Gardening in High Heels

cultivate a beautiful life

Do you know what you don’t want?

I have had this Clarity Gem from Clarity on Fire saved to write about for such a long time and I haven’t created it.  It’s talking about taking what you don’t want and transitioning it to what you do want.

Go listen to it.  It’ll only take 8 minutes.

Good?  Okay.  I was initially going to follow up Why Getting Fired Was Good For Me, but now it has more meaning in a different form.  Things come back when we most need them.

Like I wrote last week, I’m a little stuck in planning and not focused enough on doing without Knowing what you don't want is better than knowing what you do.making sure everything is perfect first.  Along with that, I’m not sure where I want to go with SynEr and my career and freelance and such.

As Rachel and Kristen say, when we get stuck in the suckitude of what we don’t like, that’s all we can think about sometimes.  We know really quickly what we don’t want and what we don’t like, but it’s harder to come up with what we do enjoy.

“I would do what I loved if I knew what I wanted to do, but all I know is what sucks.”

Makes perfect sense to me.  It’s hard to turn around and say to myself, “Here’s what I’m so excited about.”  Probably just like it’s easier to forget the good and focus on the bad.

When that happens, they recommend to take a second and think about the bad.  What don’t you want?  Then turn it on its head and figure out what the opposite is.  The example Rachel gave is feeling pressure.  The opposite of that for her is ease, relief, simplicity.  Kristen felt stifled, like she was suffocating.  The opposite for her was feeling spacious, like she had room to be creative and wouldn’t have to hide who she is.

This actually came up for me before I listened to the clarity gem all the way through.  I was having a discussion with Marissa and the same feeling came up for her, too.

My advice?  Figure out what you don’t like first.

Then I was trying to figure out what I want to write about for PCBN because Jason, bless his heart, was like, “Write about anything!”  In a total nonsensical paradox, it seems limiting to figure out what to write since there are so many options.

The easiest way for me to narrow it down was to write down what I don’t want to do and what angle I don’t want to take.  It really helped to put it into perspective and figure out, Okay, this isn’t what will work, so I can cross those off the list.

I’m also going through the Holiday Council with Stratejoy, and creating my plan for next year.  I settled on my “word” a while ago, but I want it to have a little more oomph.  “Focus” is a nice word, but it seems more like a command than a directive.  With this method, I know what I don’t like about it, and instead can find a word that has a little more power.

I’m really quite enjoying this opposite thing.  It’s perfect timing with New Year’s; we’re all trying to figure out our grandiose new direction for 2015.  I’m totally employing it to help unstick whatever’s stuck with me writing-wise.

What do you do when you need to figure out the answer to a big “something”?

Not my circus, part two

I was reading a blog post from Clarity on Fire and it hit a nerve.  This was perfect timing because I was thinking something similar to the situation in the post it came from – not the part about breaking up with toxic friends, because I’m pretty good at the moment, the part about people not being respectful of my time.  Rachel explained my sentiments pretty perfectly:

Personally, I tend to get pretty miffed when people are rude. Take, for example, when I schedule a free breakthrough coaching session with someone, we confirm the call the day before, and then they totally ghost me. They don’t bother to send a, “Sorry, can we reschedule?” email or a quick text that they can’t make it. Nothin’.

Part of my day job duties include scheduling appointments with people so I can help them with their marketing strategy or program in general.  The other day, every single scheduled appointment I had didn’t answer when I called them.  It wasn’t like I was Rambo-ing into their day and catching them off guard, these were mutually agreed upon times.

It really kills my day’s momentum when I have to stop what I’m doing to make sure I call these people on time.  It takes time for my brain to shift gears and prepare for the next task at hand.  Similarly, it takes time to refocus on what I was doing.

It smacks of not having consideration for the people around you.  I understand that some people forget or something comes up last minute; I’m not begrudging anyone of that and I’ve been guilty of it myself.  I’m talking about people who make it a regular occurrence.  Why is this okay to say to give the message that you just can’t be bothered to be considerate?

We were taught to say please and thank you.  Well, I hope we all were.  How many of you didn’t get a thank you on Halloween when passing out candy, hmm?  This self-centered attitude we’ve adopted is a big problem.

What I loved about the Clarity on Fire post is this simple reminder:

What other people say and do is about them. Not me. In fact, it never says anything about me.

Their actions are not a reflection of me.  I am not responsible for people not answering the phone.  Thank goodness we have a good note-taking system at work to prove that I did call them if there’s ever a dispute!  I am also not responsible to parent someone’s child and demand a thank you for providing free candy.

I can only control my actions.

It reminds me so much of “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”  Rachel even said that in her post, too!

What’s great about this is it works in both the positive and the negative sense.  Of course, if you blow off an appointment, it says you don’t care much for other people’s time.  On the flip side, if you do give someone a heads up that you will be a few minutes late or you go out of your way to hold the door for someone, it says that you are a respectful individual.

So today I’d like to ask you to bring back politeness.  Leave something in the world today that shows you are a decent member of society.  Let’s bring back being considerate and thinking about how your actions will effect others and how your actions make you look in turn.

Comment below and let me know what you’re going to do today to make yourself a reflection of how you really want to be known!

What other people say and do is about them, not me

PS: Don’t forget to enter the Miglio Jewelry USA Giveaway!

The post in which I fangirl about Britt Reints at #TEDxGrandviewAve

I went to TEDxGrandviewAve on Saturday.  The theme, Dare To Create, resonates with me, of course.  I loved hearing how people create from different backgrounds and disciplines; a computer programer is just as creative as an artist, just in a different way.  Most of all, I loved hearing Britt Reints of In Pursuit of Happiness speak.  When I purchased the tickets, I did so simply because of her promo view.  She told a story about a dog her family had when she was a kid.  This dog figured out that if he ran through the electric fence, it would only hurt for a bit, and then he would be free.  Um, doesn’t that make everyone go, “Yes, I want to run free and happy, to0”?

TEDxGrandivewAve Program

Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with Britt briefly at Propelle and Creative Mornings sessions.  I have to say, I think she’s just about the coolest person ever.  Someone offering to sit down and chat about writing because of something you said a month before?  Yeah, pretty badass (and more importantly) generous.  I’m crossing the line of “I feel like I know you personally because I’ve heard you speak and read your blog and your tweets and know about your life but really we’re barely acquaintances,” so on to my point.

Britt’s talk was about creating an owner’s manual for yourself and guiding yourself to happiness through learning to trust yourself.  A big part of that trust is first to stop shoulding on yourself.  Ask yourself why you should do something and don’t do it if it’s not something that you want to do.  Listen to what you need.  And do the things that make you happy to do them.  I did it and it helped.

On Friday, I was weeding and clearing flower beds, absolutely hating it because I should be doing it.  I didn’t want to do it, but I didn’t question it either, I just did it because it needed to be done.  On Sunday, I said, “Okay, but why should I do it?”

It’s the responsible thing to do.  I want the yard to look nice.  I want the neighbors to think I’m contributing to the beauty of the neighborhood (joke’s on them, I have not inherited my mother’s green thumb or enthusiasm for gardening).

It would make me happy to accomplish this task because it will make other people happy, too.

When I stopped to think why I was doing it, I was a lot more happy to do it.  Mowing grass still sucks, sure, but it feels good to have done it.

Just that shift in my attitude made it more pleasant and I was happier to mow the grass.

Similarly, I had lunch with an old co-worker the other day and as I was lamenting how I wasn’t where I thought I should  be in life, he took his chop stick wrapper and hit me with it every time I said should.  You don’t realize it until someone smacks you each time you say it how much you say it!

I encourage everyone to check out the TEDx talks when they’re posted online and definitely spend time getting to know Britt and In Pursuit of Happiness.  Now who’s ready to stop with the shoulds?

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People Really Dug These

We Belong in the Garden Together