An Idea Party Gone Intentional: Finding Your Thing with Board of Your Life

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Or: 360 Degrees of You, Baby, You

In the last month of Thing Finding Thursdays, Chris Guillebeau, Dyana Valentine, Jenny Blake, and Kelly Diels each talked about asking yourself The Big Questions:

What do you really want to do?

What would you do if you weren't getting paid?

What are you really, really good at...and can you REALLY make a living at it?

To find - or admit - their things, they started by getting real, getting honest, and looking inside. They made the interior journey - and of course, no one can do that for you except you.

But that's only part of the process. When you're looking for clues and puzzle pieces to piece together your Thing, you need to look around, not just inside. Look to your people: your friends, family, co-workers, employers. People who've known you a long time, seen you in good and bad times, watched you at work and at play, witnessed you enchanted and thoroughly disenchanted.

It's kind of like the back of your ensemble. You might not see it unless you seek it out. But everyone around you sees you from all angles.

So ask them what they see.

But this is not about asking if your ass looks fat in those pants. This is about people who care for you, are invested in you, see you...

...helping you see your way forward. Maybe even helping you find Your Thing  - and then brainstorming tangible, achievable steps to making Your Thing happen.

From an Idea Party...

In this month's O Magazine, Barbara Sher talks about the 'idea party'. You get together with your friends and each of you outline an intention, goal or dream, and then brainstorm ways to make it happen. You ask for help. For connections. For creativity. And someone knows someone with a vacation villa in Italy and a guru in India and an incandescent Javier Bardem look-alike in Bali and suddenly you're living - and writing - the next Eat Pray Love. Or maybe that's just in a Julia Roberts movie.

Or maybe it's your life.

The brilliantly simple point of an idea party is in the brainstorm, in the expanding of your possibilities from a party of one (you) to a team teeming with suggestions and directions.

Now that's a party. Let's have that party.

...To Assembling a Board of Your Life

But let's make that idea party even more purposive, more intentional, more accountable and more results-oriented. Let's not just assemble a team, let's assemble a Board.

Of Advisors.

For your Life.

That's what I've been doing for years: facilitating my baby, my brainchild, my Thing. And My Thing is called Board of Your Life. (It led me to coaching and I am eternally grateful. That's the point...Board of Your Life leads to magic).

Board of Your Life is a Summit. It's 360 degrees of invitation and clarity. It's an expedition and an adventure...and a wildly practical and possible process. And I've decided that I can no longer be the only one facilitating this gorgeousness. So I've created The Board of Your Life Kit, which includes:

  • a matrix to help you select and invite your advisors;

  • a list of tested, provocative, intensely productive questions;

  • a guide for your faciliator to effectively focus and lead the event; and

  • lists of all the materials needed to make the magic happen.

[It even includes templates for making the ask of your advisors. Confidence bolstering note: many Board of Your Life-ees are initially hesitant to ask potential advisors to participate...and then find, incredibly (and predictably!) that instead of being weirded out by the request, advisors feel profoundly honoured. When we do (or try to do) everything ourselves, we deny the people we care about the basic human dignity of supporting us. And so inviting your people into your decision making process is 360 degrees of generosity: you're sharing your purpose and your future with them; and they're sharing their knowledge of you with you.]

And so with Board of Your Life you'll see all your possibilities from all angles. You'll augment the knowledge you've excavated from your soul (by asking yourself those Big Questions) with information, plans and possibilities from the people who know you best, see you clearly, and can help you see your way into your thing.

Are you in? Intrigued? The Board of Your Life Kit debuts in ABOUT 14 days. If you'd like to know more about this kit and how to use it, let me know in the comments or sign-up below. I'll tell you all about my thing...so you can get started finding your thing.

Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact

Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.

Tanya