How Do I Choose?

One of the great things about being a coach is that it enables me to indulge in my penchant for reading personal development, motivational, organizational and social science books with wild abandon.  It also gives me the opportunity to write them all off on my taxes, but that’s an entirely different post.  There are a lot of choices out there in every type of category you can think of. Let’s look at Amazon.com for a start. Interested in developing your creativity this year? You’re in luck! Amazon delivers 11,546 choices.  Want to be more motivated?  A quick search comes up with an impressive 25,798 tomes to choose from.  If you want to take  more risks this year, there are a staggering 75,150 offerings all ready to be delivered to your door with a click of a button.

If you spend anytime reading books or blogs, attending seminars, watching videos about any sort of process whether it be creativity, management or even cleaning out your closets, what you’re going to find is a lot of contradictory information. First you develop a system, no wait, first you dive in to see what you’re working with. The number one secret is understanding your employees and giving them the structure they need, unless you ask them what they need and allow them to create it for themselves. Start slowly with baby steps except you should start by taking massive action as a way to commit yourself entirely to the process.

You get the idea.

There are literally more than a million books out there that will give you advice on how to do just about anything. And each of them will expound on a different way to help you accomplish your goal. But how do you choose which way to go?  Protein or Raw diet? Cry it out or attachment parenting? Structure or free form? Don’t forget about asking your friends their opinion too- they ALL have something to say about with path you choose.

Truthfully, though, all of these choices boil down to one thing:  Does it work for you?

Sometimes, we can only tell if something works for us by trying it and evaluating the outcome. Will Julie Cameron’s concept of “morning pages” change the way I creatively orient myself on a daily basis? The only way to figure it out is get up every morning for several weeks and try it. Sometimes we can inherently realize an outcome of a particular system because we understand ourselves. There are people who have had life-altering experiences after being dropped in the desert for a week with only a tent and their wits in a modern-day vision quest. But I  know without doing it myself that killing a rattlesnake with my bare hands and eating it raw is not going to help me see my life clearly.

You know yourself best.  You understand what works and what doesn’t – maybe innately or maybe sometimes you have to try the process and see, but you always know best. Remember when authors or speakers or trainers tell you “this is the only system you’ll ever need,” what they are saying is, “Here’s what works for me.” If it works for you too, great. If not, it doesn’t mean you are a failure or you can’t follow through or there is something wrong with you. It just means you haven’t found your way yet. You will.  Don’t trust me just because I say so though, trust yourself.

Quieting the Troops

Fun fact for the day:  A group of monkeys is called a troop.

If you’ve studied meditation at all, I am sure you’ve heard the term “monkey mind” which refers to the near constant state of the mind to jump from one idea to the next, to the next, to the next in a restless, insatiable sort of way.  One goal during meditation is to gain control of the monkey mind. Personally, I would LOVE it if there was only one monkey jumping around in my mind. For me it’s more of a troop of hundreds of monkeys – a really loud, agitated, screaming troop – all of whom want me to focus my singular attention on them.

We’ve all had those times in our lives when the noise in our head is so loud, so all-encompassing, so disorienting that we literally can’t do anything but shut down. Because my brain seems to be always set at eleven this happens to me at least 3-4 times a day. (You should see what happens when I’m actually stressed.) There are moments when the sound inside my own head is so loud, I am almost blinded from too much internal stimuli. I literally can’t figure out what I am supposed to do or where I am supposed to be and I can’t make even the simplest of decisions.

Thankfully, I have figured out a way to silence the monkeys.  I visualize it as handing each monkey a banana or draping a blanket over their heads which immediately causes them to sit quietly.  It takes a while to get to all of the monkeys- they sit on lots of tree branches and sometimes jump away just as I inch my way out to them, but eventually I quiet them all down. Only then can I begin to work with clarity, purpose and calm.

So, in no particular order, here are the many things I’ve discovered to calm the troops:

• Write down everything that’s bouncing around in my head
• Work on a jigsaw puzzle
• Play my guitar
• Take a walk with my earphones on and the music up loud
• Watch the birds on my feeders
• Stroll through IKEA without buying anything
• Browse through a bookstore
• Sit on my back steps and study my field for animals, birds, etc.
• Take a long drive with my music playing
• Sing at the top of my lungs
• Stand on the deck in the dark, breathing deeply with my arms outstretched while looking at the stars
• Tackle an organizational project
• De-clutter something
• Color
• Work on a crossword puzzle or sudoku
• Pat my dogs
• Follow a yoga video
• Run
• Ice Skate
• Sit by the water (bonus points if I can get out on a boat)
• Make something crafty
• Sweep
• Fold laundry
• Wander through an antique shop

How about you? Add to the list in the comments below.

 

 

Regina Verow is a life coach and workshop presenter who believes we can change the world one tiny creative step at a time.  For questions about coaching or to receive a free, no obligation coaching session, email her at Regina@ReginaVerow.com.

You Can’t Wait to Want

I bought myself this t-shirt.  It makes me happy and feel a little deliciously subversive since the only time I wear it is when I hit the pavement. For those of you who are new around here, I started running for the first time since the 7th grade this past September.  I am a newbie, and not the evangelical-converted-you-have-to-try-running-it-will-change-your-life kind.  I’m more along the lines of an I’m-fairly-certain-this-next-workout-will-kill-me-I’m-so-out-of-shape newbie.

And yet, three mornings a week I put on my t-shirt and head down the road as soon as the girls get on the bus. It’s a thirty minute run, nothing earth-shattering, but I always feel better for having run. I experience a sense of accomplishment that stays with me for the rest of the day when I get home.

Here’s the thing though. I never want to run.  I want to have run. I want to feel better about my body, get into better shape, have more energy and lose a few pounds.  But I never want to run. And if I wait around for the motivation to do it, it will never, ever happen.

We sometimes think that if something is important enough to us we’ll want to do it. And that doesn’t always or often happen.  How many people have half-finished novels sitting on their hard drive, waiting for the motivation to figure out the place where the plot derailed? How many people buy gym memberships and never step foot into the place again?  How many people do you know talk about getting around to  __________ (losing the baby weight, getting a new job, figuring out what they want to do with their life, etc. etc.) someday?  The insinuation is that they are waiting for a compelling enough reason to stop their life and focus on whatever that something is. And occasionally people do get that kind of motivation –  a cancer diagnosis, an unexpected break up, a near-death experience or some other huge loss in their life. Hopefully, you are lucky enough not to have a tragic or scary life-changing event propel you into change.

And then, there are a few that decide if they wait around until they want something bad enough to go after  it, it will probably never happen. So they dive in. And they make the choice to dive in again and again and again. Despite the failings, despite the tedium of the steps towards their goal, despite the fact that they never quite want to take the steps.

It’s ok to acknowledge you don’t want to do something. But if it serves your bigger goal, you have to acknowledge that you don’t want to do it while you do it anyway. If you wait to want, you’ll never get any closer.

I will never want to run day after day. I wear my “Running Sucks” shirt to express those feelings…and then I run anyway. What can you do to propel yourself in to action for something you’ve been putting off until the day you “want to do it?”

 

 

 

Regina Verow is a life coach and workshop presenter who believes we can change the world one tiny creative step at a time.  For questions about coaching or to receive a free, no obligation coaching session, email her at Regina@ReginaVerow.com.

2012 Word of the Year

We watched Tangled quite a bit over the holiday break in our household.  It’s a fun movie and I particularly like that Rapunzel does just as much rescuing in the movie as Flynn. (Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t seen the movie and want to remained surprised, skip down to the next paragraph.) When I took my girls to see it for the first time in the theater, I couldn’t figure out who voiced Rapunzel. She sounded familiar but I couldn’t quite make the connection until that pivotal moment when Flynn slashes her hair off with the piece of broken mirror. Instantly, Rapunzel’s hair looses it’s golden color and becomes dark brown.  This dramatic change from long golden locks to a short brown bob made it suddenly obvious to me who the actress was, it finally looked just like her –Mandy Moore! Her transformation allowed me, for the first time, to see who she really was.

Without overdoing the metaphor – I sometimes feel a little like Rapunzel- waiting for my “real” life to get started. I’m cautious and I often research something to death before deciding to take a leap. I engage in a lot of preparation for even the most mundane of tasks and one of the repeating loops in my head can be heard saying “Someday, someday, someday…”

I’ve mentioned before, I am not a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions in my own life. They are often one more thing to add in an already busy time and they are always the first things to drop by the wayside when cuts have to be made. What I find more effective is a technique Christine Kane uses; choosing a word to focus on for the year. This year I am pledging to start squeezing out the endless voice of “someday” and instead consider that things are possible right now. I want my life this year to be more of an action verb instead of  defaulting to the passive voice.  I’m going to do less prep work and more actual living. I’m going to come out of the tower and spend more time with my feet on the ground.  I will be the hero in my own story.  All of this will lead me to my word of the year:

TRANSFORMATION

What’s yours going to be?

 

 

Are you ready to kick start the new year and make it your best year ever?  During the month of January I am offering a one-hour single phone session to help you get crystal clear on your goals for the upcoming year and develop a realistic and inspiring plan to achieve those goals. This one-hour single session is discounted to a rate of $100.  Call or email me today!

Small Acts of Gratitude

Sometimes when I write, the words come easy and fast. In fact, sometimes my fingers can barely keep up with my thoughts, and I type very fast.  Those are days where the house is quiet, my thoughts are organized and I can focus solely on my writing. It isn’t often that I have those days but they do happen

Today, I’ve been sitting here for the last hour trying to write a blog on gratitude.  Here’s what’s been happening:

• Write a sentence.
• Daughter #1 comes in- wants to make some brownies by herself. I say okay.
• Daughter leaves to make the brownies.
• Reread sentence. Erase it and start over.
• Daughter #2 asks for help getting Play-doh out.
• Clean off the table, and carry approximately 1000 cans of half dried out Play-doh and 5,ooo accessories into the dining room.
• Write a few more sentences, pause for careful consideration of words.
• Daughter #1 comes in looking for olive oil.
• Help daughter find Canola oil for brownies instead.
• Reread paragraph, erase and start over.
• Daughter #2 needs help chiseling old dried out clay from squeezy thing that makes Play-doh look like spaghetti. Spend ten minutes extracting approximately 1 gram of fossilized Play-doh.
• Add a few more words tentatively to first paragraph.
• Help daughter #1 take egg shell out of measuring cup, verify brownie mix has been stirred enough, and scrape the bowl into pan before daughter #1 eats approximately 1 cup of brownie mix while “licking the bowl.”
• Erase paragraph and start in a new direction.
• Encourage daughter #2 not to wear Play-doh spaghetti as a hat…

Truthfully, this is how many of my days go. Sometimes I feel like I live a rather small existence in a small world.  It’s filled with wonder and love and gratitude but sometimes the idea of doing anything greater with my day can seem a bit overwhelming.  This year I have been lucky enough to spend a small amount of my time involved with groups who have showed me that it doesn’t take much, just a little effort, to really change the world. In particular, I am grateful for Epic Change and the work of Stacey Monk and her crew, who have given me the awesome gift of being able to change the lives of others with some very small acts.  This blog post today is one way.  Daughter #1, along with her church choir, have raised money to help build a secondary school in Tanzania so children there can experience something we often take for granted. I’ve been able to teach my daughters how to think of others, to see that seemingly tiny acts can have a huge impact, that children in other parts of the world are more like them than different and that giving of yourself can be a heck of a lot of fun.

This year as part of their efforts, Epic Change has launched www.EpicThanks.org where you can upload a photo of what you are grateful for and make a donation out of gratitude for all that you have.  It is a quick and easy way to be thankful for all that you have and change lives in the process.  That’s a pretty sweet deal.

So, if you find that your days are like mine- full, and hectic and wonderful all at the same time, take a few minutes and visit EpicThanks.org and EpicChangeBlog.org to post what you are grateful for and read all about how Epic Change changes lives every day. Consider making a small donation- it’s amazing what a great miracle can come out of a tiny act of gratitude.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you – I know I don’t say it enough, but I am grateful for all of you.

10 Things I Remembered While Running

I ran my first 5k race yesterday.  Very slowly, with a few walking breaks in the middle. But I did it.  The last time I even came close to running 3.1 miles was when I was in 8th grade. I’ve been training for about 5 weeks now and the program I’m following is designed to get you running a 5k in 8 weeks so all-in-all  it was a really successful day. The morning was beautiful, chilly and very fall-like. I got to run with a group of friends and we laughed and encouraged each other along the way.  What more could you ask for?

Since it was only a 5k, I didn’t have any amazing breakthroughs about the meaning of life during the time I was out on the course , but it did remind me of a few things I already knew to be true about life and running.

1. The journey is always better with friends, especially when they can make you laugh. That alone can make the difference between getting to the finish line or giving up along the way.

2.  If you wait to be inspired before you take the next step, you’ll ht the snooze button instead. You just have to make up your mind to do something, inspiration or no.

3. Making that commitment to show up out loud, to someone else, gets you out of your nice warm bed into the chilly, dark air.

4. There are a lot more people out there cheering you on than you realize.

5. Just because it takes a long time to warm up doesn’t mean you won’t hit your stride eventually.

6. The amount of time it takes you isn’t nearly as important as crossing the finish line anyway.

7. There can be lots of people ahead of you most of the time.  It doesn’t make your journey any less significant or valuable.

8. Preparation is important but at some point you just have to hit the course and see what happens.

9. Hills often seem less steep from afar.  And you tackle them the same way as the rest of the journey- one step at a time.

10. When you cross the finish line, it’s important to reward yourself with something sweet.

Have a great week folks!

 

 

Regina Verow is a life coach and workshop presenter who believes we can change the world one tiny creative step at a time.  For questions about coaching or to receive a free, no obligation coaching session, email her at Regina@ReginaVerow.com.

A Dent in the Universe

My mother bought our very first Mac when I was in 8th grade- which was longer ago than I care to remember. I’ve always been a Apple girl- probably always will be. And yet, I was struck by how much Steve Jobs’ death saddened me.

But it’s not really about the computer or the brand. It’s a sadness about the death of someone who took risks. Someone who worked hard to be creative and innovative and who showed the world what all of that looks like. There aren’t many of those types of people out there.  The Onion (www.theonion.com) has a fitting tribute to him but if you are easily offended by strong language, take a pass on reading it. I saw a quote by Jobs’ former business partner, Steve Wozniak, who noted that Jobs’ had a premonition that he wouldn’t live past 40 years old. Maybe that’s what pushed him out of his comfort zone and into the success he achieved.

After learning about Jobs’ death last week, my dear friend Stefan, (who runs the very best children’s music blog on the web at www.zooglobble.com) posted this:

“I thought for some time about how I might remember Steve Jobs, a man whose companies’ products have been a part of my life in some form for nearly 30 years. I decided that the best way would be to take the time I might spend mindlessly wasting time this week and use it — to use what has been my favorite quotation of his since he was first reported to say it — to make my dent in the universe.”

And Iw as inspired by Stefan – many of us do mindlessly waste a lot of time in our lives and how could we collectively change our world just by spending a little of it on something bigger than ourselves?

So it doesn’t really matter if you’re a Mac or a PC – what I really want to know is what are YOU going to do to make your dent in the universe?

Doors

Some friends of mine have a blogging project called Random Writers.  Each week they assign themselves a specific topic question and each answers it in their own, unique voice. I am grateful they asked me to be a guest blogger this week. In addition to my website, my post along with the fine writings of Lee Sullivan, Lindsey Goodall, Gil Gonzales and Jeff Smith can all be found on www.randomwriters.net. I encourage you to check out all the essays.

What was a closed door that led to an open door?

When I first began thinking about this question, I started making a list of all the major events in my life that felt like doors closing and the good that ultimately came out of them.  How about the time I was laid off from a job I thought was turning into a career?  Or, the long-term relationship, which ended, seemingly out of nowhere and shattered my heart into hundreds of what I though were unrepairable parts? Or the phone call when I found out a man who, for all intent and purpose was my big brother, and had survived being deployed to the front lines of a conflict in the Middle East had unexpectedly passed away on the floor of his little house on a peaceful island in Canada. There were several major decisions I made at crossroads in my life that led me down a different path. How do I choose what to write about?

Then I thought about how doors have closed for me throughout my entire life: Some, I chose to close myself and some were closed for me, and in a few cases, slammed shut in my face. I’ve turned away form closed doors grateful to move on. I’ve starred at doors, horror struck, dumbfounded and yanking on the doorknob in panic, trying with all my will to wrench open a door not only shut but locked, boarded up and with a wall of cement behind it.

I’ve collapsed from the effort of trying to reopen a door and fallen backwards only to find a wide open door waiting for me to turn around and walk through it. Some days I’ve had to pick the lock and once or twice I had to take a sledgehammer to the drywall and build my own damn open door. But the opportunities were and will always be there. Because the truth is, just like the cliché, there have been countless doors that have opened for me despite and specifically because another door had closed. Every. Single. Time.

I came to be a coach through a series of closed and open doors – I started off as an anthropology major then earned a Master’s Degree in Film- and along the way I’ve studied theater, psychology and marine biology and worked for such diverse places as major movie studios and NASCAR stores. I’ve written poetry, screenplays, television scripts and video games, researched books and changed religions- all the results of one door shutting and another opening.

The truth is, looking back there aren’t any amazing stories for me to share with you – just lots and lots of common ones.  Doors shut every day and new ones open, and like everyone else, I wind my way through the fun house of life, never knowing what’s behind the next door.  But I know with absolute certainty, there’s always another one just up ahead. That’s the good news.  And we’re all the same that way. If you are reading this, looking for inspiration, I’m not sure I have any to offer.  But I can remind you that there is hope. Things constantly change and more often that not, that’s is a good thing – and if not, a new door will open soon enough.

 

A Question Of Time

I recently hung new curtains in my bedroom. (Note: the picture of the curtains to the left is not my bedroom) I took down the old hanging blinds, installed the hardware for the new curtain rod and had the curtains up and finished in under an hour, including clean up AND listing the blinds and their hardware on Freecycle. I am thrilled to have finished this project because I hated the old blinds from the day I moved into this house six years ago. They were old, cracked and many didn’t even clip onto the track properly anymore. Also, they were a hideous maroon color that did not match my room. The new ones are beautiful and make me smile every time I walk into the room. Just the simple project of hanging curtains has improved the quality of my life substantially.

I am slightly embarrassed to admit the curtains had been sitting in my room for over a year before I hung them.  Every time I thought about the whole process, I thought to myself, “I don’t have time to do that.”  I really believed it would be a long, drawn out process requiring a huge block of time which didn’t motivate me to get it done. If I had known a year ago that the process was going to be so quick and easy, I would have been enjoying my curtains much sooner than this.

I am shocked at how often we overestimate how long it’s going to take to do something. We are really good at making mountains out of molehills when it comes to time. People often tell me, “I’d love to start my own business but I just don’t have the time.” And if your definition of time is quitting your job and spending 40 hours a week instantly on it, you’re right, you don’t have the time.  But maybe you do have the time to work on it for an hour each night. And you might be shocked at how much you can get done in one concentrated hour.

Maybe you don’t think you can get in shape because you don’t have the time. Twenty minutes three times a week is all it takes. Twenty little minutes.  Since I know you’re online because you’re reading this, I’m going to guess that you’ll spend a minimum of 20 minutes online right now- it’s amazing how quickly it goes by, right?

You might be thinking, well how about all those things that end up taking so much more time than you planned – like calling Verizon when your internet is down or having to make three trips to the DMV.  Yup those things happen.  But more often than not, my experience is that I’m NOT expecting how long it’s going to take when something like that sucks my afternoon away.  In fact, it’s usually something so mundane, I can’t even foresee how it could go so wrong as to eat up three or four hours of my life.

Overestimating can cause us to put off an activity- maybe just for a little while, maybe for a really long time.  It’s as if we become overwhelmed with the work, before we’ve even started it. And for me, I feel a little foolish when the dreaded task, the one I avoided with so much resistance, the task that by not doing it held me back in some way,  only takes a fraction of the time I spent even fussing about it.

So today, I encourage you to think about something that will make a difference in your life but you’ve been putting it off because you believe it will take too long. Write down how much time you think it’s going to take you and then time yourself attending to it.  See if you complete it much more quickly than you expected.  There’s a little rush attached to finishing it so fast not to mention the satisfaction you’ll feel having completed something that adds to the quality of your life. And then remember this the next time you resist doing something solely on the basis of how much time you think it will take. Want to be more productive?  Want to move faster towards your goals and dreams? Work on developing a better sense of the time it takes to do things and you’ll tackle tasks more often. That’s true productivity.

Fear Factor

Last year I came out of my house when I heard two of my dogs barking in a really unusual manner.  Looking into the back yard, I saw a groundhog had wandered through the fence- probably trying to reach my garden. The dogs had cornered it and were snuffling its fur, jumping around trying to convince it that they meant it no harm and were inviting him to play. Unfortunately, groundhogs have no desire to learn to speak dog so this poor guy just wanted out and fast.  As soon I realized what was going on, I called the dogs off. The moment they turned to come to me, that groundhog took off, squeezing itself though the fence, running across the field and practically diving back back into the woods.

Fear is a powerful force in our lives. It’s an emotion solidly programmed into our DNA- too much in fact. Science has proved that our brains cannot tell the difference between perceived and real danger. Swimming in the middle of a shark feeding frenzy – that’s real danger. Getting up in front of a shareholders meeting to tell them about how your company has been functioning during the last year – that’s perceived danger. In most cases, they aren’t going to try and eat you during your presentation. The trouble is, biologically, your body reacts the same way to real and perceived danger. Your heart rate and breathing increase, you produce a surge of cortisol (among other chemicals), and your brain fires off either a fight or flight response. Fear was a really important warning system when we lived in caves and weren’t always the top participant in a food chain. And it still has a place today, it’s just that no one has told the brain that the fear response really needs to be downsized, there just isn’t the same demand for it any more.

Fear is what keeps us stuck in our lives.  It’s what prevents us from changing even when we yearn to change, when we know we need to change. It keeps us from taking risks, from creating, performing or really putting ourselves out there. Fear causes us to contract into ourselves when what we really need is to expand. I guarantee if you want to understand why you aren’t making progress with something in your life, ask yourself, “what am I afraid of?” and you will learn what is blocking your path.

So if fear is biologically programmed into our systems to be trigger-happy and overactive, what do we do when fear is running our lives or blocking our growth, creativity and energy?  We confront our fear, one tiny little step at a time.

That groundhog I talked about?  After “the incident” we didn’t see him for about a week. Then one day he reappeared at the edge of the woods. For a couple weeks, he’d take a few steps out of the woods, see the dogs and instantly disappear right back into the brush. Over the next month, he’d coming out farther and farther into the field.  He’d still run back to safety when the dogs appeared – at first. And then he realized, the dogs were behind the fence – they couldn’t actually get to him. So he started standing his ground. He’d stop eating and watch them as they came up to the fence, barking and calling to him. He’d assess if there was any real danger, checking to see if anything had changed since the last encounter. When he realized they still couldn’t reach him, he’d go back to eating. Now he eats maybe ten feet from them and ignores them completely.  They can bark and call and scratch and jump as much as they want, and he’s not afraid because he knows that on that side of the fence they are just a perceived danger.

So can you stand your ground when your fear response kicks in long enough to discern whether or not it’s a real or perceived danger?  You can – a little bit at a time.  The more you expose yourself to fear, the less power it holds over you. Remember, it’s not an all or nothing proposition. Taking small steps forward help you overcome fear.  Just ask the groundhog.