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Wheel of Life
Like many of you, I’ve been going through major transitions in the last couple of years. The economy has definitely impacted my business, and my personal life has also changed substantially. My long-term marriage came to an end, and a new relationship is beginning to blossom. I changed residences, took on new responsibilities and let go of others.
I’m finding that it’s time for me to re-evaluate my own priorities by using a coaching tool I offer every new client. It’s called the Wheel of Life, and it allows me to see a snapshot of what’s working and what isn’t working in the areas of career, money, physical environment, significant other/romance, personal development, family and friends, fun and recreation and health.
The idea of the wheel is to rank each of these categories, notice where the gaps are between where you are and where you’d like to be, and how evenly distributed these areas of your life are. How smooth is the ride if your career is at a 6, but your health is at a 3?
In looking at my own, I realize that I’m now choosing to focus more on fun and recreation and romance than any of the other pie pieces. As many of you have recently reflected back to me, I’ve been operating at a high level of self-sufficiency and can take my foot off the gas for awhile and still have plenty of forward momentum. That’s what I’m choosing consciously to do.
I have decided to take the month of July off from marketing, webinars, blogging and networking. I’m going to be quiet, relax, hike, spend time in nature and swing in a hammock during this time. I’m going to vacation with my kids for several days.
I’ll be attending the Kushi Macrobiotic Conference again (my 5th time) and will use the rest of the month to relax, swim, read and pore through old journals for inspiration and instruction. I’m going to watch grass grow and spend time doing nothing.
I often recommend this to my own clients. Now the coach is taking her own prescription and trusting that the Universe wants exactly that from me–to do nothing and allow it to manifest whatever is next. There’s a heap of trust involved in letting go to this extent, but I’m crystal clear that it’s what I need to do.
I’m looking forward to a busy June and an August that is full of promises for the fall. I know I’ll return to my office renewed and reinvigorated. You can look forward to a full report (after a month of silence) when I get back.
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.
Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
~Rumi
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One of the reasons I just joined Ladies Who Launch was to be sure to claim my space at Kristin van Ogtrop’s talk last week in Greenwich. I knew it would be a sell-out and that members would receive priority. I became a platinum member and slid onto the list of attendees.
She was fabulous!
To get a sense of Kristin’s outlook and humor I recommend buying her book (seen here), but to give you a small appetizer, here are two of my favorite points she made during her talk that night:
#3 – If you don’t have a thick skin, learn to heal quickly.
She showed an actual email she’d received (the person’s email name and address included!) that was insulting and rude as an example of what she occasionally contends with. That really got my attention as I have recently been on the receiving end of others’ ire. When you’re a public figure of any dimension, you do become a target. I liked her directive to deal with the hurt and move on rapidly. I’ve been applying that wisdom to good advantage.
I remember a Newsday poll from many years ago that named Howard Stern as the best-loved radio personality. He was simultaneously named the most-hated radio personality. Fame (or any public notice) will often be a double-edged sword.
My other favorite point Kristin made was:
#4 – Don’t exceed your own personal speed limit.
That’s easily understood and could be a screen saver on your computer monitor. How often do you take on more than you can accomplish in a day? That little word “no” (which Kristin recommended liberal use of) will help keep your travel lane flowing smoothly.
In addition to hearing Kristin speak, I’m delighted to be a new member of Ladies Who Launch which is being so well run by Kathy McShane who is devoted to helping women business owners succeed. I share that passion with Kathy and am excited about joining forces with her to serve our community and beyond.
My beloved professor and some of his collection
My primary reason for visiting Savannah earlier this week was to visit my good friend Meredith Gray in her new digs. She moved from Connecticut last fall after one too many winters in the Northeast.
Coincidentally, I’d recently heard from another dear friend in GA, my college professor Jim Cavanaugh, who has written a book on acting and invited me to design its cover. I asked Jim about the distance from Savannah to his home on St. Simons Island. Perhaps I could hand-deliver the artwork since I was flying south anyway. Graciously, Meredith willingly chauffeured me to a brunch date with Jim which provided the opportunity to present him his cover. He loved it!
What a treat to be in Jim’s company again after more than 20 years since we’d last seen each other at a reunion. I had had a double major at Mount Holyoke–Studio Art and Theatre. I was a backstage person designing sets, logos and props for many productions. Jim has saved many pieces of the work I did back then including the logo for The Caucasian Chalk Circle (hanging above my head) and the bunraku puppet (next to it) which I had made representing the child in that production during my senior year.
There was something extraordinary about seeing artwork I had created 40 years ago. It surprised me that I liked it. And I was touched that Jim had it so prominently displayed throughout his home. What a gift it is to maintain relationships over the decades and to have the opportunity to revisit them. It’s important to me to keep up with my friendships and to make time for seeing the people I love.
Do you feel that way too?
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Carlette Cormier holding her Savannah Toile handbag.
I spent the early part of this week visiting my good friend Meredith Gray at her new bungalow in Savannah. We invited a fellow Savannah-ite to join us for breakfast Tuesday morning at the Sentient Bean.
Carlette Cormier and I had met in 2003–I as a speaker, Carlette as an award-winning designer. She recently took my webinar, so our friendship was re-kindled and visiting her in GA was a must. Her focus now is in developing her Savannah Toile business, which she’s doing with great success.
Carlette is a born story-teller. She was describing a big job she’d installed a few years ago at an elegant restaurant in town called Ele. As a designer, she was tasked with creating upholstered walls for one of the dining rooms. I asked her how she had received that opportunity. Carlette’s next door neighbor is a masseuse and the owner of Ele regularly received massages from her. Carlette’s neighbor happily made the referral. As Carlette so succinctly put it:
“You never know where your next referral is coming from.”
Carlette’s upholstered wall panels for Ele
While on the Holistic Holiday at Sea a few weeks ago, I had the privilege of hearing many experts speak. One of the most compelling classes I attended was titled The 5 Essentials of Health given by Christina Pirello. Her own personal journey to health is amazing. Click the link on her name for a short version. As I enumerate Christina’s ‘levels of health,’ see if you agree with me that these are vital qualities for any business owner to be aware of and strive towards. This list is from my note-taking and may not be word-for-word how Christina describes them.
- Clarity of thought – results in decisive action
- Appetite for life – cannot wait to start your day
- Good sleep – This can be highly underrated
- Good memory – This piggy-backs on good sleep where everything regenerates
- Energy – Stamina and endurance
I’d be curious to hear how you’re doing with these essentials and if you think she’s missed anything. Personally, I think she’s covered the bases very well.
Before going into the levels of health, Christina helped us understand the levels of illness. What surprised me was that the #1 issue is fatigue. I hear so many people say, when asked how their health is, “I’m fine.” But if you probe a little deeper, exhaustion often comes up. “I’m fine. I’m just tired.” We tend to overlook this as a health concern, so I perked up when she listed that first as it’s quite an attention-getter.
I’m not a health coach, but this level of self-awareness is a key component in my client’s success. Is it time to take another look at your own energy level, memory, etc?
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Mary's Privacy Curtain
“Unless you’re bleeding, don’t come in for the next hour,” I would tell my daughter Laura back in my home office/egg decorating days. That was my inelegant way of establishing privacy and quiet time for my work. I didn’t have better tools back then and blush at how crudely I stated my need.
When my client Mary called last week and spoke about a similar issue, I understood her pain. As moms working at home, establishing a quiet zone that will not be trespassed is a frequent concern. And it’s not only children who have trouble staying away. Mary’s lovable spouse likes to talk and is currently between work opportunities with time and feelings to spare.
Mary has set up an attractive, well-lit and neatly organized space for herself in the basement of their home. But there was no door on it to shut out the world when she’s working. Mary has all of the qualities of a great coach, so her husband saw her irresistible presence at home, albeit in this space, as an invitation to hang out. She adores him, too, but as a professional starting this at-home business, enough was enough.
Most of the time when I’m coaching, I ask powerful questions of my clients knowing that they already have their own answers. In this case, I simply asked, “Could you put up a door?”
Mary laughed out loud because that had not occurred to her. Because of the architecture of the space, a door wasn’t going to work. But within 3 hours of our conversation I received this image with her already implemented solution. I could feel her joy in the execution and the gentle, but clear boundary she established. BTW, names have been changed to protect the innocent.
I learned during the webinar course I took last spring that to become really successful and to expand your reach in the world, creating Joint Venture (JV) relationships would be critical. To be honest, I had no idea what the instructor was talking about. But I hung around, watched what others were doing and was actually invited to JV with a few colleagues. JVing, it turns out, is a new verb you should become aware of.
Tomorrow night I’m offering my first JV experience to my audience as I host a talk to be given by Irma Jennings, a coach also, but in a very different field than mine. Irma’s expertise is in helping women understand bone health.
We met through a webinar course on how to give webinars. I was immediately impressed with Irma’s intelligence, passion and professionalism and am delighted to offer her message to the remarkable women I know.
Having just returned from my cruise which was all about optimal health, I feel compelled to help women become aware of this vital information so that they can participate in their careers with full force for as long as possible.
I recently had a bone scan and found out that I’m pre-osteopenia, which I’m glad to know so I can take action. I am eager to hear more from Irma, especially now that I’m aware of all the mis-information out there, mainly that milk should be our primary source of calcium. Not true! Find out what is as I host Irma’s free webinar tomorrow night.
Tonight, I’m going solo and giving a one-session talk on marketing that is lively, informative and will inspire you to take an action right away. Hope you’ll join me for either or both.
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Colin Campbell + Caldwell Esselstyn - The stars of Forks Over Knives
I’m back from 7 glorious days on the MSC Poesia attending the Holistic Holiday at Sea cruise to the Caribbean. It would be hard to isolate a highlight of this experience, because it was day after day of education, meeting fascinating people, eating exquisitely prepared vegetarian meals, and touring the islands of St. John’s, Puerto Rico and Nassau.
But if you absolutely insisted on the quintessential takeaway, I would have to say it was the inspiration I got from hearing the two amazing men pictured here talk about their experiences.
With the documentary film entitled Forks Over Knives, Colin Campbell and Caldwell Esselstyn are changing the way Americans eat. Both transformed themselves from early childhoods on dairy farms into becoming experts on plant-based nutrition through research (Campbell) and medical practice (Esselstyn). Their independent efforts via The China Study (Campbell) and the Cleveland Clinic (Esselstyn) prove with thousands of case studies and statistics that heart disease and cancer can be reversed through diet. Which, they both acknowledge, won’t get most people to make the necessary changes in their eating habits, but it has helped significant numbers improve and extend their lives after severe diagnoses.
It was Dr. Esselstyn’s personal story particularly that I found powerful. He shared his struggle of getting the invaluable information he’d been studying for years out to a very resistant public, including seven calls to a doctor at Harvard he wanted to reach.
“Never get upset with the secretary,” he advised us, even though his frustration level had clearly escalated during his period of prospecting this person.
Dr. Esselstyn and his wife Ann (who was on board throughout the cruise) personally taught his patients how to cook and eat a healing diet. They took an interest in each individual in their study, called them regularly. One memorable segment depicted a woman who shared a journal entry from the day she was in WalMart, determined to indulge in a meatball grinder when her cell phone rang, and it was Ann Esselstyn calling–at that very moment– to see how she was doing. Needless to say, she never had that sandwich and was strongly converted by the level of concern and interest shown by the Esselstyns.)
The China Study has garnered great media attention for these men, decades after the hard work they put in (and continue to put in). The bigger message I got from their talks and their presence was that when you’re living your passion and making a contribution to society, the material rewards may or may not come, but the lives you are changing will be gratifying beyond words.
In today’s NYTimes obituaries, the man who helped us understand the danger of aerosol sprays to our environment is remembered:
F. Sherwood Rowland, whose discovery in 1974 of the danger that aerosols posed to the ozone layer was initially met with disdain but who was ultimately vindicated with the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, died on Saturday at his home in Corona del Mar, Calif. He was 84.
I believe that Campbell and Esselstyn also deserve the Nobel Prize for their heroic work in proving that these human and economy killing diseases can be reversed through diet. Disdain–they’ve already confronted that. Vindication is occurring daily. They have my vote.
I love watching a conversion.
In the first module of my webinar series I talk about creating a vision for your business/life. I offer two methods for doing that–a vision board or a written statement. This week I had the opportunity to review visions with one of my webinar participants, Sandy Lovell.
Sandy has been very successful in her career and was in a transitional phase when she signed on for my class. I could tell from our conversations that she was holding herself back, not dreaming big enough. During this week’s Q+A session, she admitted to having begun, but not completed, the vision board assignment. I counter-offered, and Sandy said she was willing to write a vision statement instead which included outrageous, stretch goals and desires.
As we talked on the phone, I suggested a weekly massage as part of her self-care regimen in her vision. She simply laughed at the preposterousness of the idea. Although it felt too indulgent, she promised to add it to her written vision.
Sandy joined in again on the next Q+A call and immediately opened the conversation with, “You won’t believe this! I did what you said. Wrote the vision statement, and in today’s email, I received a groupon deal for a massage. I signed up. How did that happen?!”
It’s The Secret in action, the law of attraction. That you bring into your life what you think about. Writing it down and cutting and pasting pictures of your desires hastens the process and directs the universe–and your attention–towards your particular longings.
Tomorrow I leave for an envisioned vacation. I’m traveling to the Caribbean for a cruise – Holistic Holiday at Sea. Years ago my table mate at EWN told me that every six weeks she takes a week off. I made a mental note of that ambitious and luxurious goal and am beginning my own manifestation of it. I was a guest presenter at a spa in Mexico in December, now vacationing in the tropics in March. Not quite six weeks, but wonderfully in the right direction.
I’ll be out to sea for a week. No phone. No email. Nothing but the ocean, nature and R+R. I highly recommend your following my lead as often as possible.
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I know I’m late to the party, but I’ve arrived. In one of my webinar modules I quoted David Pogue talking about his conversion to twitter three years ago. After hearing all the fuss, he still didn’t ‘get’ what was so great. Until he was on a selection committee for the MacArthur grant and one of the proposed projects had a vaguely familiar ring to it. Committee members looked at each other blankly. Had this been done before? Then one committed tweeter in their group posted the question to his followers and had a response and a link within 30 seconds. The proposed project had been done, and Pogue saw the brilliance of the medium in real time.
That happened for me via Facebook this weekend. I was flattened by the stomach bug. All I could do was lie in bed and suck ice chips. With all that down time, it occurred to me to reach out via Facebook as a possible source of sympathy and help. I entered my status and asked for advice on how others got through the virus and what I might do to entertain myself in the interim.
Very quickly I had all the help I needed. Good help too. I got food recommendations as well as a link to an inspiring documentary (tomorrow’s post) on Charles and Ray Eames.
Facebook didn’t make my sickness go away, but I believe that following my friends’ advice and feeling so heartened by their love and concern made me better.
