Articles
Something else, in Fear’s clothing
This week, I was stumped. Am writing an eBook reallllly close to my heart about Joy. It’s inspired by my mother, whose beauteous maxim was “Don’t Postpone Joy”. I had already called Fear out and told it I was going through with my eBook(s) whether it liked it or not. I believed we had an understanding. I’d write, it would show up and I’d write in spite of it. Push on through.
Besides, what’s easier for me than writing about Joy? I know this like the back of my hand. And it’s in honour of my Mom’s approach to life. (Also known to me like the back of my hand.)
So I wrote up a neat and tidy outline for the free eBook that looks like it’s going to be really truly valuable, and then…nothing. NADA. White space. Blank page. Staring moonily back at me. Blink, blink, blink goes the cursor.
I get up, shake it off, make some tea. I coax, I cajole, I get coached.
I back up. I surge forward.
I try a role call of saboteurs who may be trying to stop me. It doesn’t seem to be the “this is gonna suck, sucka!” or “who do you think YOU are to write about joy?” varietals (because, as my bud Leslie said and Rock Star Pam confirmed, I AM an expert on joy).
And the Words. Will. Not. Come.
Still something else.
Shit.
February 14th (launch date) creeps closer and closer. And closer still.
Then Carrie (who is designing the stunningness that the eBook is becoming) asked me this:
I also wondered if your mom had a favourite flower we might slip in somehow, or a particular colour that made her smile. Your intention, alone, makes this project special... but if there are other little details we can stitch in, do say.
I immediately respond:
My Mom had sublimely eclectic taste (friends LOVED our homes because they were fun and lived-in). Art everywhere (nothing “valuable” just lots of pieces from travels...none of which “matched”) Massive colour (like salmon-coloured walls) though she searched her whole life for the perfect “butter yellow” wall colour for her kitchens (never found it). Yes flowers...the showiness of hibiscus and the subtleties of lily-of-the-valley. Trees were huge for her (we have a commemorative one in her name on the beach that reads: Brenda Geisler – Lover of Life and Trees – Requisciat in Pace – she was proud that she knew Latin!) and made sure she planted several in every home we lived in (and there were many). Coffee, fall macintosh apples, good cheese, a mohair blanket I knit her, good books tat could take to her to far-away places she couldn’t afford to visit herself, and bubble baths, and heart-to-heart hugs (she would actually get pissed off if you didn’t touch hearts in a hug or look into each others eyes when you clinked glasses in cheers).
Didn’t spellcheck, didn’t reread, didn’t edit. Just pressed “send”.
Then I cried. Blubbery, slobbery and completely. My husband walked in and gave me a hug (heart to heart, of course). Didn’t try to dry the tears, just knew they needed to be released.
And boy howdy, did they ever.
I sat down to write The Joy Pages that same day. Easiest thing I ever wrote. (Still not entirely sure how it’s all going to look once my beloved editors have their way with it, but I know it will be purposeful, useful and from my heart.)
For me, the stuck wasn’t fear as I had assumed after all. (Fear has such fabulous PR that it gets the credit for pretty much all stuckness). In my case, it was profound sadness masquerading as fear that had its grip on me. And not surprisingly, it’s bloody challenging to write something useful about joy when sadness is holding down the fort.
Fear is your lifelong lover and will show up, time and time again. I continue to say we ought to all move forward in spite of it. And that may look like getting clarity around whether it’s fear or something else. Then dealing with THAT accordingly.
Am learning that the enemies of fear are: love, joy and clarity. This Valentine’s Day, those will be my gifts to you.
Stay tuned.
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.
Fear sucks...
Today is the day I get over myself. Today is the day I actually begin to WRITE the eBooks (PLURAL) that have been dying to be expressed from my heart for a long, LONG time. Not plan, not research, not outline, not hem and haw. Actually WRITE.
(Hear that? It's the collective sigh of my inner circle.)
And today's not just the day because my type-A excel spreadsheet tells me so. Oh, I can ignore IT. No, today's the day because that right there on the left is what I pulled over to the side of the road and HAD to write in my notebook on the way home from the gym this morning.
I am scared. That what I write won’t be very good. That no one will care. That I’ll have wasted my time. And so much more.
And still.
Fear sucks…doing nothing is far worse.
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What’s keeping you awake? What is dying to be expressed from YOUR heart? There. THAT thing. The thought that made your stomach do a back-flip. That’s it. Now go do it. Please..
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.
Who are you cutting along the lines for?
I love running my own business. I love calling the shots. I love being able to focus on what I want AND turn on a dime if that’s what I choose. I love the support structures I have in place. I love picking my clients, picking my projects, picking my partners. I am accountable and responsible for my actions and outcomes. Liberating. I love being the boss of me. In life and in business.
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Last night, I was cutting out some French words to be used as flash cards for my daughter’s reading. I had asked her teacher for this resource earlier in the day and he complied, giving me handouts with words of varying length and instructing me to glue them onto construction paper (for sturdiness) and then cut them out.
I settled in on the couch, intent on the task while sipping my shiraz and absent-mindedly watching husband and daughter wrestle. It looked like fun. After a time, I noticed I was starting to get a blister on my thumb and my hand was beginning to cramp. I had been at this for a good 25 minutes. I was growing weary and a little agitated. Only half-way through the pages. The laughter of husband and child started to grate on my nerves. How come THEY get all the fun while I get all the drudgery?
I looked down at my perfect little piles of perfectly cut paper.
And stopped. Then this thought bore down on me:
Who the hell cared if the words were cut along the dotted lines with surgical precision?
How neatly they were cut would have zero bearing on my daughter’s ability to read “salon”. Who was REALLY calling the shots here? And if it was ME, why was I being such a tight-ass about LINES for the love-a? And what was all this type-A crap costing me?
I was being the world’s worst boss.
I chuckled at the absurdity of it all and proceeded to hack up the rest of the pages in minutes and joined in the wrestling fun.
Sloppily cut and perfectly fine, no?
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Who are you cutting along the lines for?
My invitation to you: hack ‘em up. It feels goooooooooooood.
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.
Gratitude (v. 2)
A dear friend and I were working out at the gym earlier this week, talking about husbands, children, belly fat and joy (not in that precise order). She mentioned that she had just read somewhere that happy people become successful, whereas unhappy people rarely do. It was 6 am and neither of us were in the mood to debate how scientifically-significant that statement was. Intuitively, I know this to have some truth, so I nodded knowingly.
She turned to me and asked, "but, how does one BECOME happy"? I thought about this a moment, my coach-like spidey senses abuzz with the opportunity to ask her about her beliefs. Which I shut down and replied:
I think it starts with gratitude.
Deceptively simple.
And so, we went on our merry, separate ways. I proceeded to be annoyed about some of the days downs (working around a child who's been home sick for days), and grateful for the ups (new client, offer of speaking gig, child's fever broken) .
It's the other basic, yet massive things that I forget to be grateful for.
My reminder today came from another dear friend's Facebook update. Cath is a reporter for the Toronto Star and has been doing incredible things and covering incredible stories in Haiti.
On the anniversary of the quake that devasted the country, she wrote these words:
Big, terrible day in Haiti. Voices of survivors singing hymns still wafts into my window. Be grateful for your families, jobs, homes, and friends.
Yes. Indeed.
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.
The Gift of the Acknowledgement
My daughter doesn’t look people in the eyes when she speaks to them. Drives me nuts. Yes, she may be shy with strangers, and yes, her manners are otherwise impeccable. But eye contact isn’t a manners thing. It’s an acknowledgment thing. And the well-crafted acknowledgement is a dying art.
Now I KNOW she has picked up this bad habit from me. My attention is frequently divided (sound familiar?) So, I chop as she talks. I type as she talks. I tidy as she talks. I file as she talks. Oh, I hear her words and “mmm hmmm” from my keyboard. She knows well the side of my face, and the top of my head. It feels rare that I sit still, look her in the eyes and give her the respect of my full attention. Of really seeing her.
And I am noticing that to compensate, I compliment her. I tell her she is funny, smart, kind. That she has a good heart and the ability to do anything she sets her mind to doing. It’s all true, of course. And yet, the words often ring like platitudes intended to placate my Mama guilt.
What she deserves, what we ALL deserve, is the gift of a good, authentic acknowledgment that’s neither about me, nor is it about what she has done.
Acknowledgement recognizes the inner character of the person to whom it is addressed. More than what the person did, or what it means to the sender, acknowledgement highlights who the sender sees.
From Co-Active Coaching
Try it out.
Dare to know someone. Dare to see someone. Dare to tell them what you see and watch them walk on, a little taller, a little more committed to carving their path to greatness.
They may look a little something like this…simple and honest:
You have the heart of a lion.
Your writing heals wounds.
Your generosity inspires.
You are a leader.
The world is waiting for you to sing.
But you’ll need to start by looking them in the eyes.
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.
Three Little Words
I love you. Are there any words more powerful than those? When they’re backed with full intention, they can end wars and ignite flames. When they are not backed with full intention, they are a heart-wrenching lie. The stuff that starts wars.
I know some other pretty powerful three-word combos. YOUR three words for the New Year. You’ve heard Chris Brogan talk about them for a while now. They are like guideposts for your year to come. Touchstones of inspiration. Beams of clarity.
Being clear about what we want is the surest way to gain on it. And I’m with Martha Beck in my belief that knowing what we want has a lot less to do with outcomes than with feelings. So this year, in the year-end completion and new-year welcoming tool I share with clients, I asked:
What three adjectives do you want to feel as you lay your head down on your pillow every single night of 2011?
_____________, ________________, and ________________.
Be with that a moment, will you?
How do I want to feel? Every night before I go to bed?
Me? Well, since you asked (thanks), I choose to feel: masterful, vital and nourished.
They may mean nothing to you, yet here's what these simple yet powerful words conjure for me:
Masterful - authority, immersion, depth, roots, refinement, elegance, enduring
Vital – energized, sensual, resonance, important, joyful, light, jubilation, laughter, wonder, connected
Nourished – satiated, serene, honoured, healthy, full, enough, quality
Hubba hubba whoo whoo!!!
These words have EVERYTHING to do with my personal and professional goals for the year. They will help inform every decision I make because every action moves me towards or away from these three words.
Will working on this new project lead me towards or away from mastery? Will working with this person make me feel more vital, or less so? Does this new book nourish my mind, body and/or spirit or is it the Kraft Dinner equivalent?
Of course, there is not absolute “right” answer. My intuition will be the Ultimate Guide here, as ever. But even the finest of Guides appreciate guideposts from which to orient the path.
And if I don’t feel nourished, masterful or vital as I lay my head on my pillow, I get to try again tomorrow.
Let’s find yours
If you didn’t land immediately on the three words to describe how you want to wish to FEEL every night, then you may choose to sink into some of your values that are begging to be honoured.
I notice that my words represent in part my Future Self. The person I am becoming, the one I know awaits me in 20 years. May be the same for you. They may also be traits of someone you admire.
Whatever you land on, please make sure they are steamy for you. That you LOVE them in that blushing, hot under the collar way that a well-intended “I love you” makes you feel. Please make sure they are resonant and truthful. Otherwise, they are impotent lies. And who needs that?
A final word about love. Because really and truly, finding your words is a powerful exercise in self-love. Creating the year that YOU want. One decision at a time.
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.