Get Inspired to Make Conscious Choices!

Welcome to my blog! I will be posting as I am inspired with snippets of real life – people making choices. These stories will likely come from my own experience, my clients and/or the people in my life.

I encourage you to reflect on how each story shows up in your life. If I end the post with a question, this is an opportunity for you to reflect, even write, about your experience. Get curious. Get inspired!

PS: I took the banner photo of my husband, Bill and dog Scout, on top of Iron Mountain near Teanaway, Washington.

 

How to Measure a Year….

It’s 4^th quarter now, the time when I used to take stock of the goals set in January and see if I had a chance to meet them. Which made me think of all the possible metrics I could choose to measure progress in a year’s time….This list might just be exhaustive.  I won’t be counting everything!

What’s meaningful? Impactful? Joyful? (The rest, merely trivial…..)

# days worked

# active clients

# new clients

# hours coached

# networking events attended

# new contacts added to LinkedIn

# billable hours

$ gross receipts

$ net revenue

$ saved

$ spent

# blog entries written

# vacation days taken

# bike rides

# dog walks/swims

# yoga classes

# hikes

# Weight Watchers meetings attended

# lost/gained or ∆ in weight

# gatherings with friends

# date nights with Bill

# photos taken

# Facebook posts

# books read

# movies watched

# cultural events attended

# trips to the grocery store

# loads of laundry completed, folded and put away

# vacuums, dusts and housecleaning

# clothing items cleared out of the house

# meals prepared

# doctor’s visits

# of NSAIDs consumed

# physical therapy visits

∆ in health metrics

# miles on the Minivan

# miles on the bikes

# Starbucks consumed

# wine bottles emptied

# cell phone minutes

# text messages

# emails sent

# emails received

$ contributed to charities

# hours volunteered

# poops picked up in the field (not Scout’s)

# hours spent “being” vs “doing”

# times I misplaced my iPhone, keys, sunglasses

# phone calls to family

# times I told Bill I love him

# times he told me

 

The Eve of Choice: Creating Intentions for 2011

Once again, I am focusing on what I want in the year to come, affirming that the Universe is supporting my intentions:

• Abundance/Prosperity
• Simplicity/Ease
• Connection/Self & Others

Many years ago, my coach suggested I pre-write a “Christmas Letter” for the coming year. It is a way of declaring the best outcomes and putting the energy into the Universe for what you want.  And it offers a way to reflect at the end of the year. I have made this part of my practice each year in the time between Christmas and New Year’s and encourage you to do the same.

Take 20 minutes and just write. No editing, no judging, no inner critic.

Start with:    “I celebrate 2011! What a great year…..”

….and just write what comes to mind. Then put it away, or someplace visible, you choose! I’d love to hear how this worked for you, so please feel free to comment on this post.

Happy New Year; may you prosper with ease and connection!

 

 

New Year’s Eve Eve Eve Morning

<The title of this blog post pays homage to my dad, who used to torment us kids the days before Christmas with his cheery greeting “Merry Christmas Eve Eve Eve Morning!” – counting down each day with one less “Eve”. The tradition continued with New Year’s, and we all giggled as if we were the only ones who shared this greeting.>

After reviewing my 2010 Intentions, I have some “splainin’ to do” for my performance this year. Here goes:

My themes for 2010 were “Prosperous, Frugal, Mindful, Strong and Fit”

These were powerful. Prosperous and Frugal contributed to a profitable contract for 9 months that impacted many of my intentions, some negatively. Mindful helped me stay focused on what matters most, although I do admit to getting caught up in my contract work and gave in to stress-response behaviors. Strong & Fit helped me recover from a freak accident in early February that left me with a fractured kneecap and strained medial ligament.

• I climbed Mount St. Helens, reaching the summit at 8,363 ft. with Bill. – I didn’t. I realized in May that I wasn’t strong enough to get enough training in before our permit date of July 25 so I bowed out.
• I created and sustained a full and profitable coaching practice, with a waiting list. – My coaching practice increased by 40% despite committing 30 hours a week on my contract. I still have openings for new clients, so the waiting list is still waiting to be born!
• I completed 12 months of successful Lifetime status at Weight Watchers.- I completed 9 months – My weight creeped above goal in June and by August I was 8 lbs over. I got back on track and now am ~6 lbs over my goal.
• I became a WW Meeting Leader. – I removed this from my intentions in February when I took on the contract work. After reviewing the terms of being a leader I decided to let go of this for now and focus on getting back to goal.
• I celebrated and nurtured my relationships with family, friends and colleagues. – I feel much better about my relationships this year than past years, especially with my Mom. She is a WW member too, and I try to call her after her meetings to talk about our shared experience. And I made some new friends!
• I led at least 12 rides for the Cascade Bicycle Club. – I don’t think I got in 12 of my own, but with co-leads might have come close. The knee injury and the contract limited my ability to make commitments to leading rides this year.
• I mastered “arm balance” pose in yoga class. – Well, I did one, for a second, last month. I wouldn’t say I “mastered” it. So this goes on my list for 2011.
• I posted at least 25 blog entries. – I intended to do these biweekly, and my performance here is weak. I posted FIVE blog entries! Only FIVE! I let my contract take over my writing.
• Bill acknowledged and complimented my creative approaches to frugality. – He is proud of what I have accomplished and has said as much. I saved most of the money I made on the contract so we have a healthy “emergency” fund. I have more work to do on the “creative approaches to frugality” and will add this to 2011 goals so I stay focused.

I am accustomed to doing annual self-assessments as part of the corporate performance review process. The “Manager” review is missing here. If I let my “Saboteur” have a voice in the “Manager” role, I get this:

“Page had a disappointing year, given her potential in January. She failed to meet 7 of her 9 goals, citing an injury, a distraction (the contract work), and flat out removed a goal without consulting me (becoming a WW leader).  While she did improve her financial position, this came at a cost to her overall health, weight, strength and fitness. She drank way too much wine and gin, ate too much sugar and processed foods and stopped going to WW meetings.

Page has a chance to recover her losses in the coming year. She needs to refocus her attention to her health, coaching practice and frugality. She is at risk of losing credibility if she doesn’t.”

Not a pretty picture, eh? My “Saboteur” holds me to a standard of perfection, with lots of judgment. I think it’s time for my “Future Self” to weigh in:

“Page always sets high expectations for herself and for the first time, she gave herself permission to let go of those that didn’t serve her. She allowed herself time to heal from an injury, instead of pushing through pain and ignoring her body. She had an amazing offer virtually fall in her lap to help a company as an interim HR leader and set boundaries for herself to take this on. She knew what the tradeoffs would be and she accepted the realities that came with the work. Her self-employment creates a bit of stress for her husband, and she knew that this work would help him relax about the family finances.

“Page achieved many things not on her list of goals for 2010:  She funded her first SEP as a sole practitioner. She traded her coaching services for private Pilates classes to honor her intentions of “Frugality” and “Strong & Fit”. She nurtured relationships with her mom, 5 new friends and 15 new clients. She experimented with new recipes to keep meals interesting and on plan. She made sure Scout got his exercise and was disciplined with his rehab after his knee surgery in September. She supervised a new ride leader for Cascade Bike Club. She and Chanda launched a new team-coaching client and put on their first weekend retreat for women.

“She has prepared the foundation for an exceptional 2011, as she begins her 4^th year as a solo-preneur. I look forward to seeing the goals Page sets and supporting her progress toward achieving them.”

How do you assess your 2010 performance?

And what does your “Manager” have to say about it?

There is truth and wisdom in both views, Saboteur and Future Self; I encourage you to do this exercise before setting your 2011 Intentions.

(I will be doing this myself in a few days!)

 

My Social Media Diet: Life Without Facebook!

Six weeks ago I was preparing for a transition in my work schedule: a contract was drawing to a close and I was about to have a calendar with more “white space” (see my last blog post for what this means!). I knew I needed a strategy to make this transition work in my favor so I took a good look at how I was spending my time and what I wanted for the days ahead.

I came to a surprising realization: I had become a Facebook junkie.  What I claimed was “relationship management” was really voyeurism. I logged onto Facebook every morning while drinking coffee and clicked on my friends’ pages and posts until the coffee was gone or I had to stop to get ready for a client call. Some days, I would keep Facebook open and check back in between calls, meals, any break between activities. I knew that I had to get this under control before my first week post-contract started.

So I quit. Cold turkey. Shut down my own page, my business fan page, and my cycling page after deleting all content, pictures, videos. Sure, the timing of my panicked withdrawal aligned with the privacy concerns about Facebook hitting the media. And a friend had a phishing virus on her Facebook page that annoyed me with its constant updates about products. But I quit Facebook because I needed to make a different choice about how I used my time and I knew I wouldn’t be successful “managing” it.

It’s been six weeks. I miss seeing what some of my friends are up to, especially the ones I don’t see that often. I miss sharing photos and videos that I create and then having my friends comment on them. I have given myself permission to create a new page and start over, but I don’t really know if I want to. I use LinkedIn for my professional connections and just can’t tell if Facebook is really worth my time anymore.

What am I missing? I am curious to know what you think.

 

Overcoming Over-committing

I am learning something about myself: I tend to over-commit. I have good intentions and deep down think that the calendar white space means I am not doing enough. I also think I am still recovering from my corporate days where I bounced from meetings and conference calls like a pin ball, checking my Blackberry in the elevators and hallways in between.

And despite creating the schedule of my dreams (15 minutes between each call), I still have new “choice muscles” to strengthen. Here is today’s example, and I hope others find a “pearl” in this for their own learning:

A while back I registered to attend TotalNetworking at Qwest Field, from 4-8pm today. I added on a PowerChicks “pre event” event from 2-3. This all seemed reasonable – I’d be able to promote my business and distribute flyers for my women’s weekend retreat coming up at the end of March. I also had 2 client calls in the morning and I added Physical Therapy and chiropractor appointments in between. I am still recovering my fractured kneecap, (using a cane) and have chronic neck issues. Add to that, my right thumb is starting to “trigger” as my left one did last fall and you get the complete picture: I am a mess. And yet, I didn’t see that because my calendar was full. White space is the devil; at least my saboteur thinks so.

This morning I realized I was nuts! (My Future Self must have awoken.) Going to the networking event in this state would only exhaust me, increase my neck, thumb and knee pain AND leave poor Scout in his crate for a LONG time.  How could I be a role model of self-care with all these ailments to make excuses for? Not to mention the IRONY of doing all this to promote a workshop about Rejuvenation for Wrung Out Women!

I made the choice to stay home. And buy a proper size cane and splint for my thumb. And THEN take Scout for a short slow walk in the glorious sunshine. We just got back. I am slowing and carefully typing with my new brace and learning how to NOT use my right thumb.

Today has been a good day. I learned a lot. I am learning how to “be”.

 

New “Choice” Muscles

Two days ago I was on my way to visit my sister near Providence, RI. I had checked my flight schedules the night before and was a little apprehensive about the 30 minute layover in Newark. (Somehow I missed that detail when I made my reservations a few months ago!) And, since I was traveling with a knee injury and a cane, I had planned for wheelchairs to move me through the airports and was checking my bag instead of carrying it on. “Would I even have a bag to retrieve in Providence?” was running through my brain?

In the 40 minutes that passed from when I left my house at 5AM and arrived at the ticket counter to check in, the flight from Newark to Providence had been cancelled and my itinerary had a new flight time, AND DAY! It looked like I’d be spending the night in Newark and flying to Providence the next morning. Sigh.

Not what I had in mind. Not with a cane and a fractured knee cap. Not at all the way I wanted to be traveling.

After asking the ticket agent for alternatives, I realized that I had choices to make. I thanked him and stepped away from the counter and hobbled to the row of seats and plopped down. “Wow,” I thought, “this is so different from my former business travel experience.” I felt empowered; I realized that I didn’t HAVE to conform to the new itinerary. I also realized that I didn’t have the corporate travel center available to get me on another airline to route around the weather that caused my flight to be cancelled.  My expectations were so much different and as a result, I was so LESS stressed than I had been in prior travel situations.

I called my sister and talked through the situation and choices. We were both disappointed that our plans were foiled, and then I made the CHOICE to abort the trip and reschedule for another weekend in the spring, closer to my sister’s birthday instead of mine.

So this is what it feels like to be fully at choice: empowered, without regret. (I also reaped an unintended benefit: squeezing in two more physical therapy appointments to help speed up my recovery!)

 

Rejection

It’s tough to accept rejection, especially when you do all you can to make something work out.  I remember a time long ago when I was dating a guy and one day I reached the point where I just didn’t want to date him anymore.  When I told him, he pleaded with me that we could work it out, but I knew there was nothing more in it for me and I was done. It was hard for him to accept and he pleaded with me to reconsider. I knew what he was going through – I’d been “dumped” before.  Rejection sucks.

I see similar reactions with clients who try so hard to make a “yes” out of an opportunity that conflicts with what they say they want. One client in particular was presented with a job opportunity that seemed great, but had several hurdles and conflicts with her stated goals. She really did a lot of soul searching to craft a proposal to make it work for herself, her family and the organization. Even if she got it, she was in for significant family and personal disruption. But she persisted in the pursuit. Til she was told that her suggested compromises wouldn’t work for the organization. They declined to consider her any further.

At this point, she was disappointed. She had really wanted to make it work. She said to me that she was frustrated with her current limitations (the reason she was rejected was her inability to physically be in the company’s offices quickly) and was struggling to accept that they wouldn’t accommodate her “remoteness” for a few months.

I give her a lot of credit: she thought seriously about how to make a great job with a desired organization work within her circumstances and what she was willing to sacrifice to do it. The people at the organization just weren’t all that into her suggestion. Hey, it’s their prerogative.

As she processed this rejection, she moved toward choice: how she was frustrated with not getting selected OR how she could choose to focus on the fact that she is full time booked with contracted projects for the next 6 months.  What I noticed is that she wanted it all; she was afraid of acknowledging that she was full up, likely because she is self employed and these kinds of opportunities don’t come along that frequently AND as a solo-preneur she felt compelled to make every one count.

Here’s the thing:  it’s a paradox to balance “don’t say no to yourself” with “you can be choosy”. I hold both perspectives firmly at the same time. I encourage you to do the same: do your “due diligence”, explore and be curious, and then take a stand for what matters most.

You can say no from a place of informed confidence without regret.

And in that place, you are at choice.

Fully, consciously and purposefully.

 

UPDATE: The “Unintended Choice”

I didn’t intend for a month to pass between blog posts and I realize the “unintended choice” poked up.  That lyric from the Rush song is bouncing around in my head: “if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”. (I just Googled it to be sure it was Rush!)

What have I chosen in the past month? What has that got me? This is a good time to reflect.

I chose to focus on my own accountability to being “Strong & Fit” and created another blog to track my fitness activities. I wanted it to be easy for my personal trainer to access and inspiring for me to journal regularly. Creating the format with a picture and description made it real.

I chose to focus on getting clear on my cash flow so I could prepare a new pro forma and household budget for 2010. This involved creating spreadsheets and going through receipts for the past four months.

I chose to focus on marketing my Rejuvenate! workshop via Social Media Marketing in ways I never thought of before. This involved creating events on various sites and sending links to my connections and groups.

And I chose to focus on my Life GPS, a tool I learned from Scott Eblin’s book “The Next Level”. He describes a process for creating this tool, and I took that and created a document I can use with my clients.

Life GPS

What did all this get me? I am ready to meet with my accountant and do my 2009 taxes, I am getting stronger and holding myself accountable, and I have a clearer picture of what and how to live at choice in 2010.  All this creates space for what I want most: to inspire others to live with intention and be at choice.

• What did you choose since the New Year began?
• What did that get you?
• What will you choose going forward?
• And what will you get as a result?

Stay connected to what matters most, your values, and who you are becoming on this journey!

 

2010 Intentions (not Resolutions!)

Today is the Eve of Choice (tomorrow being the day when New Year’s Resolutions are declared by those who vow to undo, redo, or just plain do something (anything!) to be fitter, thinner, healthier, richer, happier in the next year than they were in the one that ends today).

So on this day, I prepare for the coming year by declaring my intentions (not my resolutions). I get clear on my values, take a look at my “Wheel of Life” and create from the perspective of my “Future Self”. I focus on what I want, not what I don’t want. My intentions are worded as if they have already been achieved and once I have captured them I create the structure, behaviors, actions to help me achieve them.

Here goes:

(My themes for 2010 are “Prosperous, Frugal, Mindful, Strong and Fit”)

• I climbed Mount St. Helens, reaching the summit at 8,363 ft. with Bill.
• I created and sustained a full and profitable coaching practice, with a waiting list.
• I completed 12 months of successful Lifetime status at Weight Watchers.
• I became a WW Meeting Leader.
• I celebrated and nurtured my relationships with family, friends and colleagues.
• I led at least 12 rides for the Cascade Bicycle Club.
• I mastered “arm balance” pose in yoga class.
• I posted at least 25 blog entries.
• Bill acknowledged and complimented my creative approaches to frugality.
• I maintained “conscious choice” without regret or remorse.

These are the big ones, and there are lots of “to dos” that support each statement. For example, in order to master “arm balance” I will need to practice yoga at least once a week, preferable twice! And to summit Mount St. Helens, I will need to follow a hiking training plan to meet distance and elevation goals.

It’s your turn.

What are the themes for your 2010 intentions?

What do you want to accomplish this year?

And what will you do so that you can celebrate these accomplishments 365 days from now, on the Eve of Choice 2010?

 

Choice on a Hike

Scout chooses a stick

Mystical forest

Moss draped tentacles beckon

Scout to choose a stick