Discovering what you wanna be when you grow up is a process. There are skills to identify, values to name, responsibilities to consider, questions to ask & get answered, truths to uncover, false beliefs to conquer, and tons of self-reflection to, um, reflect on. It’s no quick fix, which is why I encourage all of my career change clients to work with me for 12 sessions, or 3-4 months of coaching. For some reason, that’s the magic number for most of my clients to not only come to the conclusion of what they want their grown-up career to look like, but to have an action plan in order to make it happen.

Something happens, though, around the halfway point, where my clients develop what I like to lovingly call “The Itch”. They’ve spent almost 2 months figuring out what the pieces of their puzzle consist of, & they’re ready to see The Big Picture. The Dream Career. The Answer. The Key. The pressure is on. The stakes are heightened. They want to know, and they want to know now.

It’s about that time in the process that I annoyingly & purposely ask them to “live in the questions.” But what does that mean? How can you let yourself do that? And why haven’t I been punched in the face yet? Well, “living in the questions” is another way for me to say: (more…)

One Step by Art = Happy.

I feel it. It’s here. I can’t let it linger any longer, or turn my back, or sing “la-la-la” while I stick my fingers in my ears.

It’s a point. It’s turning. It’s a turning point, and I can’t pirouette in reverse. Nor do I want to. I keep moving forward, taking steps, making them baby so I move slow and steady and sure and smiling.

It’s not just me. It’s you, too. You know what I’m talking about. And if you don’t, at least not immediately, then close your eyes. Take a breath. Listen. (more…)

Layout by Khristian. I totally stole it right from her site, but I have a feeling it’s cool.

Get your mind outta the gutter – Confessions of a First Timer is a new (clean!) e-book from surface designer / photographer / new awesome friend, Khristian A. Howell! I met Khristian blocks from my home in Brooklyn, as she & Jess Swift came together from Atlanta to exhibit at Surtex, and then came together to Brooklyn to go to the Flea meet me! Khristian patiently put up with the hugging and squealing Jess & I did on the street when we (finally!) met in real life, but if I knew about Khristian’s awesomeness then like I know about it now, I would have hugged and squealed with her, too! By the time Surtex was over, the 3 of us had our own Sex & the City-like girl club (minus Miranda, I think) & cried that we would be separated ’til next year. I’m still crying. (more…)

Today is the day by The BIG Harumph

It was a huge a-ha moment for my client. So much so that she pronounced she was done with “research” & “preparation” & “ideas” – she was sick of ‘em, sick of working on that & only that for days, weeks, months, years at a time.

“I’m getting out of my head and into my hands, literally!”

It’s a statement that life coaches like me live for, & it’s now The Motivating Statement of All Motivating Statements  for this client to start (& continue!) putting one foot in front of the other. I made her post it where she can see it often, & might even make her tattoo it on her forehead backwards. (more…)

Ask For What You Want by NayArts

I’m on vacation early this week, & my clients are doing some Show & Tell! It’s time now to hear from Juliana Finch, a glorious (yes, glorious) singer/songwriter whose music will make you melt (yes, melt). If you like what you hear, help her make her new album (& have her play in your home! yes, really!) by being a backer. I became one already. Yes, the music ’s that glorious. I wasn’t kidding.

When I first discovered Michelle’s coaching practice and blog, I had one of those “Aha!” moments that Oprah talks about. Here was someone who was telling people that it is not only totally ok to be a creative person out in the world, but that your creativity is possibly integral to your well-being and can help you thrive! That idea is almost my religion, so it was immediately clear that Michelle was my kinda gal. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been getting some excellent group coaching with Michelle and it has helped me push past a plateau I’d reached regarding the business side of my creative work.

For most artists I know, the terms “business” and “money” might as well be four-letter words. Our creative work is a labor of love, so mixing it with money can feel dirty. We’re all familiar with the idea of the starving artist, right? Somehow, we’ve gotten the idea that a real artist has to be suffering and toiling in obscurity. If you’re financially secure and marketable, it must mean that you’re a sell-out. (more…)

Bee Your Very Best Self by Hip Heart

I’m on vacation this week & early next, & my clients are doing some Show & Tell! Today I have the lovely Caitlin Donohue, an avid reader and aspiring writer who blogs about her love of books and reading on her blog commonreaders, weighing in on why self-help books rock & which ones prove that point!

Self-help books tend to get a bad rap. I have friends who duck in and out of the self-help aisles in bookstores–not wanting to be caught actually looking for a book on those shelves. There’s a memorable scene from Sex and the City, when Charlotte is looking for a particular title in the self-help section and encounters a number of pathetic, sniffling people crying into their books. I think she leaves without purchasing the book-not wanting to associate herself with “those people”.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. I love self-help books and I don’t think anyone should be ashamed for reading them! The term itself is empowering: helping yourself. By reading these books you are taking steps to arm yourself with information and inspiration to make your life better. There is nothing pathetic about it. Lately, this type of books have begun to fall under the category of “personal development”, which is perhaps a trend to rebrand the genre. (more…)

Last month, I attended a pretty fantabulus webinar where Seth Godin, marketing genius guru extraordinaire deity, was interviewed about career stability in relation to the launch of his new book, Linchpin. While I’ve yet to read the book, I knew that the overall message was that you need to make yourself indespensible by becoming an expert (read: forsake all other things besides the One Thing). As a Creative, my ears perked up & my brows furrowed when I heard this. Many Creatives are also Renaissance Souls, & not only do they not want to be put in a box, but they experience major Sophie’s Choice-itis when forced to do so. With myself, my clients, & poor Jewish Meryl Streep in mind, I pounced on the opportunity to ask Seth a question:

What if I have so many interests that I can’t decide which to devote expert status to?

His response included some tough love. He immediately mentioned The War of Art, & all the excuses we make that feed Resistance. “It’s the Resistance talking, which is trying to keep you safe! Write down all the things you’re interested in, circle one to do, & do it until you get through it. That’s the purpose of our lives!” Easier said than done, right fellow Creative Renaissance Soul? Well, here are my ideas for becoming an expert while honoring your many loves:

• Find out the ideal conditions for your Renaissance Soul to be happy. For example, I have a client who learned recently that her Renaissance Soul is happiest immersing herself in one project until completion, but only if that project has an end date no more than 3 months in the future – & she knows in advance the next project to switch to. Because of those quarterly goals, she knows she’ll complete 4 projects every year, which is a high (& motivating/exciting!) number for her. Personally, I enjoy having my hands in 2 or 3 projects at a time, working on them each for about an hour a day or longer (when inspiration strikes). If I had to work on 1 project continuously until it’s done, I might go insane. To figure out how you work best, ask yourself: (more…)

Make room for your life – Postcard set by emcee

This might seem absolutely counter-intuitive to last week’s Tough (Question) Tuesday, but when you take something off of your plate, it’s because you want to make room for something else. And as a slightly hippy-dippy life coach (I’ll never be fully hippy-dippy, or at least I’ll never admit that I am if I become it), I like to think about what you’re committing to bring into your life as opposed to what you want to kick out of it. Feels happier, brighter, positive-er to me.

Today, I commit to making room for breaks – places to breathe, to explore, to think, to grow. I commit to actually putting things on my calendar so they aren’t stolen away from me, & in following through with them  – not forever (scary!), but just for this week. My journal is calling me, & I’m gonna answer the phone & talk for a while.

What will you make room for? (more…)

Fake It till you Make It by restless type

Thank you guys all so, so much for being so understanding & awesome, sharing with me your experience & words of wisdom to help me work through my Overwhelm (yes, capital O). Because of it, I’ve had some Realizations (yes, capital R) in the past day or two that I wanted to share (it’s only fair. I have brown hair. Did you give me a dare?):

• I went from about a half-dozen or so sessions each week to 15-20 over the course of the last 2 weeks. That’s about triple the workload as I was used to just a month ago! While again, I’m thrilled & thankful for all the coaching I’m doing, I had to be kidding if I thought I’d be able to handle it / know what I was doing in a week’s time. There’s a learning curve, & I’m swinging in it. I’m gonna take my own coaching “advice” & experiment over the next few weeks with how I’m structuring my time, since what worked a month ago ain’t gonna work no more, and that’s OK.
• I need to go back to being very conscientious about multi-tasking, & stopping it as much as possible. Lately, I’ve been keeping my email open all day & not making the effort to finish one thing before I start on the next. While I’m really good with that if I have a focused task to complete, like writing an exercise or copy for my project with Jess, if I’m, say, “just checking email” there are 10 things that usually bite into that, & I take my sweet time. I know I can be way more productive if I, say, just carve 2 hours into each day as “email time” & only read/return email then without opening any other tabs or doing anything else. I can also chunk my time into 45-min blocks (I heart 45-min blocks of time – any less & what’s the point, any more & I get ants in my pants) & use the last 15 min to check/return email or go on twitter or respond to blog comments. Again – experimenting!
• Really, really, truly, truly committing to step away for an hour each & every day. Now that my schedule is a 12 hour day (on paper -I usually start working 2 hours before I open my calendar up to coaching calls!) up to 3 days / week, I MUST take a break. It’s tough because I never truly feel that I’m “working” (yes, this is as awesome as it looks), & because I trick myself that nothing is more important than what I have down to work on that day, but I know it ain’t true. While I do schedule a 1 hr lunch into my Moleskin every day, I take it only in the amount it takes for me to make & eat lunch (which I always do at the table, not at my desk, & with whatever book I’m reading instead of any paperwork) & then I get back to business. I’m gonna use that hour now. Just watch me.
• Schedule 1 non-coaching call every week outside of my family/friends circle. I have so many fantabulous friends that I’ve made through the Interwebs & I love talking to ‘em, but I know that, until the fall, I can only carve an hour or so each week for those catch-ups. I think this will allow me to keep up with the friends & family that I haven’t talked to as often as I like, as well as making sure I’m only talking to the peeps I really wanna be talking to. I also need to let go of feeling like an ass when I say, “Yes, let’s catch-up! How’s Sept 12th?” I’m groaning even writing it. I’ll make sure to come up with something to say that’s not, “I’m so busy“.
• Wanna hear something creepy? When I left my job, my goal was to have 20 coaching sessions/wk. That seemed to be a good number financially & time-wise, as 20 coaching sessions = 35-40 hours of coaching + back-end work, which is a “normal” workweek. Now, I’m at about 20 coaching sessions a week. When I realized that yesterday it blew my goddamn mind. But only now can I see this for the learning experience that it is. If I want to keep up my blog, & write my newsletter (next one’s out next week!) & be a good Spring co-host & work on my project with Jess & make sure my friends & family remember what I look like….well, I’ve learned that it’s craziness. 20 coaching sessions is too much. Or, I could say, it’s too much to maintain. I’m relieved that I’ll be upping my rates & expanding my packages this weekend (yes, I’m tying my hubby to the computer to update it this weekend – no excuses! And no, you can’t get an extension on my current rates unless you subscribe to my newsletter & pay attention to the Delicious Discount that’s coming in the next issue).

So, overall, I’m remembering to breathe, being extra special nice to myself, & taking this for the learning experience that it is. And let’s be honest – this is how I want my business to be. Striving. Thriving. Bursting at the seams. (That’s what she said). I gotta get used to it & figure out how I handle it. I’ll certainly be taking this nice long weekend (&, who am I kidding, the rest of the month/summer!) to figure it out. (more…)

I’m finding my way, originally uploaded by knottednes & found via kind over matter

Even though yesterday’s Tough (Question) Tuesday (”What can you take off your plate?”) was an “easy” one (compared to “Do you believe in passion?” & “What’s your definition of success?“), it totally stumped me. I looked at it & looked at it, hoping the answer would jump out of the screen & show itself to me, all spooky word-jumble-by-a-ghost-style (like the letters of “What can you take off your plate?” suddenly form “can of pea” & that would somehow tell me something).

But nope. The Otherworld did not send my messages via my 7 year old computer (that’s getting upgraded this week! Hurry up for spooky things, Ghosts. I know you’re in here). Instead, I knew a Big Ole Brain Dump was gonna show me the way. Yup, I’m about to share my process & everything that’s on the said daily/weekly/monthly (!) To Do list (despite the fact that maybe I “shouldn’t”!). Hence, the Big Ole Brain Dump along with the estimated time that goes with each task, as I think it’ll help me sort through things:

• 7 group coaching sessions: 15 hours/week for sessions & back end work
• 13 private client sessions (email & phone): 15 hours/week for sessions & back end work
• rewriting my Services copy with new packages & pricing & (forcing Luke into) updating it to go live (Note: Once it does, I’m gonna be charging $99/session instead of $79. You better contact me now if you’re thinking of working with me, ’cause there’s no going back once that baby’s updated): 3 hours
  
• weekly Skype Boozin’ & Brainstormin’ meetings with Jess Swift (for our top secret project!): 2 hours/wk because we force ourselves to stop gabbing. Otherwise, 84 hours/wk.
• writing copy for said top secret project: 3 hours/wk, ideally.
• monthly newsletter: 5 hours/month
• Spring & all that goes with it (monthly calls, taping videos, communicating with collaborators, writing & publishing posts, etc): 20 hours/month (approximately)
• 2 new written exercises/wk for group coaching sessions: 3 hours / wk
• Taking Flight content: 3 hrs/wk
• Running 3 mornings/wk: 3 hrs/wk
• weekly business building check-in/updates: 90 min/wk
• monthly finance reconciliations: 90 min/month
• daily Hootsuite/Twitter communication: 30 min/day
• blogging 3x/wk & answering comments: 4 hrs/wk

(more…)