Making plans for 2013?

January 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment

“If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.”

-Albert Einstein

Welcome back from the holiday season! Many of us consider the turning of the calendar year to be a time of new beginnings and fresh starts. Are you feeling up for the challenge? What’s in store for you for 2013?

The best way to get what you want,is to make a plan to get it. Here’s an exercise to get you started.

Be conscious of what you want in the following twelve areas that represent a whole life. Where are you now? Where do you want to be by December 31, 2013?

  1. Romance/Spouse
  2. Children
  3. Friends
  4. Extended Family
  5. Physical Appearance
  6. Health & Self Care
  7. Money & Finances
  8. Career
  9. Physical Environment
  10. Personal Growth & Spirituality
  11. Fun & Recreation
  12. Service & Giving Back

Now set your SMART goals to do what you need to get to where you want to be:

S: SPECIFIC. Break it down to single actionable steps.

M: MEASURABLE: You must be able to objectively measure your progress so that it can be evaluated, and it must be clear (not subjective) as to whether you’ve accomplished the step or not.

A: ACHIEVABLE: It must feel doable if you are to be motivated to take the necessary action steps. It must also be in your control to carry out the steps on your own.

R: RESONANT: The goal must be compelling enough to you that you want to really achieve it.

T: TIME-FRAMED: Keeping in mind that some day never comes, be sure to set a time frame by when you want to achieve the goal, as well each of the actionable steps you need to take to get you there.

Now, go forth and plan!  And if you feel you could use some support in planning your goals for 2013, be sure to sign up for Success 2013. It will be a transformative, action-packed and effective experience that you will be able to duplicate on your own year after year.

Filed Under: Goal-Setting, Success Tagged With: ,

Happy Holidays & Toward 2013

December 24, 2012 by Leave a Comment

While I am currently traveling abroad, this post is scheduled to come out on Christmas Eve, when those who celebrate will be moments away from Christmas, and those who don’t, will be getting ready to head out for the obligatory Chinese food. Either way, there’s a tremendous amount of electricity in the air, lots of light, and an exciting feeling of what’s in store for the next year.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Steve Jobs:“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life…Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.  They somehow know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

As a coach, I am passionate about helping people live according to their passions. Passions can be about an idea (e.g.a strong educational system), or a job (e.g. the work you do), or a hobby (e.g. painting or music), or about something you do that likely comes very naturally to you (e.g. helping people be more efficient). While there are so many things to be passionate about, for everyone it’s different.   What does remain the same across the board, however, is that when you live passionately, you feel empowered to accomplish so much more in line with who you really are and your highest, best self.

At year end, it’s appropriate to evaluate where you’ve been (which becomes your starting point for today) and where you’re going. For 2013, I challenge you to pick something you are passionate about and move closer to it.

Goal setting in any realm remains the same: Step one involves evaluating where you are today so you know where to start. Step two is to figure out where you’d like to be, which becomes the ultimate goal. And finally, in step three, you design small steps that will bring you closer to where you want to be. Eventually, you’ll get there, I have no doubt, but if the task feels daunting, the key is to begin taking these designed steps. After all, tomorrow will come, and when it does, you will either be that one step closer to where you want to be, or you won’t. It’s really as simple as that.

To help you with this exercise in all areas of your life, be sure to sign up for Success 2013 where we will set goals with a plan for taking individual, realistic steps to moving you forward to that ultimate vision you’ve created for yourself. We will repeat the exercise in all 12 areas of your life, with a method for revisiting each area every year to keep you moving forward. The process keeps you on track, feeling empowered and intentional in all that you aim for.

May you feel empowered and intentional in all your endeavors from this day forward.

Happy holidays everyone, and happy New Year.

Filed Under: Goal-Setting Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Truly Being in the Holiday Season

December 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I’ll be heading away on a wondrous extended family vacation in December over the holidays, and even before we get on that plane, I’m planning to design on my own, as well as with my husband, how we want to be together and in relationship with the others when we are there. Don’t get me wrong – I love my family and am counting down the days to being together, but I also anticipate a lot of together time, some of which will involve very tired and sometimes hungry people of all ages. There are personality dynamics to consider in addition to the fact that it can get frustrating when it takes a lot of time to move all of us from point A to point B. In the past in these situations, I’ve chosen to ‘be’ loving and open, light-hearted and fun, compassionate and understanding. Not surprisingly, these states of being are the real me when I’m at my best. And not surprisingly, I have enjoyed myself and my family more than I ever imagined.

December is upon us along with the gloriousness of the holiday season, and yes, the stress that comes along with it. The key to getting through it as unscathed as possible is taking the APD steps – Anticipate, Practice, Design:

  1. Anticipate: your relationships and interactions during this season. Think about all the interactions you’ll have and all the places you’ll have them: At home, at the mall, on vacation; with your children, with your parents, with your friends, with other family, and even with sales clerks in the stores in which you’ll be shopping. This may not cover it all, but if you get most of them, you will have no problem applying this technique to new or unanticipated scenarios.
  2. Practice: humility, understanding and forgiveness. Remember that there is not one single person who was put on this planet with the purpose of pissing you off. At the same time, there is not one single person who was put on this planet to please your every whim – the world doesn’t center around you. Let’s not forget that you are not the only one experiencing the pace and stress of the holiday season and all that it brings (good and bad). Why someone gets under your skin has to do with a clash of values (those things that are most important for you to be your best, like gratitude or acknowledgment or order or beauty – and someone is stepping on those values, likely because their top values are different than your top values). Once you get that the person in line at the grocery store who is talking on the phone incessantly is not doing that to piss you off, it’s far easier to forgive and move on. For more on this concept, read Dr. Fred Luskin’s Forgive for Good.
  3. Design: how you want to be. Think about each and every one of the relationships from #1 above, and design for each in advance how you want to be in your interactions with them. Remember: you get to choose your behavior and your reactions in any given situation. How you ‘be’ will dictate how you act. And in my experience, there is no doubt that if you anticipate and plan beforehand, you can be proactive, not reactive, in these situations.

I’ll let you know in January how the family vacation went down, but in the meantime, I’ll hold my preferred way of ‘being’ throughout the month of December. Happy holidays to all.

Now time to get packing!

Filed Under: Relationships Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Healing from Senseless Tragedy

December 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Without a doubt we are all coming out of this weekend a little sadder and a little more heartbroken for all the young lives lost in Friday’s tragic school shooting in Connecticut. I cannot help but think about the potential lost along with those lives, the pain of the families, and the shock and ache of the nation. What happened was unthinkable in so many ways: the children were innocent victims, this school could have been any school and is supposed to be a safe place, and we are supposed to be living in a civilized first world country more advanced than most on this planet. So how could this have happened? Blame is being pointed at the gun laws or the failure of the mental health system or the failure of community support to someone who was perceived as a sad loner. Regardless of whether we choose any one or a combination of those factors, or none at all and believe it was a random act, it doesn’t take away the fact that we have all been changed.

I have chosen not to watch live television or videos on what transpired, and have also attempted not to go overboard reading about the details (although I’m still struggling with the motive – what would possess a young man to so completely lose faith in society and head to the other side with such anger that he would take it out on children?). I do find myself looking for comfort. I’ve spent a lot of time with my kids this weekend, hugging them, engaging them in all kinds of conversations, and just being with them, feeling my own good fortune. I have looked to our leaders for comfort as well: the President, my rabbi, and others.

But I have found the greatest comfort for me is the belief that the world is a good place and that people are genuinely good. Yes, I do believe, after this horrible atrocity, that we will learn from this tragedy.  My hope is that as people and communities, we will connect with and reach out to each other with greater conviction that it is the obligation for each of us to look out for one another. And I pray that our anger will lead to action, whatever that may look like: lobbying, writing letters to the parents or survivors, or just making it a point to be kind to one another.

But most of all, my belief in the decency, strength and love of people is what will help me go on.

Filed Under: Healing Tagged With: ,

Putting It Out There Takes My Breath Away

December 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I just spent a very full weekend writing my book during the Bestseller in A Weekend Boot Camp. The webinar allowed me to sit in the comfort of my own office, and was so intense that I barely had time to go to the bathroom, let alone eat. While my self-care suffered afterward, the inspiration and excitement I got from it was worth every penny, every uncomfortable moment. I feel energized and excited to get my book written. And the end result is so compelling for me that it literally takes my breath away. That doesn’t even take into account the fact that I’ve now announced it to the world, and therefore am feeling that I MUST get it done.  In. The. Next. Six. Months. (Okay Barbara, now Breathe…).

Which leads me to the subject of my book: Right now, the working title is: Sailing to Success: 7 Steps to Creating Your Courageous Change (Lessons Learned from Sailing the Pacific). By the title, you’ll get that it will integrate my family’s sailing adventures of 2009-2012 together with how one gets past barriers to do what you really want, even when it takes your breath away to even think about it. Or when your negative self talk says it’s impossible. Or that it’s ridiculous. Or whatever other things it says to you.

Over the next few months I’ll be enlisting you, my readers, to help me with case studies, surveys, opinions and ideas to include as content for the book. Let me know if you have any burning questions you’d like answered around the topic. What do you think of the title of the book?  Would you buy it? I’ll be asking questions that may have yes/no answers, or others that are more open-ended. Please share your thoughts with me – I strongly believe that your comments will help others. To start with, take this survey on how you, personally, get to making an important change.

And now for the first tips to making your Big Change: Announce it to the world. Once you are scraped up off the floor and resuscitated, there is nothing like it to motivate you to get started.

Filed Under: Motivation, My Book Tagged With: , , , ,

The Power of Change

November 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I am relaunching my Coaching practice after being away from it for 3 years, having taken almost 2 and a half of those years to sail with my family through Mexico, the South Pacific and Australia. The decision to leave everything I knew and felt comfortable with was a powerful and refreshing one, and yet with the change back to life on land, my commitment to coach again feels just as powerful, fresh and revitalizing. The bottom line is this: Change keeps us fresh. Without it, we wither, we get stale, we get small. I’m not saying that everyone should shake up their lives as drastically as I did, but I am saying that if you haven’t stepped to your edge lately, it’s time.

To begin, ask yourself this question: What have I been wanting to do? What change have I been wanting to make? Don’t worry about the answer being something that is huge, but be sure it is something that would mean a lot to you if it was done.

And forget about all the reasons why you haven’t done it until now, because beating yourself up over it won’t get you closer to making a change. One of the things I love about coaching principles is that we don’t get stuck on all the ‘stuff’ from your past, but rather embrace the saying: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life – now get to it.” Tomorrow is going to come, whether you make the change or not.

What would life be like if in fact you accomplished this thing that you’ve been wanting to do, this change you’ve been wanting to make? Spend a few minutes really thinking about that, or if writing things down is more effective for you, journal about it.

It’s time. It’s time to make a change, to keep fresh, to get big. You owe it to yourself, to those you touch, and to the world at large.

As I refresh my own career, I am committed to helping those who are ready to make important, meaningful and sustainable change, one step at a time.  Please contact me if you are one of them.

Filed Under: Change, Coaching Tagged With: ,
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