I just got back from Trader Joe’s and, man, that place stresses me out. Between the too-crowded aisles and the oblivious shoppers (everyone except for me of course), the second I step into one of these stores I find myself immediately tensing up. As the Trader Joe’s Trauma starts to take hold I begin feeling unfocused and anxious. As a result I unconsciously go down the same aisles multiple times, find myself backtracking constantly and can’t seem to let go of that feeling that I have clearly forgotten something. And although I probably shouldn’t be admitting this, at times the strain has gotten so great that I have even been known to GROWL!

OK, so maybe Traders Joe’s doesn’t push your buttons. Perhaps it’s driving in rush-hour traffic, dealing with a challenging boss, or negotiating bedtime with the kids that sets your heart pumping and your brow furrowing.  The fact remains, unless you’re living in a cave somewhere chanting “OM” while seeing through your third eye, most of us have something, or MANY somethings (I sure know I do) that cause us to feel stressed on an almost daily basis.  So, if you take this kind of stress as an inevitability, which I have at this stage of my evolution, then what’s next?

Well just because life isn’t going to be stress-free, at least not this one anyway, that doesn’t mean we have to live our lives feeling like humans on a hamster wheel.  Each one of us has our own personal treasure-trove of tools that can help us stop the madness, mitigate the constant pressure and counterbalance the effects of those regular stressors. We all have at least a handful of activities and practices, that when we are engaged in doing them, we feel a sense of peace and presence.  For me I feel it most when I’m holding a baby or I’m absorbed in a great conversation with a close friend. For you it might be when you are going for a run, eating a delicious meal or reading a good book. The point is, we each can benefit from our own custom-designed reservoir of replenishing resources by identifying those experiences that bring us joy and rejuvenation and then actually giving ourselves permission to do them without guilt or admonishment on a regular basis.

PRACTICAL PRACTICE

I invite you to take a few moments to write a list of five to ten activities or practices that bring you joy and nourishment.  Then, for the next month, I offer that you give yourself the permission to engage wholeheartedly in at least ONE of those experiences per day.

Almost every day we get these great ideas on how we can improve our lives, how to feel happier, healthier and more financially secure. Sometimes these ideas come from external sources such as a self-help expert, treasured loved one or respected colleague. We take in their offerings and say such things as, “Wow, that sounds great, I would love to meet your financial planner/yoga teacher/coach/dietitian/personal trainer”–feel free to fill in the blank for yourself. Other times, the message might come from within, sounding something like, “I would love to train for a 5K” or my personal favorite, “I wish I would eat more vegetables.” In fact, there exists no shortage of ideas that if employed could improve our lives, many of which we have heard ad infinitum, and yet when it comes down to actually engaging in these activities this is where our enthusiasm often wanes. The odds are we could each make a list at least a page long identifying all the behavior changes we would like to make or may have even committed to making in the past but still haven’t adopted.

So what is the secret magic ingredient that will propel us from having an idea to taking action? What will motivate us from just thinking to actually doing? I’m afraid I have to let you know the truth–there is no secret magic ingredient, no silver bullet, so quick fix. Believe me, if there was a pill that would automatically put vegetables on my plate and then eventually in my mouth three times a day I would take it, but alas, no pill exists, at least not yet. And there isn’t a pill to get you out jogging or to make you start that low carb diet either. The reality of the matter is, engaging in new behaviors is challenging. In fact, it is one of the most challenging things we can do and yet so often when we don’t succeed in the way we envisioned we beat ourselves up. Instead of celebrating ourselves in our efforts and encouraging continued attempts we often resort to calling ourselves unsupportive names like “lazy”, “procrastinator,” and “weak-willed,” that more often than not undermines our motivation to try again. Talk about kicking a woman when she’s down!

Alternatively, there are many ways in which we can create an environment that supports us in our efforts for change, not the least of which is using words of encouragement such as “good for me” and “way to try something new” throughout our experience. Additionally, scientists recommend setting up systems of rewards and repetitions around the new behavior that will eventually lead to greater ease in engaging in the activity. For me I like to repeat a motto a heard a few years back and that is, “Think big, start small, take action.” This allows me to honor even the baby-est of steps as I move forward towards my goal of actually getting more veggies in my belly.

PRACTICAL PRACTICE

In honor of taking first steps this month, I thought I would start with focusing on a habit I know many of us would like to change and that is learning how we can actually get those items done on our  “to do” lists that never seem to budge. For the next month I invite you to identify those items on your “to do” list (and any other items you wish) and apply the following SMARTS steps.

Specific–Make sure the “to do” item is as specific as possible. I will eat one serving of vegetable per day for three weeks.

Measurable–Make sure you can measure if the item is completed so that you can celebrate your accomplishment. By the end of the day, if I ate a vegetable, I know I have accomplished my goal.

Actionable–Make sure you aren’t just thinking about the goal but have made a plan of action to do it. I am not just thinking about making a plan to eat vegetables, I have made an actual action plan.

Realistic–Make sure your goal is realistic. It would not be realistic for me to go from no vegetables in my diet to having five servings per day but one serving seems realistic.

Time-bound or Time-Specific–Make sure you set an end date if your “to do” is an ongoing practice or a specific date if it’s a one-time activity. Setting my goal for three weeks seems a lot less daunting and doable than if I said “every day for the rest of my life.”

Support–Make sure you engage the support of other people to help you reach your goal. Even declaring my intention to other people to eat one serving of vegetables per day makes me more accountable to carry through, as well as it provides me with emotional support and encouragement that is invaluable to effect change in our lives.

BY STARTING with a small step of completing those nagging “to do” items you will build the skills and foundation for creating future long-lasting positive changes in your life.

Now I best be off so I can stock my kitchen with all those vegetables I plan to eat.  Happy SMARTS planning yourself!

I have a weekly goal to post on my Blog every Wednesday. It’s part of a series of rituals I complete once a week which includes participating in an RA  online community, posting on Craigslist and updating my Blog. It’s important to me and my business that I maintain each part of the ritual, especially the Blog posting part. Except TODAY!

Today, I am going to give myself permission to take the day off from this particular part of the ritual. It is a gift I am going to give myself because 1) I deserve it 2) the world will not collapse (at least I am counting on that) 3) sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves, our families, our businesses is to let ourselves off the hook.

So here I am…and there I go!

In October 2008 I sat coughing in the San Francisco Airport waiting for a friend to pick me up and deliver me home. I had gotten a cold back East where I was speaking at a conference and was now feeling miserable. But truth be told, it wasn’t just the sniffely sneezies that were getting the best of me, it was sitting next to an armrest-hogger on the plane and lugging my suitcase into crowded bathroom stalls and not being able to look forward to the loving embrace of a special someone waiting for me at baggage claim–these discomforts all combined to point out to me the real source of my unrest. The long and short of it was, I was feeling sick and tired of being a solo traveler, literally and figuratively, and this trip was adding yet another reminder of my desire to share my journey and my baggage (pun definitely intended) with someone I love.

As a coach, I am of course familiar with the practice of setting intentions and writing them down as a way of helping you reach your goals. In fact, I give entire workshops based on this two-step process.  I have applied this strategy to my business and helped clients utilize it to reach their own goals and yet, when it came to my own soulmate-searching, I gave it a miss. Surely the process of finding a life-partner became too complex for such a simple exercise, I thought. But there I sat at SFO with time of my hands and yearning in my heart so I began making my list of all I wished for in a life-partner.  In the end they amounted to 46 desirables in all!  When I tell this story, people are routinely shocked by the size of that list.  In response I like to quote Lily Tomlin, “I always wanted to be somebody.  I guess I should have been more specific.”  So let’s just say, after years of being what appeared to be too general, I decided to get quite specific.

Three weeks later, after finding each other on Craigslist (of all places!) I went on my first date with Josh. This past month, two years ago to the day from when we first met, we got engaged.  When I first shared my list of qualities with Josh we weren’t at all surprised that he easily cleared 43 out of the 46 items that ran the gamut from “he helps me become a better person” to “he likes tickling my feet while we watch TV.”  Since that time what Josh has come to mean to me surpasses any list I could create but I’ll forever be grateful for those few moments at San Francisco Airport when I finally decided to become clear about my intentions and set them down on paper.

PRACTICAL PRACTICES

In the next month I invite you to think of a goal you would like to achieve in the next year and take a half-hour to think about and write down exactly what that goal looks and feels like. And take it from me, don’t be afraid to be real specific!

While you’re busy thanking everyone for trudging through the snow to come over to your house or for inviting you over to their cozy abode, or for cooking you you’re favorite stuffing or for traveling to see you braving the new TSA rules or for the million and one other things you can thank someone else for….I invite you to thank YOURSELF to.

I invite you to thank YOURSELF for simply being you. For waking up each morning, getting out your warm bed (I have designated my bed The Most Comfortable Place on Earth), getting dressed and getting on with the day.  Some days I know it’s easier than others but every day you have a choice to make and most often you make the choice to forge ahead. This deserves thanks! So go for it!

Thanks ME!

Most of us will remember our elders counseling us, “Sticks and stones may break your bones but names will never hurt you.”  Well I am here to tell you that their advice was dead wrong. Sticks and stones may break a bone or two but the damage done by words can be a lot harder to heal, particularly when we’re directing these taunts at ourselves.  Sometimes the self-inflicted name-calling is obvious and spontaneous, like when we drop a glass and a voice inside our head yells, “Stupid, pay attention!” Or it can be a little more premeditated like when we’re trying on an old favorite pair of jeans and the voice declares, “Wow! You’ve really turned into a Fat Ass.” The chastising can also be subtler, like when we’re having a hard time getting motivated to clean the hall closet and it goads us, “Don’t be so lazy. You can do it.”

At just about any given moment of any given day the odds are the little voice inside our heads is providing us with this unsolicited color commentary of our life so often complete with this type of name-calling and character defamation.  Now I ask you, if I followed you around all day talking to you like this, calling you names, mocking every other move you make, I bet–best case scenario–you would tell me to bug off, worse case scenario might be you’d test the old adage and see what a couple of sticks and stones might actually do to my bones. Both these reactions would be understandable, even defensible and yet our actual everyday response turns out to be what is most incomprehensible. Instead of acknowledging this voice for being the internal ignorant bully that it is we do the opposite by condoning it.  I have heard my clients and others defend their voices by sharing: “It replaces my parents’ guidance”;  “It motivates me”; “It tells me what I deserve to hear.”

For a variety of psychological and sociological reasons, we have convinced ourselves that we would be unsuccessful, unmotivated, unlovable people if it weren’t for the habitual haranguing by this inner voice.  But this is simply not true. When a client asked, “Who would I be if I didn’t have this voice keeping me in line?” I replied succinctly and factually, “Happier!”  The truth is, for most of us, this voice will always have a presence in our lives as part of our ego structure, but if we could, even for a moment allow ourselves to just hear that voice but not listen to it, to acknowledge it but not sanction its message, to observe it but not believe it, we would in all honesty be happier. Because, in the end, although it is true that sticks and stones can break bones, name-calling can break your spirit and no orthopedist can fix that.

PRACTICAL PRACTICES

For the next month, I invite you to begin to notice that name-calling voice inside your head. Notice how often it appears and what effect it has on you.  I invite you to consider no longer encouraging this voice or defending it as a necessary component of your success. I invite you not to accept its opinion as truth.

For those of you interested in exploring this further, I invite you to check out the following books.

Taming Your Gremlin, A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way, Rick Carson

Soul without Shame, A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within, Byron Brown

I remember when I was a kid, on my Mom’s 40th birthday, my Dad gave her a present of what we later discovered was an oversized, billowy, white poncho of sorts. At the initial unveiling of the gift, however, my mom, my sister and I remained perplexed as to what exactly it was. My dad, being the considerate husband that he is, had gone out of his way to purchase it from one of those chi-chi Greenwich Village bohemian boutiques and felt sure it would be a winner. As my mom good-naturedly attempted to navigate the parachute-like poncho in order to determine its functional identity, my sister and I could no longer hold back our snickers. Once free, they became contagious and my mom, while continuing to explore for the appropriate poncho openings, started to laugh as well. And finally, it was at the moment that my mom piloted her way into the poncho and modeled it in its full Stay Puff Marshmallow women-glory that my dad joined us with his own fits of uproarious laughter. Although my mom never adored that outfit again, for years to come all we had to do was mentioned it and we’d be sent reeling with laughter all over again.

There were many times like that growing up. A simple thing someone said or did and I would be rolling around thinking for sure my lungs would burst if I didn’t stop laughing, but even a ruptured ribcage wasn’t going to deter me. I remember waking up those next mornings, my sides hurting like I did a couple hundred sit-ups the night before.

Sadly, I don’t find myself laughing like that as much as I would like to anymore. As adults it seems our laughter becomes tempered as if its potency decreases with each new responsibility we acquire. And when pressures become even greater, like they have for many of us given our current climate, we may even lead ourselves to believe there is no time for laughter. But, at the risk of sounding clichéd, I would like to offer that there is no better time than the present to laugh, to laugh as much as possible, as hard as possible, and as often as possible because nothing to my mind makes us feel more alive, more hopeful and more ready to take on the world then to laugh like a kid again.

They say laughter is the best medicine and since many of us have caught a serious strain of the stress bug, I invite you, for the next month, to give yourself at least one dose of laughter each day. Here are a few ideas on how to make that happen.

PRACTICAL PRACTICES

They say laughter is the best medicine and since many of us have caught a serious strain of the stress bug, I invite you, for the next month, to give yourself at least one dose of laughter each day. Here are a few ideas on how to make that happen.

SUBSCRIBE TO FREE DAILY JOKES

http://www.jokes.com/

http://www.freedailyjoke.com/

WATCH FUNNY VIDEOS

http://www.dailyhaha.com

READ OLD-FASHION COMIC-SCRIPTS

http://www.gocomics.com

RENT FUNNY MOVIES

Bravo’s 100 Funniest Movies of All Time

DO LAUGHING YOGA

Laughing Yoga International

READ FUNNY BOOKS

Top 10 Funniest Books by Contemporary Literature.com

GO TO OR WATCH STAND-UP COMEDY

One of my all time good-for-the-whole-family favorites is Ellen DeGeneres’ Here and Now

HANG OUT WITH YOUR FUNNIEST FRIENDS

You know who they are- go laugh like a kid again!

As, Mark Twain, creator of a couple of our most beloved children’s characters, once said, “Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”

…Happy Laughing

So maybe you are already feeling overwhelmed and over-committed with even the thought of upcoming holidays.

Or you’re exhausted dealing with your post Halloween sugar hangover.

Or perhaps all the election hoopla has you feeling anxious about who will be minding the store (and what they will be selling).

If this sounds like you, then I would like to invite you to register for my very first Insight Out F*R*E*E teleclass: Chaos to Calm: Tools to Taming Your Life!

Over the years I have done tons of in-person workshops, mostly in the San Francisco Bay area, and many people outside of California have asked, “So when are you going to take your show on the road?”

Well I’m doing the next best thing and hope you will join me F*R*E*E* by phone (toll charges may apply) for Chaos to Calm: Tools to Taming Your Life!

I promise as a result of investing this time you will feel empowered with the tools you will need to infuse your life with:

• A greater sense of purpose
• A strategy to be more productive
• And an inner sense of peace

Together we will learn how to:

1. Understand the mess stress- Notice how it effects all aspects of our lives
2. Manage stress- Utilize my 4-Step Process
3. Reduce stress- Practice stress reduction tools and exercises

And there is a damn good chance we’ll have some fun too!

Basic Details:

Time: Thursday, November 11, 2010  @ 12:30 – 2:00 pm PST
Call in #: 1-218-936-4141
Participant Code: 6216029
Investment: Your time

Click Chaos to Calm to get more details and to register!

I look forward to helping you shift from Chaos to Calm.

..Sometimes means, not taking yourself too seriously.

When I started Insight Out, I was instinctively drawn to helping people create a better work-life balance. I knew I wanted to support the growing number of burned-out business people, especially women, in helping them release the ever-mounting pressure they were under.  I wanted them to feel hopeful again, even energized about their lives.  Although at the time I didn’t know the unsettling stats such as up to 90% of all physician visits are due to stress related illnesses or that 59% of workers feel that stress is affecting their interpersonal and sexual relationships, I did know that something just wasn’t working all too often.

Have you been noticing this too? Maybe even experiencing it yourself?

Since starting my business I have dedicated myself to supporting businesswomen and men in finding ways to live lives of greater fulfillment and less stress. I must admit, I have even been brought to tears witnessing my clients make the most beautiful transformations as they start living the lives they were meant to live.  So, in honor of my courageous clients and my committed Insights community, I thought it could help if I sat down and identified what Top Ten Tactics proved most helpful to my clients. I would like to share them with you now.

1. Breathing: Remembering to consciously breathe deeply has helped my clients ground themselves in the midst of worry, doubt and instability.
2. Celebrating themselves: Making efforts to replace negative self-talk with words of compassion and appreciation has helped my clients feel better about themselves.
3. Making requests: Asking for and accepting support from other people has helped my clients feel less alone (and has even resulted in getting someone else to do the dishes from time to time.)
4. Slowing down: Deliberately stopping themselves in those moments when they are frantically running from one to-do to the next has helped my clients switch off automatic pilot, in favor of more conscious participation in their own lives. (It has helped them lose their keys less often as well.)
5. Making time for fun: Intentionally making plans for fun has helped assure that work and chores don’t dominate every moment of my clients’ lives (and even more importantly allowed room for laughter and the occasional water park visit.)
6. Getting rest: Allowing themselves guilt-free downtime, be it an hour more of sleep or precious moments reading a good book, has helped my clients feel more rejuvenated and able to deal with the unpredictability of life.
7. Exercise: Prioritizing physical activity boosted my clients endorphins and immune system and even helped them finish their first marathons.
8. Making space to make goals: Taking time with themselves and/or their loved ones to think about the bigger picture has helped my clients feel more purposeful and focused.
9. Sharing their thoughts and feelings: Bravely overcoming their fears and sharing their feelings and thoughts with loved ones have helped my clients feel more supported, loved and heard.
10. Listening to their true selves: In developing their ability to reconnect to their true selves my clients have started living with authentic intention and direction which is the real clincher in living lives that are stress-free, integrated and fulfilling.

PRACTICAL PRACTICE

For the next month, I invite you to take at least one of the Top 10 Tactics offered here and begin to incorporate them into your life so that you too can can live a more balanced, less stressful life.

And don’t forget I am here to support you.