G Ronnie Kraegel – GReat Kreations

Value Of Creating A Vision

Posted on 27 July 2020 by G Ronnie Kraegel

Posted in Vision & Values Leave a comment

What drives you to be the best? Creating something that improves the quality of life for clients or customers? Creating an empire? Creating a life that allows you to do something you love without financial stress? Can you answer this clearly and concisely? If not then stop what you’re doing and read on.

Identifying your values, articulating them into a vision, and then putting an action plan in place is one of the most important things you can do to support your success, both personally and professionally.

I’ve worked with many organizations to identify their organizational vision and better articulate their mission. This is also an important thing for you to do for yourself. What is your vision for your future? A vision is about the difference you make in your own life, in your community, and at work. It’s about your dream of what your life looks like, feels like, can be. Your vision is born of your values. It gives you purpose. It’s the reason for everything you do.

Sounds a bit melodramatic, doesn’t it? But I assure you, it isn’t. If you take the time to look at yourself, your beliefs, and your values you’ll be able to not only create a vision for the future, but also establish a road map to get you there.

Remember when you were a kid laying out in the grass, staring up at the clouds, and dreaming of what life would be like when you were all grown up?

Remember when you were in high school preparing for college? You gave a lot of thought to what you would major in, what it would look like when you graduated, and you just knew what kind of a job you would have.

Somewhere along the line most people stop dreaming and allow themselves to become caught up in the demands of the job, raising children of their own, making sure the bills get paid, and the list of things is endless. The path you envisioned when you received your diploma or college degree is no longer the path you’re on and you are just now realizing life didn’t turn out at all as you expected.

This is also true for organizations, but that’s for another article.

Now is the time to take a deep breath, acknowledge that you’ve veered off course, and invest the time and energy to get your life going in the direction you want. The greatest value to creating a vision for your future is that you’ll have the future you want. There’s an old saying, “The best time to start was yesterday, but the next best time to start is now.”

There are many ways to identify your values and create a vision for yourself. I offer a Vision Board eCourse that will help you create a vision for your future. Once you enroll you’ll also receive 52 weeks of encouraging and inspiring messages from us to your inbox.

Create A Vision Board

Posted on 1 July 2020 by G Ronnie Kraegel

Posted in Planning Leave a comment

Vision boards are a simple but powerful way to visualize what you want to manifest from your dreams. Many highly successful people, including Oprah Winfrey, have used vision boards for generations. Jack Canfield, the New York Times bestselling author of the series, “Chicken Soup For The Soul,” has said, “Creating a vision board is probably one of the most valuable visualization tools available to you.”

Vision boards are a way to see and plan what you want your life to be like, the things you want to do, places you want to go and the items you want in your life. They can be created in many ways, including applications and in digital images, poster board with pictures cut from magazines, drawings or phrases on pictures.

You can create a vision board for business or personal goals, career goals, or for whatever you dream of achieving. The boards are versatile and can be used for any topic. Most people write their goals down to be finished with them. Then, they either lose them, or tuck them away and don’t look at them again. If they do run across them, they read the goals infrequently. A vision board is the visual map of your goals that reminds you why you’re doing certain things and what you will have once you achieve your goal. It’s a visual snapshot of your future.

Setting your goals and intentions is the first step in creating your vision board. However, you need to have to have purpose for your vision board. Start with an intention. This is a good time to dream and contemplate your options. Close your eyes and imagine your life as how you want it to be one year from now. Where are you? What do you see, feel, hear, taste, or smell? Who is with you? Are all of your goals achieved? How are you celebrating your success?

Once you have your goals and intention set it’s time to gather the materials you want to use to create your vision board. For example, if you decide to make a simple vision board by cutting pictures from a magazine to paste onto poster board and you find pictures of puppies. Ask yourself if it’s your goal to have dogs in the future. If not, it’s better to leave the images in the magazine.

Once you create your vision board, you need to know how to use it in order to manifest your goals.

Create a plan of action with steps you can begin to take to get you closer to your goals. It consists of a series of the steps you need to take to reach your goal. Using your dream board, work backward to create the steps you’ll need to take to get to your goal.

If your goal is to eat healthy, then you need to know how to turn that picture of your low carb meals into your reality. The last step is the results, a healthy body. The previous steps are eating healthy and exercise. The first step then is to research and decide how you are going to get healthy.

Staying focused and motivated is the key to achieving your goals. Looking at your vision board everyday is a great way to help you stay focused. Whenever you feel yourself drifting down the wrong path, take a few minutes to gaze at your vision board.

Imagine what your life is like as if you’ve already achieved your goals.

Learn to make your own vision board by getting our Create A Vision Board Home Course.

Zoom Zoom? Nah.

Posted on 5 April 2020 by G Ronnie Kraegel

Posted in Communication

I know many of us were using Zoom for work. I wasn’t as excited about it as most folks, but I recommended it as an easy to use, stable video meeting platform. Until last week, that is.

If you’re not aware of the deep pile of virtual doo-doo Zoom found itself pretty much buried in a quick google search will fill you in. Suffice it to say I no longer recommend or use Zoom for connecting with clients.

So what do I use? I always recommend that clients join Second Life and take advantage of the robust environment and communication tools of virtual worlds. If that doesn’t work I use Skype.

Why virtual worlds and not just email or teleconferencing? Humans are social creatures. We love to be in the company of others. Also, visual cues are a large part of our communication with one another. That’s why video calls are popular; because we get to see one another. Virtual worlds offer a lot of the social connectivity we need in a fun and immersive environment.

Briefly, mirror neurons fire both when we perform an action and when we see someone perform an action familiar to us. That means, we experience seeing someone do something as though we were performing the action ourselves. That’s why we tear up when we see someone cry or wince when we see someone prick their finger with a pin. Many years ago I broke my nose and, to this day, when I see someone with a broken nose my eyes tear up and a familiar ache spreads across my face.

How does this apply to virtual worlds? A good example is when you watch your avatar engaging in conversation with another avatar mirror neurons tell your brain that you are in a face-to-face conversation with that person and you experience that virtual encounter as you would in real life. This is one of the many reasons I recommend using virtual worlds for meetings. There’s also the creative aspect of virtual worlds that enhances teamwork. I use Second Life to work with clients. One of my most successful Board of Directors exercises is about building vision. This hands-on team project allows everyone to contribute their ideas and work together to build and then articulate a cohesive vision for their organization. Another meeting tool I recommend is Skype. I’ve been using Skype since the 1990s and haven’t ever had a security problem with it. It’s also worked on every operating system and device I’ve ever owned. Though it’s now owned by Microsoft and brings with it the familiar MS baggage it’s still a robust and stable platform for one-to-one and group communications.

Using Skype for personal and/or business offers basic call and video options along with easy to schedule and join meeting features. It also allows for content and screen sharing. You can host meetings for up to 250 attendees and broadcast your meeting to several thousand attendees. From powerpoint to video presentations, whiteboard collaboration to polling, Skype has a broad range of features for your online teams and business presentations. There are numerous other tools available for connecting with others. Some are free for individual users and others can be quite expensive. Think about what you want to accomplish. Write a list of what tools you need to communicate effectively. Then search for a platform that provides the features to support your objectives. Be sure to read reviews and learn about the security and privacy features of anything you consider using before you use it. Always keep in mind we want to zoom to the finish line without crashing.

Etopia Fans The Flame Of Education

Posted on 17 January 2016 by G Ronnie Kraegel

Posted in Collaboration, Organization Culture

My passion for nonprofits, education, and creative uses of online tools for greater effectiveness and impact come together in my Second Life project; Etopia. I’m so proud to have Etopia featured in the January 2016 issue of Eclipse Magazine; http://bit.ly/1JbuRDC

For those unfamiliar with Second Life, it’s a virtual environment in which users interact with each other and a world they create. Think of it as a social platform on steroids. It’s also a platform for enhancing the way we work together. My goal with the virtual environment I helped create and continue to build upon is to allow visitors to learn about community, mindfulness, and sustainability.

I know sustainability is a buzz word, but it is a focus I work with clients on adopting and applying to their organizations. There are many things that go into building a business whether it’s a brick and mortar operation or solely Internet-based. Green infrastructure considerations apply to both. Increasing efficiency while lowering negative impact on the world around us benefits the environment and everyone in it.

Etopia has been my way of demonstrating what we can do to create community, live well, and work successfully. The nonprofits and professionals that call Etopia home in Second Life not only appreciate this, but contribute to it.

Virtual environments aren’t for everyone. There is a learning curve. There are those that see Second Life as another online gaming platform like World of Warcraft. However, when evaluated in context of a changing business world and in light of the educational opportunities inherent in immersive experiences, Second Life, and by extension Etopia, offer limitless possibilities.

top nonprofit blogs

Posted on 20 August 2013 by G Ronnie Kraegel

Posted in Leadership

I love reading blogs. I just don’t have the time to read them all, compare them, and filter out the best of the best. I’ve tried Google alerts, checking out the blogs my friends followed, and more. I’ve tried Flipboard and other apps on my iPad that gathers the top trends and shares the hottest blog posts. Regardless of what I used or how I set it up I was alwasys missing something of value that I could learn from and share with you.

Here’s a site you’ll love. Especially if you hate the wasted time that comes with scouring blogs, websites, Facebook, and more. Top Nonprofits measures blog performance across the nonprofit sector. Their website compiled a list of the world’s most popular nonprofit blogs. I was thrilled to see that my favorite blog is in the top three on Top Nonprofits. Guidestar originally shared this site and since then I’ve saved a ton of time reading and getting the information I want.