Back To Basics

Time to read: Short and immediately actionable

Eat your vegetables!

One of my coaching groups was talking about stress this morning. As the group outlined the strategies they use to manage stress and regulate mood, our 90-minute call sent us right back to the basics.

It's so easy to forget that managing stress is fundamentally a physical exercise. Meaning, it's about your body and soothing your nervous system. The list of strategies we created was so good, I wanted to share them with you.

You won't be surprised. You will be reminded of what's actually effective to manage stress:

• Exercise (move your body!)
• A healthy diet (eat your veggies!)
• Sleep (rest and recover!)
• Meditation (so soothing for the nervous system!)
• Focus on process over outcome (become unattached!)
• Know what is yours to own and what is not (discern and let things go!)

It's that simple. Move your body and eat vegetables. Oh, and sleep. Doesn't it seem like these are the answers to everything?

Have a great time playing with these this weekend!

Invite your friends to join for the fun weekly challenge that will run this summer (aka: this newsletter in challenge form). They can join the summer challenge by signing up for this newsletter here.

Do You Feel Free Or Like A Hostage?

Time to read: So short and so relevant

FREE!

When you look around your career, do you feel free or do you feel like a hostage? As you assess this question, here are some hints:

Hostage:

• Your happiness and fulfillment are tied to (fill in the blank), your compensation, performance appraisal, raise, promotions, kudos from your boss. If you feel like you're constantly chasing the cookie, then you're trapped on a hamster wheel you feel you can't stop.
• You constantly think about making a change but never do.
• You feel like the risks of change (quitting your job, changing your perspective, seeing a therapist or coach) are more terrifying than putting up with the way things are.
• You wrestle with the same stress, decision point, or situation on repeat.

Free:

• You enjoy what you do (most days) and feel like you make a difference, to your coworkers, company, those you serve.
• You know that no matter the circumstances, you choose every day to be wherever you are.
• You feel like your work uses the best parts of you. You may be exhausted sometimes, and it's the "well used" kind of exhausted.
• Your work supports and balances well with the other parts of your life...family, free time, hobbies, health, rest.
• The balance of your life feels right to you. Even if that means you work 80 hours a week or you have all the free time in the world.

What I want for each of you is to feel free. Free doesn't mean nothing but free time or no work. It means that you feel like you have agency to craft your days through the lens of your priorities, style, and desires.

This summer, this newsletter is going to be a short and easy weekly challenge to help you feel more free. You don't have to sign up. You already are.

Invite your friends. They can join the summer challenge by signing up for my newsletter here.

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For Those Of You Who Are Burned Out, Stressed Out, And Tired

Time to read: One little minute or less

When you are stressed out, stuck, frustrated, maybe even angry, working crazy hours, falling into bed exhausted, feeling unmotivated or just plain burned out, what do you do?

As a first step, assess, what is the structure of your situation?

Within every circumstance, structural issues contribute to the experience you are having. Here is what I mean:

• You operate within a matrixed reporting structure with many leaders giving direction. This creates confusion and makes determining priorities hard if not impossible.
• Your role serves multiple stakeholders who have no visiblity to each other. They all believe they are the only one pulling on your time and talent.
• Your industry has seasonal pushes, like tax time, a semester, or summer programming that pre-determine your annual schedule.
• Your role is global so your colleagues are in Asia which means early morning meetings.

The bad news is that you have little influence over these structural issues. Of course you can advocate for changes, and if you put all your energy into trying to change the macro structures, you will deplete yourself.

The good news is that you have little influence over these structural issues. This means that you DO have agency over how you navigate a tricky structure, how you operate day-to-day, the ways you care for yourself, and frankly to decide if this structure is something you can tolerate, or not.

You always have choices.

It's not the structure that exhausts you. It's fighting the structure that exhausts you. Separate out the structural issues then look for places to claim your agency and power. You will find yourself with more energy and less stress.

I hope this helps!

A Fabulous Client Story With A Lesson For YOU

Time to read: One little minute or less

A photo I like: Not worrying if the photo fits this newsletter = EASY

A client arrived at her coaching call this week bursting with excitement. She had been stuck on a BIG THING for years and in our last call I asked her, "what if there was an easy path through?"

The BIG THING was too big to tackle right away so she decided to practice making things easy on smaller things. Here's what she did and what happened when she asked herself, "what would make this easy?"

• She was stressed about saving money and did the easiest thing and opened a checking account. She adopted "save first." The whole process took two minutes, and she now feels powerful around her finances.
• She's a great cook and for a few weeks just didn't feel like cooking. Instead of the usual guilt and hand-wringing around why, she simply pulled up her 5 easiest recipes and ate them for 4 weeks. This freed her to put energy and time toward an exciting personal goal.

AND....as a result of building an easy muscle, she had a giant ah-ha around the BIG THING and is ready to find the easy way to that, too.

Her story was so inspiring, I asked for permission to share it with you.

Then reach out and tell me all about it. I always love to hear from you.

So, ask yourself about any situation that feels stressful or stuck in your life, "what would make this easy?"

Then reach out and tell me all about it. I always love to hear from you.

A Quick Challenge For Spring

Time to read: 10 seconds

This was, like, 2 weeks ago

Today is another short one because it's spring! Use the extra minute to step outside, open a window, smell the sunshine!

Spring makes me think of newness, refreshing, and starting again.

So, here's your challenge: Today, perhaps even this minute, do something new. It can be big (like sign up for a drum line class or that writing circle you've wanted to join) or something small (like sort your pens and get rid of ones you don't like).

Bring to your world the energy of spring!

I'd love to hear what you do. Reach out anytime.

I Learned An Important Lesson For You

Time to read: 1 min, 25 seconds

When the cat's away, the mouse gets tattoos.

Last week, my entire family was gone. One child is away at college, and my husband and other child were chowing their way through the Pacific Northwest on a boy's spring break trip.

I was home alone.

I had no clients, no other work and only a few obligations. As I settled into house projects and time with friends I realized, it's the first time in 20 years that I have had more than a few hours to myself, free of any obligations to others or any caretaking other than our pets. This was a week to myself in my own life, so not on vacation or at a training or teaching, speaking, or coaching out of town. 20 years!

The week was an incredible reconnection to who I am on my own, without the roles I play or the services I provide to others. I didn't know to miss the aspects of myself that haven't had a chance because I'm so full with everything and everybody.

I love my everything and everybody. I love coaching. I love my family. And it was eye-opening to see all the parts of me who are there, just beneath the surface, ready to play.

I didn't do anything special or extraordinary. I relished my life. House. Friends. Neighborhood. Pets. It was more nourishing than a week or two of vacation.

So what does this have to do with you?

• Your life, as it is now, is filled with fun and joy and things you love. Find the space to see and enjoy the things that are already there.
• More of you is available, right beneath the surface of the roles you play and the people you care about and for. Make room for you.
• Get your people out, even for a day or 2, so you have some space to breathe and connect to YOU.

If you're wondering, I was happy when my people returned. It's good without them. It's also good with them.

Practices That Change The World #10 - Part 2

Time to read: 55 seconds

Remember last week? Me yelling at the hotel clerk? Last week was Part 1: Recover. This is Part 2 of what to do when you've behaved in ways you're not proud of.

REPAIR

First let me say that humans are messy. That means that sometimes, other people will be messy. Other times, you will be messy, confused, hurt, angry, tired, frustrated, and you will lose your abilty to keep your confusion/anger/hurt /tired/frustration under wraps.

So, in any relationship, whether with a friend, or even in the case of a hotel clerk, REPAIR is crucial. To repair requires compassion, grace, forgiveness and a commitment to understanding that humans are messy, including yourself.

The temptation is to judge, hold impossibly high standards and walk away, writing the other person off as wrong, annoying, or as someone who deserved it. This is not a great framework for living in a world filled with other people.

I invite you to consider the power of repair....for what it does for you and for the other person.

Here's how repair works in the form of an apology.

An apology requires you to take ownership for yourself (if you are the one apologizing) and to receive the apology (if you are the one, well, receiving the apology).

Here is an ineffective apology:

Me: "Sorry I yelled. I just wanted you to not charge me for the room tonight (blame). I've had a hard week (justification)."

Hotel Clerk: Uh....um....

Let's try that again with an effective apology.

Me: I'm sorry I yelled at you.""

Hotel Clerk: "It's ok." (Notice the desire to make everything ok as quickly as possible except it's not actually ok because I haven't yet taken ownership.)

Me: "Actually, it's not ok. Please let me apologize. My behavior was out of line. You were doing your job and did not deserve to be treated like that. I'm sorry."

Hotel Clerk: "Thank you for apologizing. That isn't the worst thing that's going to happen to me today."

Me: "I'm sorry to hear that. It should be."

See? A win for self-compassion. Connection made. Relationship restored.

You are not expected to be perfect. You will mess up. You will hurt people. You will be messy. Welcome to being human.

P.S. If you love this newsletter, your friends and colleagues will, too. Anyone can sign up here.

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