We always get to choose

I recently got a wake-up call. You know the kind. When someone you love has died, and someone else you love is suddenly diagnosed with advanced illness, a lot shifts into perspective.

The big question that moves to the top of the mental list becomes, “What really matters?” 

And truly, that’s the question we need to be considering each day. That’s where our attention is best placed.

Do you have clarity about your priorities? If not, this is a great time to slow down and give it some thought.

Next, consider these three questions:

1. Are you choosing fear or love?

It’s easy to get caught up in fear — about viruses, about what’s around the next corner, about the political climate, and so much more.

When we allow fear to run the show we are inviting roadblocks to get in the way of what we decided was really important. 

Instead, we can orient ourselves to operate from the space of love.

What does that look like? 

It means choosing to love ourselves. We can focus on ramping up self-care, like getting plenty of sleep, and walking outdoors, or meditating to stay calm. Even something as simple as taking a minute or two to get quiet and tune into your breath works wonders.

We can also focus on love as we connect more to important people in our lives. These may be people we see every day, at home or work, as we make space for especially meaningful conversations. It may be reaching out to people we care about but have not spoken to in a long time.

When we operate with an orientation of love, we not only help ourselves and feel more positivity and happiness, but love ripples out in beautiful ways.

2. Are you choosing action?

After getting focused on what matters to you, are you setting intentions to get into action and stay in motion? Ideas are great, but many people stop there. It’s in commiting to actively doing that you will find satisfaction.

There’s a bonus to being in action, too. When we are active — whether we’re physically active, or actively engaged in an important project — fear has less opportunity to limit us.

3. Are you choosing inspiration?

There are many ways to stay energized and inspired. Rather than being caught up in drama, intentionally turn your attention to things that keep you energized.

Did you read inspiring stories on International Women's Day? Did you meet someone whose ideas are remarkable? Did you read a fabulous book or see a great film? Did you spot wonder around you (maybe see a surprising way the light filtered in your window, or hear a magical bird call)?

When you choose to bring your attention back to people and ideas and art that inspire you, you have incredible fuel to keep pursuing the things you’ve determined matter most.

We all have the opportunity to grow and expand day by day, as we make choices with care. We all have important work to bring into the world, unhindered by fear. 

What better way could there be to respond to a wake-up?

Leave a comment and share the ways you are choosing to focus your attention and efforts.

And, if you are curious about how coaching can support you to live your best life — as you are pondering what’s next, or if you feel stuck, or as you are navigating a big transition — let’s make a date to talk. Private Creative Core Coaching might be a life-changing resource for you. 

I currently have one more spot available for one-on-one coaching. And with the exciting activity that’s developing around my book, Live Big: A Manifesto for a Creative Life, I may not be taking on additional private clients for some time. 

If you are ready to take a serious step to start living the life you yearn for, it can start here.

How do you want to live big now?

We are all busy. To-do's related to work, relationships, family, volunteering, community and more fill our our calendars. Most of us rush from one meeting to the next task, to the next obligation and barely give a thought to the toll this busyness takes — on our well-being as well as what we accomplish.

My questions for you is simple: 

What is really important? What do you want — big-picture?

And, are you keeping that big desire in mind as you fill your calendar?

When you have a clear focus, you make intentional choices that align with the thing that is really important to you.

And, it's ok if the desire is not a single thing. Bringing focus to the key, few important things that matter most to you will lead to taking consistent, aligned action. 

(And as I wrote in a recent post, having a clear focus helps you to stay motivated, too — so it will be easier for you to take consistent action.)

Most of us fail to realize how much opportunity we have to choose, in order to make our focus a priority.

Most of us move through our days without considering what we choose to say, “Yes” to. We do not pause to assess each possible “Yes,” to confirm that it supports our big desire. Nor do we consider all of the opportunities we have to say “No.”

Here’s an example.

My big focus, for several years, has been to bring my new book to completion and launch it. And as important as it has been, Live Big: A Manifesto for a Creative Life has not been the only thing I focused on. That said, it was important enough to make many deliberate choices in order to bring the project to fruition.
Other big things I also made a focus in these years included: time with my loved ones, serving my clients, and developing my skills as a painter. (These have all been key ways I wanted to live big.) 

And these all required me to think carefully about when to say “Yes,” and when to say “No.”

It was that careful attention to all of the choices I’ve made that enabled me to get the book into the world, while also keeping my other select priorates in play.

And, I, like so many others, have many interests! I can get excited about pursuing lots of new ideas and opportunities. But I have learned that carefully saying “Yes” and intentionally saying “No” has been a game-changer. 

It’s not always easy to say “No” to a terrific invitation or to diving into something new and fascinating. It does get easier when you see the way your big desires continue to take shape when you stay focused.

It’s also worth taking a long view.

The universe is abundant and life affords us many opportunities. There are many seasons and times for making different things your big focus. 

So what is most important now? How do you most want to live big? Focus there and it will grow!
And trust that when something keeps calling to you, you will know it’s worth creating focus for it to take shape.

As well, if something new, bigger or more compelling shows up along the way, and makes a claim for your focus, you can bring your energy to that.

It’s not about doing everything — because we can never do it all. It’s about doing what makes your heart pound, about making real what you deeply yearn to bring into your life.

I would love to know what you have been making your focus, or are starting to bring into focus, or are dreaming of — how you want to live big.

Leave a comment and let me know.

And, if you want support to help you figure out your big focus, or a path to your big vision, or need help getting started, or want guidance and accountability, let’s make a date to talk about how my Creative Core Coaching might be a resource for you.

The time to live big is now! I cannot wait to see what that will look like in your life.

How to realign when you’ve lost momentum

We all get off track from time to time. This happened to me last week. After a great (but hectic) week of business travel I returned to lead a retreat with my group coaching clients. While I loved it all, it wasn’t long before my body had had enough.

I first lost my voice, then lost energy and got achy, and I had no choice but to slow down, rest, and heal for the rest of week two.

Happily, I am now on the mend. But I am facing a big back-log of tasks. 

It’s a challenge to get back in your groove when you have been knocked off course — whether by travel, illness, a family emergency, an emotional rough patch, or anything else.

Here are 3 tips I use to get back on track

1. Go slow

If you are anything like me and the accomplished women I work with, you are an achiever. You work hard — often too hard. This is not the time to follow your impulse is to jump back in and tackle your backlog fast. You will likely sabotage yourself with that approach.

Be thoughtful as you give yourself permission to build up to your usually pace.

Ask yourself these questions:
• What can I delegate, get help with, or defer?
• What to-do's have the highest priority, that I can map on my calendar now?
• What low-hanging fruit can I batch and take care of quickly?
• How can best I communicate to those waiting for replies that I will get back to them soon?

Resist the urge to over-promise. It’s always better to set a reasonable expectation and meet it — or delivery early.

2. Show yourself some love

You may need to set a later wake-up alarm than usual, or skip your usual morning work-out. Or, you may find you have a productive morning and then your energy wanes. Listen to your body! Give yourself the rest, nutrition and movement that you need. 

If your muscles ache, schedule a massage. If a nap will refresh you, go for it! If you are stressed, take a break and meditate, draw, or walk around the block. 

Self care now, coupled with self-compassion, will pay big dividends.

3. Steadily pick up the pace

You will know when you are ready to work a full day again. In most cases, careful pacing and attention to self care will help you to catch up and resume your usual routines fairly quickly.

This is a great time to reflect and reassess. Think about the balance in your life, and the intensity at which you had become accustomed to living. Maybe pushing a bit less hard is a better pace for you in the long run. Maybe you discovered some new ways to work smarter, not harder. Maybe you introduced some self-care that you want to continue and make your ”new normal.“ 

This challenging period can teach you a lot. Take note of your insights.

I'd love for you to share what works best for you at times like these. We can all learn from one another. Or, if you have particular questions, ask them. Leave comments below, or email me, and I can share this feedback in a future post.

Ready to go on a road trip to clarity?

My passion is helping accomplished women break through the barriers and challenges that limit them so that they can live their greatness — and truly live big. These accomplished women know there is more greatness in them and want to tap into that power to make important change in their lives, but don’t know how to do that or where to begin.

Seeing that struggle and frustration over and over, I decided to create a roadmap for these women to gain clarity about what’s really important for them, to get laser-focused on the issues, and to start making the big changes they want in their lives.

What many people don’t consider is that you need to start by clarifying what you really want and why it’s really important to you. When you do that, and decide on a few specific realistic changes to start with, you can move on to implementing bigger, important changes in your life. With clarity and structure, making change is absolutely doable — I watch it happen all the time and marvel at the breakthroughs I witness.

I created my 5-day virtual journey to help women first get clear about what they truly want — and what their highest priorities are. Because if you try and change a little here and a little there without focus, you splatter your effort and energy and stay pretty much right where you are. Once this journey guides you to clarity, and to committing to what you want to make your focus, you’ll be guided to generate real action steps and ways to implement them slowly — so you won’t resist the change and so the changes stick. They become a natural part of your life.

When you start making these tangible changes — even small ones that impact your mindset and well-being — you’ll be propelled forward in big ways.

The Roadmap to Clarity is a 5-day journey of discovery. I am traveling with you on this journey. I will guide you through the entire process.

My design for the process uses one of my favorite and most powerful tools (one that my clients find to be remarkably useful and valuable) — the Discovery Dozen™. This tool is easy for me to teach and easy for anyone to use. Best of all, it always reveals big insights and generates great ideas that can then be put into practice one step at a time. And, you’ll be excited to implement these changes because they are perfectly aligned with what you really want and need.

I am excited to offer this journey and lead women to starting to live their greatness. I’d love to be your guide and watch you start creating — and living — your biggest life!

The Roadmap to Clarity is available here.

The time it takes to say “Yes”

I’ve written a lot recently about simplifying a cluttered life, and about how saying “no” is an important skill to hone. (The three articles I wrote on this topic can be found here: The gift of simplifying, Just say “No”, and What's to be done about emotional clutter?.)

So naturally, I am turning my attention — and yours — to what we say “yes” to. 

And, I am thinking about how we give focus to the things we decide are a true “YES!,” so that those big desires become real in your life. Because the decision to say “yes” means those things require, and deserve, your attention, your commitment, and ample time. 

Even when we have made a concerted effort to simplify our lives, and say “yes” to priorities with intention, we tend to underestimate the effort it takes to change our habits and stay focused on those clear priorities. We are accustomed to living at a fast pace and don’t consider that we may need to shift our patterns of behavior to make our commitments a reality. Because just like the principle in physics that says nature abhors a vacuum, we tend to quickly (and often mindlessly) fill all of our time — in this case, the space we created when we simplified.

If you are ready to get focused and really commit to seeing your “yes” priorities become real, here are some suggestions that can help:

Start by slowing down

Simply considering the idea of slowing down is a challenge for most people. But if you have done some thoughtful simplifying, and have carefully decided on what it is you want to make a focus in your life, it’s not as hard as it may appear at first.

Certainly, your life is likely to be busy. But by giving attention to what you said “yes” to, you have already slowed down for reflection and conscious decision making. Take that same thoughtful energy into the way you choose to pace your days.

The magic here, as you will soon experience, is that you will get more done by slowing down. (I know, it sounds completely counter-intuitive!) Why is this true? Because when you slow down you will not be multi-tasking. You will be less distracted. You will be amazed at how much you are able to focus. And when you move more slowly and with more focus as you tackle your priorities, you accomplish more. 

Make a sound schedule

Consider the next month in your life and how you will use your time.

Start by listing the things you absolutely must do in your life, and rank them from most important to least. Then make a list of the big ”yes” commitments you have made to yourself. Break down the steps for those projects if there are multiple stages or steps involved.

You will now be ready to put blocks of time on your schedule for the ”must-do’s” that make the most sense and reflect the relative priorities you assigned to them. Some of your must-do’s will be need to be done daily, some will be weekly, or once or twice a month. Map them all on your schedule for the month ahead.

Next, in the open blocks of time on your calendar, schedule in your efforts for each phase of work entailed for your “yes” priorities. Or, if there’s a priority like making time to exercise that does not entail steps to accomplish, you can plan for times when you will work out at a gym, take a yoga class, walk in nature, etc.

Do not fill every minute on your schedule! There will always be unexpected things that come up, so allow for them. And remember that it’s important to build in time for you to simple BE in each day. Remember, slowing down is a big part of this new way of living. 

Stick to your schedule and adjust as needed

It's most important to honor the times you have mapped on your calendar. Make those sacred times to focus without distraction. Remember, you are now a good “no” sayer, so stay true to both your obligations and your “yes” priorities.

There will certainly be adjustments to be made as the month goes by. Make your changes thoughtfully. Consider your priorities and what’s come up that was unexpected. Consider what you can delegate to others, what you can defer for a time, and what you can simply say “no” to. Then move things around on your schedule.

Be sure to include time for an appointment with yourself to map your calendar at the end of the month, so that you plan for the coming month. There may be new steps to take to see a big priority through. And there will certainly be new priorities to plan for as you complete some projects and have space for what you next want to make a commitment.

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Are you willing to give this approach a try? To put in the effort to take simplifying your life a step further, and to seeing what you learn from it? Whether things feel challenging, or you find a comfortable, new flow, or a bit of both, I’d love to hear about your experiences. Leave a comment below. Let’s share our experiences. 

A different kind of top-10 list

With the holidays upon us and the last days of the year winding down, top-10 lists will soon start showing up. We have all seen the typical lists of the top-10 films of the year, the top-10 world events, etc. In thinking about top-10s — which for me would include things like a significant birthday celebrated, the marriage of my nephew, coaching remarkable and inspiring clients, and a memorable trip to Paris — I decided to be grateful for all of those things, but to take a little different approach to thinking about how I want to compile my top-10 this time around.

I am thinking about the top 10 things I have learned that I want to take into the new year.

1. To start, I’m focusing on what I want to leave behind from this last year.

By reflecting on what went well and what things went awry this year, I will be able to leave behind habits and practices that I know do not serve me well. This will open the way for more of what I want to bring into my new year. What will I leave behind? For one, timidity. I have learned that when I take a step that feels big, and even a bit scary, it's always better than shrinking back. I will also no longer chase after every interesting idea I get or every opportunity that comes my way. I’ve learned that these distract me from my big priorities. Do you get the idea?

2. After reflecting on my last year, I will decide on the key things I want to create in this coming year and I will choose a word for my year.

When I have clearly defined my top priorities, for my personal life and my work, selecting a word that will guide me will follow. (I wrote about choosing a word of the year last December, and many people wrote to tell me they carefully chose a word to guide their year, too.) I learned that having my word was meaningful and inspiring, and that it was great to post my word where I saw it daily. I know this year’s word will help me to be focused and on-target, both with my new priorities and with how I want to live.

3. I will celebrate my achievements in this year and commit to celebrating my coming achievements in the new year.

We often lose sight of the things we have accomplished and achieved as we rush through our days — especially the small things that can have so much meaning. When we take the time to savor and celebrate ourselves for our successes, and celebrate things what we might overlook (such as trying out something new that is not a sure bet, or having a tough conversation rather than avoiding it), we encourage ourselves, and can appreciate that we are learning new skills and are growing in important ways.

4. I will make my visions visible.

For me, this includes making a vision board every 3 to 6 months. Creating a vision board is an incredible process, and the completed board provides a way for me to look at what I want to bring into my life on a daily basis, so I do not lose sight of what I want to manifest. Making things visible also includes writing down the top three things I will commit to each week and posting the list where I will see it often. The act of committing things to paper, and seeing them, is powerful.

5. I will get more help and support.

Last year I began to work with a great bookkeeper and wondered why I had waited so long to do that. My coaches are a big part of my support system, and I look forward to continuing my work with them. This year, I will begin to work with a virtual assistant to free me from daily tasks that take time away from doing the things that matter most to me and things that only I can do. I will also do more work with a great professional organizer to start the year with an updated filing system for my business, and to help me clear accumulated clutter in my office and home. And, I will think about other kinds of help and support I can enlist to make this a great year.

6. I will have weekly Accountability Calls with a colleague.

This is a practice I started in last year. In every call, we each report on what we accomplished in the past week, where we struggled, and what we learned, and we declare our top three priorities for the coming week. We close by picking a word to be our theme for the week. This has been a remarkable practice.

7. I will take excellent care of myself.

Having experienced a series of health challenges this year that are now, happily, resolved, I am well aware of the importance of careful self-care. I will pay special attention to what I eat and to my exercise routine. I will create a new daily practice that includes quiet meditation each morning, so that I will be centered, calm, and clear as I start each day. I will be tuned in to what causes me stress, and work to reduce those influences — and I’ll actively clear any stress that does come up.

8. I will show up, engage in constructive conversations, and take action related to civic causes about which I care deeply.

Current political developments are calling me to think creatively and partner effectively to be a force for sustaining and improving civil rights, ensuring social justice, building tolerance, protecting the environment, and more.

9. I will create as never before.

I know that when I write from my heart, and when I paint, and when I think creatively, and when I experiment freely, my life is enriched. Difficult emotions are transformed, I am fueled and inspired, I learn and grow, and I engage with others in amazing ways. I will also visit museums and galleries, attend live theater, music, and dance performances, and read as many great books as I am able. Creativity that I engage in and that I experience connects me to big, new ideas and accelerates inspiration.

10. I will live with love as a driver.

I know that love is powerful and positive, and that is what I want to be. I know that love is an antidote to fear and anxiety. So, I will continue to make “love” my watchword, as I have been especially focused on doing recently. I will check in with myself and ask if I am I serving myself, my family, my clients, my community, and the world with a full heart, and if I am modeling love and tolerance for those around me.

I am looking ahead to the next year with the desire to live bigger than ever. That desire informed my top-10 list entries. What will you include on your forward-looking top-10 list? How will you create the best year ever?

Let me know if you are making a top-10 list, and what your list (or lists) include. I would love to hear your thoughts on the topic.

All my best wishes for the upcoming holidays and a BIG and happy year. Let's all look ahead to a year filled with love, creativity, joy, abundance and peace.