Living With Chaos: Who Are You?

Time to read: 24 seconds

More carnival glass!

Welcome to week 10 of Living with Chaos. Our final week! It's been fun romping through chaos with you. The romping is fun. The chaos, not fun.

Chaos shows you who you are. If you love the way you show up when stuff gets real, great. Keep going. If you don't, think about who you want to be and how to get there.

Maybe you hide. Or flail about like a headless chicken. Or become hard and controlling. All of these seem like natural responses to chaos. Without judgment, ask yourself: Is the way I am responding useful? to me? to others? to the situation?

If it's not, time to do some work. Nothing like chaos to show you who you really are.

If you have unanswered questions about living with chaos, I always love to hear from you. Email me. I enjoy a good challenge and will gladly turn your questions into future newsletters.

Thanks for being part of this merry little band of corporate rebels.

P.P.S. If you love this newsletter, please share it with your colleagues. They can sign up here.

Living With Chaos: Opportunity!

Time to read: 41 seconds

Carnival glass. So pretty.

Welcome to week 9 of Living with Chaos. Invite your friends to join here.

We're heading into the homestretch of this series about Living with Chaos. Next week is our last one.

Today: there is an opportunity in chaos. Those opportunities might look like this:

1. In a corporate restructuring, people leave and move around. Positions open, informal opportunities to mentor become obvious, new projects become available.
2. When someone is in the hospital, you have the opportunity to spend time with them or find ways to show you care that weren't obvious in daily life.
3. When things are hard for any number of reasons, it's an opportunity to grow your resilience, see help you didn't notice before, become humble (my favorite), or learn to quiet your mind and tend to your emotions.

If you keep your lens wide, you will see places to step in, or you will head down an unexpected path. Exciting things can happen in those unexpected places.

Living With Chaos: Awesome!

Time to read: 26 seconds

Made this for a woman who was a music teacher

Welcome to week 8 of Living with Chaos. Invite your friends to join here.

Today is nice and short.

One of my clients was worrying about something that hadn't happened. (Like all worries.) Anyway, I said to her, "Instead of worrying about the awful future that hasn't happened, what if you just let things be awesome now?"

Today's message: let it be awesome.

Look around your life for the things that are working. When you're living in chaos, the temptation is to focus only on the things that feel broken, out of control, and painful. You lose your job, and your kids are hilarious. You hate your boss, and daffodils are coming up. A parent is sick, and you love walking your dog.

The point here isn't to ignore the hard things. It's to balance them with awesome so that you are able to LIVE in chaos.

I hope this helps.

P.S. If you want a custom charm bracelet, email me here.

I LOVE making them for people. They make great gifts!