Choices

When you think back on your life, what pops into your mind’s eye?  If you were to write your story, you’d probably anchor it around a series of Y’s in the road, defining moments that took your life in a different direction. It may have been an event in your family or your world that impacted you, but just as often it was a choice you made. 

It’s fun to read books or watch movies about alternate histories where the hero sees what life would have been like if a different choice had been made at a key pivot point.  I’m a big fan of the movie Back to the Future and the Quantum Leap tv show.  I wonder what my life would be like today if I hadn’t broken up with my boyfriend of 3 years, Bob, to marry someone else, aka the Jerk.  (Give me a break… I was 18.)   Would we have gotten married, had kids, broken up anyway?  Who knows, but what I do know is that the consequences of that choice played a major role in shaping the life I live today.

When we write our life story, it’s these defining moments that stand out.  Regrets often stem from bad choices made at these points and they can haunt us for years.  But your story - your life - is so much more.  In fact, it’s the small choices you make every day that quietly form the basis of your life.  It’s not big drama, just a slow drip, drip, drip that shapes you over time. 

These smaller choices fly under the radar.  Think back on your day.  How many choices did you make?  Was it 4 or 6?  What to have for breakfast, lunch, dinner – that’s 3.  Of course it varies by day, but I’ll bet there’s a big gap between the number of choices you made consciously and those that you made unconsciously.  One key to making changes in your life is to turn that around.  If you increase your awareness in the moment and make conscious choices aligned with your goals and priorities you’ll begin to move in the direction you want to go. 

Habits are unconscious choices on autopilot, and they can support or sabotage your dreams. Is it easier to start a good habit or to stop a bad one?  For me it’s easier to start a good habit since I can tie it in a positive way to something I want to accomplish.  Stopping a bad habit feels like deprivation.  But you might be different.  Experiment on yourself to find what works for you, and remember that it takes time for new behaviors to be come habits. 

Perfection is not the goal; the key is to make progress. Do what works for you, but in order to do that, you need to know what’s working.  Put in place practices that build awareness in support of your goal; e.g., a food diary, exercise or training journal, spending log, tracking time wasters like oversleeping or hours of tv watching.  (Try it, you’ll be amazed..and shocked…how fast the hours in front of the tube add up.)

In addition to wrangling your habits, look out for non-choices like procrastination. If you find yourself procrastinating about a project or a task, you’re really making an unconscious choice to let something, usually fear, stop you.  When you feel yourself resisting getting something done, bring the issue to the surface by hearing my little voice in your head asking in a quiet, non-judgmental way:  what’s going on, what’s stopping you, what are you afraid of?  Be gentle but honest with yourself and try to identify what it is.  Once you bring it to the surface and name it, you can craft a strategy to address the issue like asking for help.

If you’d like to hear my little voice in your head for real, give me a call for a 30 minute complimentary coaching session. Working with a coach is a great way to increase your awareness around your choices, habits and non-choices.

Risk Management

During my last two years at Washington Mutual Bank I worked in the Risk Management group heading up a program to reduce deposit fraud.  Fraud is fascinating and scary!  One of the keys to our success was balancing the bank’s sales and service goals with the changes we were implementing to make us a less attractive target.  It was a tricky balance that took a strong partnership across multiple business functions.  

Good risk management doesn’t equate to zero risk.  The best risk management functions embrace the business objectives and collaborate in designing strategies to support those objectives in a manner that minimizes or mitigates risk.

How are you doing as Chief Risk Officer of Your Life, Inc.?  Are you managing the balance between your objectives and risk or are you too risk averse?

People seem to fall into two categories:  those who define themselves by their successes and those who define themselves by their failures.  When we have a setback we tend to ask, what went wrong? When things don’t turn out as planned, we often stop whatever we’re trying to do and shy away from going down that road again – there’s just too much risk as evidenced by firsthand experience. 

But people who are pursing their dreams and have a track record of success will ask, what could I have done differently, what did I learn, and what role did I play in how things turned out?  They then take those learnings and either walk away or make adjustments to reduce the risk of repeating the setback.  Seth Godin wrote a great little book on deciding when to walk away called The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick). 

So, CRO of Your Life, Inc., thinking back on 2010, what were your successes over the past year and what were your failures?  Draw a line and put success at one end and failure at the other and list them out.  I know failure seems like a strong word – think of it as things that didn’t turn out and things you walked away from - non-successes.  

Then look at the middle.  That’s where the goals not met often reside, the dreams not pursued, the abyss that creates a ho-hum life.  It might be the zone of work in progress, but it’s usually the zone of inaction or not enough action.  As the economy continues to create challenges, we don’t want failures so we forego creating success.  Things just sit in the middle until they die on the vine.

Now put on the CEO hat of Your Life, Inc. and think ahead.  What do you want in 2011?  Are you willing to dare to dream, take a risk and try for success knowing that a setback could occur?  Is your Chief Risk Officer on board collaborating to develop strategies that will support your objectives while appropriately managing the risk? Or is your CRO sabotaging your success?

I have a client who desperately wants a different life, but she is frozen in place by fear.  She’s afraid that she won’t be able to have what she really wants for her life and won’t even let herself dream.  She’s afraid she’ll get laid off and not have enough money to live, so she stays in a job she doesn’t like which is sapping her confidence.  This pile-up of fears combined with low self-esteem is so strong that she needs to feel safe and be comforted.  Guess what she does to comfort herself?  Shopping – resulting in credit card debt which is one of the factors feeding her fears keeping her penned into her current situation. 

Why do we do this to ourselves?  She’s not alone.  How many of us engage in self-sabotaging behaviors every day to help us feel safe and keep us on familiar ground?  We desperately want a different life but are unwilling to make foundational changes in thinking and actions that would create change and move us to where we want to go.  Our Chief Risk Officer (and Chief Financial Officer in my client’s case) need to get on board!

What about you?  Are you foregoing your own dreams by being unwilling to go for success?  By being unwilling to challenge and change the limiting beliefs and behaviors which keep you tied to your current situation?  Give me a call when you’re ready to have a talk with your Risk Mangement department and get them on board with supporting your dreams.

Rethink Time Management

Do you often feel there aren’t enough hours in the day between the demands of work and your family and other commitments?  If you find yourself saying yes, expand your thinking about traditional time management and try a different approach next time you’re feeling overwhelmed.


Not having enough time is a challenge that I hear all the time.  Many of us juggle work and family and often get to the point of asking:  when do I get time for me, for my hobbies, and my dreams?  Many people are just in survival mode trying to make it through another day or until the weekend.


Cell phones, email, instant messaging, texting.  There’s a growing expectation that we’ll be instantly available to anyone who wants to get in touch with us at any time.  These constant interruptions and demands on our time are exhausting.  We’re also challenged at work with having to get more done with fewer resources due to budget cuts and layoffs. Carreerbuilder.com found that 78% of the people they surveyed say they’re on the verge of burnout.

In one respect, we’re all the same.  We all have exactly 24 hours in every day.  So why do some people make better use of their time?   Do they have a better tool?  Traditional time management tools can help us schedule our time and prioritize our tasks, but finding new ways to slice and dice time is not always the answer.  What else can help? 

Manage your Energy.  Unlike time, which is finite, you can increase your energy. 

You might be thinking, oh, I’ve heard that before.  Become more physically fit so I can have the stamina to cram more into my day.  When people think about energy, the first thing that comes to mind is physical energy.  But, there are other forms of energy which are just as important.  In fact they’re all interconnected.  Begin to increase one type of energy, and it will carry over into the other areas.

Mental energy engages your mind.  It brings focus.  There are a number of practices that can increase your mental energy such as clearing away clutter and eliminating multi-tasking, which I call activity clutter.  It’s anti-focus. There’s also a strong correlation between physical and mental energy.  If I eat something sugary for breakfast my mind gets fuzzy, and it can take hours for me to be able to focus.  On the other hand, after I get back from a morning walk, my mind is racing with creative thoughts.

Emotional energy is charged or drained by your relationships with others and with yourself.  Do you know an energy vampire?  Hopefully it’s not someone in your family or your boss.  Limit exposure or eliminate these people from your life.  That’s easier said than done because sometimes that energy vampire is you.  I asked a client:  what does your inner voice say to you?  He replied, it says I’m shit.  Yikes! Once he started to practice more positive self-talk, his emotional energy improved which enabled him to make other changes.

Perhaps the most powerful energy is spiritual or purpose energy.  Not religious, but being strongly connected to your purpose, values and passions.  An energy deficit here is often the source of feeling disconnected.  When I get a new coaching client I ask them to make a list of 10 things that make them happy and 10 things that give them pleasure.  This can be very challenging for some people because they’re so out of touch with even this level of connection.

Where to start?  Start working with whatever form of energy you most identify with.  It really doesn’t matter as long as you do start.  You’ll create a ripple effect and other forms of energy will begin to increase.  Once you make some headway, you’ll find that you’ll be making better choices and therefore making better use of the finite amount of time you have every day. 

If you’d like to read more on this and be inspired by some great examples, here are two book recommendations:

This is a quick read on the power of creating positive energy.

The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy
This is a great book with lots of examples of changes to make to increase physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy.
The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal
Call me when you're ready to tackle those energy drains so you can have the time and energy to be your best.

Clear the Clutter

In early December I went to visit my dear friend who lives in sunny San Diego.  As usual we did girlfriend things – went out for dinners, to see a movie, walked on the beach with her dogs.  But most importantly we spent two days cleaning out and organizing her closet. 

My friend’s job requires her to commute to a different city three days a week, so she lives a third of the time out of a suitcase. Also, her weight has fluctuated down then up again over the past two years leaving her with two different wardrobes.  Her closet had become an energy-sucking abyss filled with dry cleaning bags, stuff on the floor, baskets of unfolded laundry, and reminders of her battle with her weight.  She hated going in there and dreaded Monday nights when she had to pack for the week.  It was increasingly a source of stress, and as it got worse and worse, she finally couldn’t deny the impact.

So we dug in.  My mantra for the start of any project is: what would success look and feel like?  Other key questions include:  What did she want her closet to do for her?  What adjectives describe her dream closet?

At the end of two days we had donated all the clothes and jewelry she didn’t want anymore, moved all the clothes she wanted to keep but weren’t in season to another room out of sight/out of mind leaving just the things she currently wore and loved.  This required a lot of decision making.  Some decisions were easy (Do you really need to keep that necklace that you used to wear to work in 1986?) some were harder.  We just kept going back to her answers to those key questions. In the end she got a functional, tidy and pretty closet that even now almost three months later makes her smile.  She’s inspired to declutter other rooms in her house, and eventually we’ll get to the garage.

Hanging on to things that don’t work for you anymore, that you’ve grown out of, grown away from, or evolved beyond drains your energy. Denise Linn, author of  Feng Shui for the Soul, says "clutter-clearing is modern-day alchemy." Every time you are willing to let go and clear out what no longer fits, the rest of your life steps up to the plate and you create space for amazing opportunity, creativity, and serendipity.

Clutter is more than just physical stuff.  What else is cluttering up your life?

Do you have habits that don’t work for you?  You know that vegging in front of the television for hours every night eating junk food isn’t contributing to your fitness goals, but you do it anyway.   Knowing is not the same as doing, and the pull of ingrained bad habits is very strong. 

Are you hanging onto relationships that drain your energy, yet you don’t know how to disengage?  You can’t always walk away from toxic, energy-sucking people; e.g., when they’re your family.  If you have any of these vampires in your life, you need to be really clear about what you’ll tolerate and what you won’t and establish clear boundaries.

Are you carrying around beliefs about yourself that may have served a useful purpose at some time, but that don’t reflect who you are today?  Many of us developed a protective layer and a story as a result of emotional wounds.  This armor helps you feel safe but it also keeps your true self, your essence, trapped behind a wall.  If you’re seeking more meaning in your life and want to be accepted and appreciated for who you are, how can this happen when the real you is locked away?

It can be really scary to let go - to let go of things we spent money on, that we might have loved at one time, that hold memories, that protect us, that help our life feel safe and familiar.  But if you want to make changes, pursue your dreams, open yourself up to new experiences and new relationships, you need to clear away the clutter of what’s not working for you anymore. 

So get that broom out and start sweeping!

Choose Your Attitude

On New Year’s Eve 1984 I drove into Los Angeles and headed over to Marina del Rey to the corporate apartment my employer rented for my first month in a new city.  I moved from Seattle to LA for a job promotion – I was going to work at headquarters.  At first I was very homesick.  I had moved to LA not knowing anyone, and I was so lonely.  I would walk around the Marina at night and cry.  I missed the green of the Northwest, I missed my friends, I missed the feeling of knowing my way around.  Fortunately I found a great apartment a couple of blocks from Redondo Beach.  But I wasn’t happy.  I hated my job, and I hated everything about LA:  the commute, the smog, the long distances, the heat, the people.

When I sat down for my New Year’s Eve ritual one year later I was a miserable piece of work of my own creation. I had spent the past year actively hating my life.  But I had to admit that I had created this life through my choices.  That night I promised myself that if I was still miserable a year from now, I could go home.  But I would only allow myself to do that if I spent the year sincerely trying to enjoy my life.  Then, if I was still unhappy I could move back to Seattle. 

While LA never became ‘home’ for me, I spent seven years there.  I progressed in my career, made some wonderful friends who are still part of my life today, joined the art museum, started going to movies and concerts, and spent a lot of time walking and jogging at the beach.  I love the ocean at dusk – it’s one thing I still miss. 

The turning point for me was standing up and taking responsibility for my life and the path I had chosen.  Finding the good wasn’t easy at first.  It was so much easier to focus on what I didn’t like – I mean it was right there in my face every day.  It took a lot more effort to seek and create circumstances I enjoyed.

That extra effort paid off in spades.  I moved back to Seattle in late 1991 feeling very empowered. I knew, and I still know, that I am capable of building a great life for myself.

Last week we finalized the sale of my mother’s beautiful house, and she moved into a retirement home where the care she needs and a couple of good friends are close at hand.  On the night before she moved she asked, “what if I don’t like it?”  She was understandably scared.  She had lived in her house for 30 years surrounded by space, light, things she loved, and a quiet and secure neighborhood.  She hadn’t lived in a small, shared-wall apartment since her early 20’s. 

What if she doesn’t like it?  Well, so far she hates it.  There is bound to be a settling in period, and it will probably never feel like home to her.  She feels like she’s living in “God’s waiting room,” although it’s the nicest waiting room we were able to find and afford in the area.  But there’s no going back, there’s only moving forward. 

So we had the talk – you can choose to hate it everyday or you can start to look around for things you like.  It will take her some time to turn her attitude around, and I suppose she’ll come to feel it’s a blessing and a curse to have a daughter who’s a coach to remind her that her feelings and attitude are her own choice.

What about you?  How much responsibility are you taking for your circumstances?  Are you choosing to look for the good or are you taking the easy road and only seeing the bad that’s in your face every day?  I would love to be your guide and support partner when you’re ready to begin creating the life you want.

Dare to Dream

What’s your dream job, dream sweetheart, dream house, dream place to live, dream lifestyle? Do those questions excite you or do they scare you?  If you’re excited by the prospect of having something different in your life, yet intimidated to go for it that means you’re dreaming big, and that’s a good thing!  Or do you want to stop reading right now because you’re thinking:  why bother with my dreams, or I don’t have any dreams, or who has time for this.

My wish for you is that you embrace the new year and begin the journey to reconnect with your dreams.  Look forward and listen to the messages sent by your heart to burst out and move towards a life you love.

Is fear of failure stopping you?  Have you tried before, but failed?  We often think if we’ve tried and failed, we shouldn’t try again, and who needs that disappointment.  However, if your dream is still speaking to you, take an honest look at your previous efforts, accept your learnings from the past, but leave the baggage.  If at first you don’t succeed, figure out what to do different and try, try again.

One common obstacle is getting bogged down because you can’t figure out ‘how.’  So, don’t think about things from start to finish, try the reverse. Sit quietly and imagine what you will feel when you accomplish your dream.  What will be different in your life and what will be different in the world?  Get really specific and detailed with this description.  You might even do some type of dream board with pictures of your dream.  Then start asking yourself questions.  Once you get a list of questions, you can begin to investigate the answers.  If your dream is to live six months of the year in Paris, what type of job would you need to be able to do that?  How much money would you need?  I mean, do you even speak French? 

Make a project out of it even if it turns out to be a multi-year project. Staying put when it’s part of your bigger plan can change your whole perspective on your current situation.  Identify things you can do today to move towards your dream.  Do your Paris dreams include shopping for food in the outdoor markets?  Go to the local farmers markets and take a French cooking class.  For your next vacation, rent an apartment in Paris and live like a local for two weeks.  Once you’re in motion, it’s easier to keep going. I love the story of John Grisham.  He was a practicing attorney who finished his first two novels, A Time to Kill and The Firm, by getting up early and writing for one hour every day.

Don’t feel like you have to go it alone.   Find somebody who has achieved what you dream of.  Ask them what they did first, and get some tips on how to get started.  Also consider using a life coach like me.  Together we’ll examine why you can’t get moving on a particular area of your life and uncover what’s holding you back.

Whatever happens, you will achieve some kind of a result, even if it’s not the result you were expecting.  Sometimes our dreams come true in unexpected ways.

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Driving Force

Last week on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, there was an interview with Sting that struck a chord with me.  Jon asked Sting about the wide variety of musical genres that he works with implying that he is kind of all over the place.  Sting replied that he liked experimenting with different things to see how they’ll turn out.  He only likes about 1 out of every 10 attempts, but that’s OK because he’s driven by curiosity.

Driven by curiosity.  What a wonderful way to be.  And it fits when you look back on Sting’s career.  Someone else who is driven by achievement or perfection might find his approach frustrating. It’s all about your attitude.  The lens through which you view your current situation depends a lot on what motivates you, and what motivates you influences how you view your current situation.  It works both ways.

When there’s an underlying driving force, you feel pulled forward versus the feeling of pushing sand up a hill that you get when you’re working outside or against what motivates you. The specific circumstances become secondary.  If you’re motivated by learning, you can follow that urge in all aspects of your life – at work, at home, in your hobbies, with your family.  However, if you have a job where you’re not learning and you don’t create another outlet to express that part of yourself, you’ll feel bored, disconnected, frustrated, and bitter. 

Money is a surface-level motivation and it’s just not enough.  Dig deeper and you’ll find a motivator that speaks to who you at the core as a person.

I’m motivated by self-expression.  When I took up ballroom dancing I didn’t have any illusions about becoming a great or even good dancer.  What I enjoyed was learning a wide range of ballroom and Latin dances and then exploring the character of each dance trying to bring forward those aspects of myself.  It sometimes took some digging, but it was part of the fun for me.

So, what drives you?  What motivates you?  Is it:  adventure, discovery, curiosity, achievement, having an impact, solving a problem, bringing order to chaos, security, creating, inspiring, teaching? 

I have a client who is a senior manager for a large company.  After many years successfully managing her line of business, she was offered an opportunity to join a team to develop a new system to replace the core infrastructure of her company.  It was a prestigious position.  They wanted an ‘A’ team, and she would be representing the core business stakeholders’ interests on the ‘it’ program. She was ready for a change and was passionate that the new system meet the needs of her internal clients. After the initial learning period she didn’t like her job but couldn’t figure out why. She was frustrated and worse still, she was losing favor with her management.

We started at square one:  what are you motivated by – what drives you. Working together we determined she's motivated by achievement.  She’s a ‘get it done’ person with a really strong sense of responsibility and the discipline to go with it.  It's been a key contributor to her successful career which started in sales.  But she soon discovered that activities like sitting in 4 hour roundtable status meetings drove her nuts and brought out the worst aspects of her ‘get it done’ drive.  Turns out that working on a job where ‘done’ was five years away, regardless of the money and prestige, was not the job for her.  Once she recognized this disconnect, we developed coping strategies for those situations she found particularly frustrating, and she started looking for another job inside her company.  She’s now in a different position which she is crafting around her motivations and strengths.

Understanding what drives you, what pulls you forward, is a great first step in creating a life you love.  I use an assessment to provide a 10,000 foot view, and it’s a great tool to begin the discovery process.  What would your assessment reveal about you and what could you do with that information?  If you’d like to find out, call me.