Man, the summertime crazy has commenced. It took everything I had, and little less sleep, to get this episode out this week. My schedule was jam-packed and I have family coming to visit so my schedule is going to be all out whack for a couple of weeks. I'll have a week of rest after (or not) and then I'm off to Podcast Movement. The old me would have become insanely stressed out and resentful, and the people around me probably would have been very aware of it. I would have tried to get rid of as much on my to do list as possible to try to alleviate the stress.  The old me would have battled with myself about doing an episode this week and I probably would have done it but it would have been because I didn't want to look bad. I would have been motivated by a fear that if I didn't do this episode I would lose momentum, and lose the faith and trust of those of you who look forward to the 100% Jodi episodes each week. I'm not going to deny I'm a little wound up this week with everything but I wanted to do an episode this week because I'm motivated from something different than fear. The emotion I'm motivated by is love. I love doing these episodes. I was hesitant at first. I was excited and nervous and testing out the waters with different topics but now I've hit a groove, gotten your feedback and now 100% Jodi is a labor of love. As much as possible do things coming from the emotion of love. I think we can agree it's much more enjoyable to be feeling love while you are taking action than it is to feel fear. I would much rather do an obstacle course loving the exhilaration rather than running it half freaked out by the obstacles I have to overcome. Sometimes it's not even fear we need to shift but there can be something really special that can come about when we add love to the mix. I remember when I joined BNI my chapter took attendance but they didn't enforce the attendance policy. That seemed fine with everyone because everyone seemed to give a best effort to attend...until they didn't. When I was the President of the chapter from 2012-2013 I had some real concerns with what I was seeing. With my personality type, and my background in corporate you know I went to the reports to see what was going on. Sure enough, when attendance was good there were corresponding increases in the numbers of referrals passed and the amount of money we tracked in closed business. When attendance went down so did the referrals and money made by the members.  Okay, so after looking at the BNI reports for my chapter for attendance, referrals passed and money made by the members, it was plain as day what I needed to do but this would be a major culture shift and I had only been in the chapter for a year and a half. A large number in my chapter had been in the chapter for more than 10-15 years, some of them for nearly 20 years. However, the solution was clear but I needed to do this right. So I presented the information first to the members who were in leadership roles in the chapter and proposed that we start enforcing the attendance policy. They were surprised but the numbers didn't lie and they agreed to the change.  With their support I prepared a PowerPoint presentation to do at an upcoming meeting. I was a little nervous given some of the personalities that were in the chapter at that time but I knew it was the right thing. I was resolved. And I was preparing for the presentation with that energy. My friend Michelle who is also a member of my BNI chapter, chatted with me the day before my presentation and asked me how I was feeling. I've mentioned her before as the friend who balances me out and this demonstrates exactly how. I told her I was ready, I was resolved and it was the right thing to do. Michelle replied, "And remember you doing this because you love them." She was exactly right! I wouldn't have risked so much if I didn't love the people who were in the room but I wasn't present to it as I was preparing my data and creating the slides.