One Word That Will Bring You Peace And Calm

Time to read: 42 seconds

Life and work change. You have a period of stability then things change again. Every day, I hear from people about layoffs, new babies, new bosses, retirement, sudden illness, reorganizations, and of course the stress of everything happening in our world right now.

I've thought a lot recently about what brings peace and calm. The best answer I've found is one word:

Complexity

When you grip the status quo ("But I loved my old boss") or cling to the one way something must be ("I am someone who works. No way I'm retiring.") you stay stuck, limit your options, and find yourself standing rigidly in one corner, certain that you're right.

The irony is that holding complexity helps you loosen your grip, and find ease in curiosity and understanding. Peace comes from being able to see how two contradictory things can be true at the same time.

When you can see that, all kinds of new possibilities open up.

Happy fall!

Challenge #1: Starting With Ease

Time to read: 45 seconds to read. Doing this challenge will give you time

Summer ease!

Welcome to the first day of your summer challenge!

Each week, an easy challenge will arrive in your inbox. Each activity/change/new perspective will be easy to implement alongside your regular life, meaning you don't have to buy special equipment or add to your mental load.

You may already be doing some of the things. Some may be new. You may choose to do some and not others. You might do some for one day and repeat others until they integrate into habits.

I encourage you to do as many as you can to get the most out of this experience. You have a week to practice and some will stick with you all summer and perhaps forever.

Many small shifts over the course of the summer will add up to profound change - healthier habits, feeling good in your body, and a calmer mind.

So, here is your first challenge.

This week, make one thing easy each day. Watch for something in your day that feels hard...scheduling something, a conversation with a colleague, getting home on time. (Don't start with something big like dating or asking for a raise, unless, of course, you can easily make those things easy.)

Simply look at the situation and ask yourself: What would make this easy? Then do that. Maybe pick up the phone. Maybe cancel the meeting. Maybe simply put things down until tomorrow and leave. (Hint: Sometimes the easy thing is to do nothing. I find that when I wait, often things become easy on their own. That's legit.)

So, a challenge that is all about ease and calm in your life starts with the practice of EASE. Ease is the foundation. You will practice it this week and then ease will be the lens for every challenge this summer.

Please invite your friends and colleagues to join you. All they have to do is sign up for this newsletter to be part of the fun. They can sign up here.

If you have something you'd like me to address in this challenge, please reach out. Tell me the thing you'd like to shift, and I'll add a challenge tailored for you (and you can bet others need it, too!).

This Is What Easy Looks Like!

Time to read: 53.57 seconds on my stopwatch

A client, we'll call her Susie,* came to me frustrated and sad. It had been 9 months since she left her job during Covid. She needed a break. One month, became two which became nine. She started to worry that she wouldn't find the right fit or that she'd have to go back to the unsatisfying work she was doing before. She was apathetic and filled with self-doubt.

Job searching is brutal, especially if you are changing fields or changing careers. Uncertainty does a number on your self-confidence.

In years of experience as a coach, I know that the path to finding a job is a magical combination of working on yourself and taking strategic steps that bring positive energy to the search. Susie and I worked on her self-doubt and motivation. She resolved some tired old stories that were not serving her.

Susie called me excited last week. She landed a thrilling new job that starts right away. The role is a perfect fit. Susie loves the industry, sees a future for herself and said, "My confidence is back!"

How did she get this job? Did it come from struggle and worry and hard work?

Nope. She sent an email. One email to someone she had spoken to a few years ago. He was happy to hear from her, told her of an opening in the company, she applied and was hired. The whole process was easy.

When I asked her what she learned from this experience she said, "I can trust easy things. Ease is real."

There it is. Ease is real. I see it all the time. Clients struggle and worry and wring their hands until a magical moment happens when the perfect job and the perfect candidate find each other. When that happens, everyone wins.

Ease is real, and it's not just for job hunting. Ponder that concept.

If you have a friend who is job hunting, contemplating a career change or simply needs some ease in their life, please forward this artcile to them. They can sign up for my newsletter here.

Struggle vs. Ease... Which Do You Choose?

Time to read: 1 minute, 35 seconds

Let's all move into Hotel Ease!

Hi Rebels!

This week, I had a fun email exchange with one of your sister rebels who asked me about the time it takes to write these newsletters. She writes a blog and said it sometimes takes her 10-12 hours to produce a blog post and that "writing is hard work." That got me thinking about all the things you do every day that feel like "hard work."

I had to really think about that before I replied.

1. Because I wanted to say something useful.
2. Because over the years, I have developed a very different relationship with writing and work.

For years, I was mired in a story that work was hard and required struggle. Think: No pain, no gain.

To produce a dissertation, I became unreliable to my friends, unavailable to my partner, and worked many, many hours because I believed "hard work" was the only thing that would get me that darn PhD.

In my corporate job, I believed that long hours and "hard" work made me successful and got me recognized as a top performer. Toward the end of my time at my corporate job, I was working late at night, struggling to keep up with email, and working "hard" while sacrificing time with my family and frankly, my sanity.

The truth is... this "hard" work got me a PhD and did get me recognized as a top performer. And, there were huge costs associated with my choice to see work as "hard" and as a "struggle."

A couple of years ago, I decided to change my perspective toward work, and it has made all the difference. Here's what I said (among other things, like it takes me 20-30 minutes to write a newsletter) in the email exchange. I share this because I'd love for you to be able to shift from "hard" to "ease."

"I hold writing these newsletters (like I hold most things) as fun and easy. It’s part of my personal practices to let go of struggle so I practice ease (not struggle) with things like my newsletter. Holding it with ease liberates the process to take less time and actually be easeful. Sometimes, I don’t have a clue as to what to write, and then it takes a little longer."

Think about a place in your life where you believe "hard work" and struggle are the key to your success. Where can you breathe ease into the process. (Notice, I'm not saying "easy." Even ease has elements of challenge. The question is, what would it be like to drop the struggle and do the same work with ease?)

Give it a try then write and tell me all about it. I love hearing from you.

With rebel love,

Christina

P.S. If you love this newsletter, please share it with your friends and colleagues. The more, the merrier. Just forward it to them. They can join us here.