.) As the lesson was being taught, the new (ugly) German Wirehair puppy was bounding about, alternately begging, which is against the good dog manner rules, and trying to shred the unfolded laundry, which is also against the good dog manner rules. Did I mention that this puppy is ugly? So, my dear, nearly-perfect husband, bless his heart, was trying to soothe the 13-year old, quietly contain the (ugly) misbehaving puppy, (in the hopes that someday his wife would come to not mind having her house completely destroyed by the new, wild, -ugly- puppy), and trying to figure out how in the heck to win Czechoslovakian friends. He’s incredibly competent, but still, this could stretch even the most talented spiritual leader. At the same moment, the chronically sunny 11-year old was busy writing a new song. She does that occasionally. She frankly couldn’t care less about having Czech friends, because everyone, except her brothers, already adores her anyway. The lyrics were something about her alabaster skin and hair of chocolate brown that makes the prissy world go round. I swear I’m not making this up! The problem with the song, other than the fact that we were supposed to be having a Family Home Evening lesson, was that it started on approximately high E and went up from there. But hey, if you can’t actually hit the note, just make up for it with volume. No one will notice. (This is especially effective if there are multiple people hollering at an ugly puppy in the background. Not to mention that irritable 13-year old brothers simply crave high pitched squeaky singing.) Not to be left out, our 19-year old, who is home from school right now, for some thoroughly twisted reason, thought the whole episode was hopelessly funny. She kept looking around the dining table and giving this dainty little belly guffaw that only egged the others, including the ugly puppy, on. (I know, I know. Dangling participle. It wasn’t the only thing dangling, let me tell you. Our entire eternal salvation was right there dangling with it!) Now, I try to be patient at times like this. I knew when someone like me married someone like my husband, that it was probably going to be a nutty journey, but really! I wasn’t sure whether to laugh, or swear (which I’ve truly tried to keep to a minimum now that they’ve called me to be a youth leader), or pray, or give up and send them all to bed and put myself in “time out” for the rest of the night. (I’ve actually done that a couple of times. It’s quite refreshing, but doesn’t cut it as far as counting as a real Family Home Evening. Few people ever learn the great eternal lessons of life when the mother is in “time out” because they just revert to things like video game systems and long, young-adult fantasy novels. It’s rarely a touching spiritual experience.) At this point, I looked around wondering if God has a sense of humor, or if the adversary was giving someone a high five in the underworld about what was going on in the Hawkes’ household. It was hard to tell. I just know that in the future, I may consider bringing in a camera crew to film it. Who knows? There could be a reality show about weird Family Home Evenings. We could be rich! It could happen. And I know that some of you know just exactly what I mean. I’m not the only mother who has occasionally experienced stuff like this. You know who you are. Someday, if I ever have the I Survived Family Home Evening t-shirts printed, I’ll let you have one. In the mean time, enjoy the insanity. After all, you could have just had a plain, old lesson. BORING! Jaclyn