A Gift to You: Pure, Simple Joy

Time to read: 10 seconds

I started drawing a few months ago for the first time in my life. A short drawing class turned on something I didn't know was there. When I show people my work, they make suggestions like, "you should sell it!"

Drawing calms me. It feeds my creativity. It gives me something to give away (when I want to). Learning to draw taught me to see in new ways. Sometimes, you do something simply because it feeds you or you enjoy it. Simple as that. You don't have to make everything you do into SOMETHING.

Your enjoyment is value enough.

What's your pure, simple joy?

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From Career Despair to Wild Success

Time to read: 1.25 minutes

Katie's portrait of my essential worker

Photographer, Katie Howie, watched the bottom drop out of her portrait business during the stay-at-home order. As she watched her life's work disappear overnight, she sank into depression and worry. She told me, "I was worried out of my mind for everyone and everything. I cried daily... Things felt bleak."

Katie is a former neighbor and our family's beloved photographer. In March, she texted me to ask if I knew any essential workers. She had started a project called, "By a Thread: Pandemic Portraits" to document essential workers at their homes. Turns out, I did know an essential worker. My 15-year-old son works as a cashier in a grocery store.

Katie said she didn't want to do what other portrait photographers were doing so she waited. She said, "For about a month, I waited for inspiration. And then, it was like lightning. My inspiration came so fast it was crazy."

Since she started By a Thread, Katie has done 60 profiles and unexpectedly and amazingly, her project is featured in Minnesota Monthly's July/August issue. (See the article here.) She's considering public shows and a book. The project (and Katie's career) has taken on a life of its own.

I asked for Katie's permission to share this story with you, because it's a story of how despair led to creativity. How waiting and listening led to inspiration, and how a career took off without a plan.

I heard from some of you that you're having a hard time connecting to the meaning of what you do. Katie is the perfect example of how finding your purpose works.

She sat with her despair. She allowed her personal pain and worry to move her and inspire her to act. She started something with no idea where it would lead. She leaned into her unique gifts and talents. She took the next step and the next and now By a Thread has a huge impact.

The world of work is challenging right now. And, the creative possibilities are endless.

What might become true for you with a little waiting, listening and leaning into your unique gifts and talents?

With love,

Christina

P.S. Would it be fun to find some inspiration of your own this summer? The Rebels at Home Challenge is 8 days of short (3 minutes) video challenges designed to inspire and uplift you so you can relieve stress and create new opportunities in this strange and challenging situation. Sign up here to receive Day 1.

How to Get Out of Exhaustion and Overwhelm

Time to read: Less than one minute and fifteen seconds

Hello Rebels,

It's 6:00 am. Your feet are barely on the floor, and you're already behind. You stayed up after your children's bedtime to empty your stuffed inbox and get ahead on that presentation you couldn't finish during your back-to-back day. Then there is summer scheduling, end of school activities, and picking up the slack while your colleagues take spring vacation. Remember exercise? Ha!

You're exhausted before you've started, and although some days are more packed than others, they all mush together in one long string of busy-ness.

Feel familiar?

You think that if you find the right productivity strategy, you'll be able to fix this. You get creative with your company's insistence that you "do more with less." You only check email once or twice a day. You focus on the three most important things you need to get done. These strategies work to some extent, and nothing seems to change.

I love productivity tips as much as the next busy person. And, organizing your desk differently or making prioritized lists is only going to get you so far.

What will actually get you out of exhaustion and overwhelm, is a change in you.

To help you experiment with this idea, I turned to a process I use in my own life. I have this amazing set of cards full of empowering choices and beliefs. I pull one every day to anchor how I will be with whatever is happening that day.

Today, I pulled three cards for you. (See the photo above.) Your three cards are:

Willingness: This is one of my favorites. You have to be willing to do things differently today. To slow down. To stop worrying. To get into action. Even when things suck, we're often not actually willing to change it.

I am creative: Where can you lean into your wild creativity to bring more joy, new solutions, or less stress to your work?

I choose trust: I pull a card everyday, and I seriously trust 4 out of 5 times. Seems like this one might be kind of important. Where do you not trust yourself? Or others? Where can you lean into more trust to bring ease to your work and relationships?

Pick one of these cards and use it to navigate your day. Then hit reply to this email and tell me what happens.

I always love to hear from you.

With rebel love,

Christina

P.S. Please share these cards with a friend or colleague who needs a little more trust, creativity or willingness. They can join our merry band of rebels here.

Let your rebel flag fly AND succeed in a corporate job. In fact, it's vital!

Estimated read time: 2.5 - 3 minutes depending on your reading speed

The Muppet Yip-Yips can make you successful at work, too!

Let's jump right into a story this week about the amazing results you get when you let your unique, rebel flag fly at the office.

Meet Matt. (Matt is my client's REAL name. Matt said this morning, "I’m happy to hear my story is helpful for others" and is ready to "take the plunge" to share it.)

Matt didn't get to pick me as his coach. I was hired by his company (a large, multi-national financial firm) to coach high potential managers, and the HR team matched us up. Matt's management felt that things were crunchy with his team. The ways he was interacting in meetings wasn't always, shall we say, productive. Shared anxiety was affecting his team's performance.

As Matt and I started working together, it became clear that much of the anxiety was stemming from him. (Yup. He's the leader. Makes sense.) We quickly uncovered three things:

1. He is deeply creative and has an elephant's brain. It's a groovy circus in there - full of connections, hilarious metaphors, and a steel trap memory.
2. He believed that only a buttoned up, carefully controlled version of himself was going to succeed as a corporate leader. He literally visualized a wall on his commute to work where he turned off big parts of his identity in order to become the person he thought would be effective at the office.
3. He ran his life on a tight timetable and set of expectations that was making Matt all work and killing his sense of fun.

Our work was clear: expose the beliefs that were holding him back, uncover the amazing way he already operates, leverage those funky, rebel-y mental processes to bring him success at work, get clear about what he wants in all areas of his life, and teach him how to take care of himself.

If anyone had been a fly on the wall in our coaching sessions, they would have wondered what the heck we were doing. We talked about the ninja on his shoulder, used Sesame Street as a point of reference (yep, the alien Yip Yips), and cleaned out the metaphorical clutter in the attic of his brain. He did homework: meditation, turned off all of his clocks for a weekend to enable him to experience his own pace, and experimented with ways to open up at work. We had a blast.

At the end of 6 months, Matt had worked diligently in coaching to grow himself and created real, practical results for himself and his team. He quelled the anxiety. He lost weight. His team got happy and productive. (In our final status meeting, his boss commended the amazing change in Matt and his employees.) His retention was secured. He started exercising and hosted grilled cheese lunches for his group at his desk. He took walks during the day when he needed to clear his mind. And, (I LOVE this part), he went to a concert with his new open attitude and met the love of his life. They got married a year later. His success has led him to be courted for a new challenging assignment full of interesting risk and potential. Giving himself permission to be his full self created real, lasting, tangible results.

I asked Matt to comment on this story and here's what he said today:

"One thing that came to mind in reflecting on our time together...was the magnitude of the positive impact you had on my life centered around you guiding me on how to get out of my own way. I had and others had 'everything necessary to be successful.' (I remember you repeating this a number of times in our sessions). You cheered me on as I tackled that mental clutter, associated fear and uncomfortableness with the 'unknown and hard to describe,' and helped me realize the value in being my genuine self (and how much easier and fun it was to be)."

I can't make this stuff up, Christina. When a client does something incredible for themselves, I still shout with amazement from the rooftops, "this shit really works!" And it sticks. Matt and I worked together years ago, and the changes he created are still true today.

You deserve to be happy at work. You deserve to understand the fun and funky ways you operate so you can leverage them for your success. You deserve to feel like what you do every day matters and brings you a sense of meaning and joy. (Ok, most days. Some days are still gonna suck. Not gonna lie.) You deserve to let your rebel flag fly loud and proud.

Let's get your rebel flag in the air and get you happy at work. Hop on the phone with me for 30 minutes. We'll strategize your personal situation and transform the way you're thinking about your leadership and your work. Email me at christina@boydsmithcoaching.com to set up a time to talk.

Seriously, this shit really works. (I hope my mother-in-law doesn't read this. I promise I don't teach my kids the "s" word.)

Christina

P.S. Please forward this email to anyone you think could use some support or consider a session for one of your employees. Being fully yourself is vital to your success. P.P.S. If you know someone who would like to receive this newsletter, they can sign-up for The Corporate Rebel Video Podcast and Newsletter HERE.