What are you waiting for? Let’s take on a 30 day challenge!

I love Ted Talks, they are a brilliant forum bringing quality people and their passions to live and web audiences. This Ted Talk did not disappoint, it is entitled Try Something New for 30 Days it is from Matt Cutts who implores us to try something new.

I am coming to the end of my first 31 day challenge (July has 31 days). I have been exercising daily for 24 days now and I can tell you that Matt is right. My life has more daily purpose, I am encouraged to prioritize my life and bring new balance to my daily schedule. I am much more in shape, I have more energy, I am sleeping better, and I have more confidence. A challenge like this makes 30 days so much more memorable, it instills confidence, and it has instilled in me a more adventurous spirit.

What is something you have always wanted to try? What would you do if you could try something new for 30 days?

Some advice for deciding to undertake a 30 day challenge:

1) Tell your people about it. Let them know what you are planning to do and talk about it with them…or maybe encourage them to take on a new challenge too. Whether they join you in your challenge or not it is great to have someone to encourage you when you are having a difficult day and want to just leave the challenge off for a day.

2) Take small steps, don’t take too much on, and be gentle with yourself if you have a bad day. Remember you are the master of your own challenge but don’t make excuses not to work at it.

3) Record the challenge. Take note of your progress and celebrate your wins. Journal, blog, or post on Facebook.

4) Choose something you will really enjoy! Have fun. Even if you are taking on a big challenge, know that if you are having fun you will more likely do more and get more out of it. Small changes stick and anyone can try something new for 30 days.

Now it is my time to start thinking about what I will do next. How will I make my life more beautiful, balanced, and the most spectacular it can be? 

I hope you choose something fantastic and really let your 30 days take on a real purpose. Life is so much more than going through the motions, surprise yourself and do something spectacular in August!

Voice Temporarily Misplaced

I am back, my apologies for disappearing for a bit there. For lack of a better explanation, I temporarily misplaced my voice. So we are clear I didn’t physically lose my voice, I temporarily silenced my voice in order to regroup, rebound, and otherwise get through a difficult time. Last week I experienced a challenge in the form of critical feedback that I was not expecting and it kind of knocked me off of my horse, until now I haven’t been able to get back on and continue my ride. Today’s post is an attempt to share with you a little about the situation, how I worked through the challenges associated with criticisms and judgements, where I am now because of the journey to find my voice once again, and to make peace with the criticisms and judgements so I can move forward.

In order to adequately explain what happened I have a little back story. For most of my life I have been in search of my voice, my true identity, and experiences that were mine that I can share with the world thereby sharing myself with the world. In many cases through my journey to find myself and most importantly my voice I was frequently derailed by people in my life who sought to “teach me how the world is” and to “snap me back into reality”. They would share negative feedback with me and tell me I was doing everything wrong. I guess  I started believing those voices telling me that I was nothing special and I would never amount to anything. I bought what they were selling completely. I got the idea that they could detect a defect in me that I was unable to see. I believed them because I knew they must know more that I do about me. I wholly gave over myself to others and resigned myself to the fact that they were the ones who would shape me now. How did this manifest in my life? I would rarely share an opinion with others unless I knew they shared that opinion. I rarely argued because I knew in my heart that I was always wrong. This opened me up to falling prey to people who sought to manipulate me and be negative presences in my life.

Now that I am attempting to rediscover myself and establishing my real identity, I have discovered that I am someone who has been emotionally battered and bruised. But I have not been defeated. I am still establishing who I am. I am still relatively cautious about how I use my voice and for what purpose, but I am more and more comfortable with using my voice.

 In my journey working with my life coach, I am infinitely more comfortable using my voice. I am determined to not continue to make assumptions about what others think about me and not believe those assumptions to be the absolute truth. Now I find myself in an ongoing period of discovery and I am developing the kind of emotional intelligence that I want to have. It is still very difficult for me, and the challenge I received last week illustrate this quite nicely.

Last week I received negative and critical feedback in an email from a colleague. The feedback was not only negative but also seemed to be judgmental, and worst of all it was a complete surprise. I do not like surprises especially when it involves feedback. I believe if you have information that I could have used months earlier to improve my former colleague’s experience and my performance, why would you not express it in the moment?

This critical feedback was the first significant challenge to my voice and to my sense of self with my work that I have received since I have transitioned from working with my coach to working with myself on myself. After the shock and surprise wore off I was determined to use the strategies I learned while working with my coach to help me work through it. I closed the email, I attempted to distract myself with other projects, I took a walk, and I called some of my people to get their takes on the situation. But nothing would adequately stop the criticisms from swirling around in my head and all the while the criticisms and judgements shouted at me from my memory. 

In the past I would have completely shut down to protect myself. I believed that if one person thinks this way about me EVERYONE must see it too. I have done this in the past, I would emotionally disappear from my life. A little tip, it is really difficult to be authentic when you are attempting to be emotionally void. In order to try to carry on like nothing was wrong I would act my way through situations, I would attempt to fake authenticity, which is the worst oxymoron I have ever heard.

In the current situation I decided to temporarily misplace my voice to retreat into myself (get out of my head) and search myself for how I wanted to proceed, and how I would respond. Most of all, I needed to use this period of misplaced voice to figure out how move forward and reclaim my voice once I got right with everything. And that is what I did. I also spent a good amount of time wondering: Would I be able to rebound? Could I come out of this stronger? Would my voice return to a similar strength or stronger than before?

Today I can say that I have been able to come through this challenging time. I am a little bruised but I am healing nicely and my voice is coming back. I will continue to evaluate my response to challenges and find ways to strengthen my voice – for now I will write, for now I will put my thoughts out there and be as authentic as I can be, for now I will vow not to be afraid of who I am and definitely will not be afraid of what others think about me. I will get to a place where I can sit with my voice and let it say what it needs to say. I will take my voice out for a spin every now and again. I will continue to reclaim my voice as a spectacular banner for my identity and wave it proudly! After all “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw

 

Day 2: Happy, Happy or at Least Positively Positive

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I rediscovered this quote last night and I immediately added it to my inspirational quote section of my journal and decided to touch on it in this forum. I then decided to think a good deal about how I react to difficult situation, the choices I make in choosing negativity, and what I can do to create more positivity in my life.

I am sure we all know quite a few people whose first reaction to a difficult situation is to be angry, upset, frustrated, and choose negativity. You may ask me…how do you “choose negativity”? Anger and frustration is most definitely a choice. So is boredom. It is so very easy to choose negativity. Positivity is more difficult because there are many other individuals who are quick to pile on to your negativity, it can spiral out of control a great deal and turn to a negativity-fest.

 I am consciously making choices everyday either to be angry and frustrated or to take in the difficult situation, do what I can with it, feel the frustration, learn from it, and move forward in a positive way. I am working to check myself prior to jumping on the negativity train. I am not perfect but I do know that I need to make an effort to be more positive.

In making conscious choices to be more positive, here are some tips that I am using:

1) Fake It ’til You Make It

I believe it is completely possible to change your own outlook, a good start is to fake it first. If you are trying your hardest to be positive, chances are you will choose positivity because you are already halfway there. I am not advocating making decisions to act a certain way so that you are consciously choosing not to be yourself. This is just a quick reminder to yourself like: “Hey I want to be more positive, let’s do that!” This is like adventures in positivity.

 2) Choose Happy and Remind Yourself Daily

Whenever I leave my house, my office, and walk anywhere I choose a mantra/happy feeling/happy place to think about for the day and I find something to say to myself. This morning I left my house and I made a point to say to myself…”I am choosing positivity today, I will have a great day, and I will do everything I can to keep positivity in my life today. This helps me to frame my day, so I do this at the beginning and at the end of my day so I can start and end my day with positive intentions.

 3) Spend Time Around Positive People

This may be a more difficult than the other two conscious choices. There are many people who choose negativity because it is the easiest thing. I urge you to get to know those people in your life who you think are super positive. take time to talk with them, see what they see and how they see it, and ask their advice about how you can be more positive. Be sure to compliment them on their positive outlook.

4) Take Time To Enjoy Everyday Beauty

No matter where you live, there are always opportunities to notice what is beautiful in your daily life. I live in a gorgeous place (Flagstaff, AZ) and work on an incredible college campus. I know that if I am feeling negative I can go outside, take a walk, and embrace a sunny day. I go outside with the specific intention to sit and notice the beauty around me. If you are feeling negative, change your scenery and get outside and just take in the beauty.

Changes are challenging but they can come easily. I think there are fewer changes more worth our attention than being positive and choosing positivity over negativity. It is your choice.

In closing I want to include a quote that I received from my Yogi Tea which I call inspiration in a cup. “The purpose of life is to enjoy every moment.” How will you make your day more enjoyable, positivity is a fantastic start. Positivity…just another aspect of the spectacular everyday.

Day 1: Adaptability and Team Work

It is officially Day 1 of Spectacular Everyday…where did I find my spectacular today? My spectacular happened quite early this morning as I was reporting to work at 6am.

I work with 50 incredible student Orientation Leaders. Together we plan and execute amazing transitional experiences for incoming freshmen, 10 2-day sessions, of which this is session #9. You better believe me we train them a great deal on being adaptable and rolling with changes on the fly. This morning we arrived bright and early to our check in location to find it under siege by so very many sprinklers (we send specific instructions for watering of the lawn) and today was not on that schedule. I was proud of myself and my team, we formulated a new plan on the fly and set everything up quickly according to our new plan.

In my journey to managing my emotions, staying in my own business – only in my own business, and not making assumptions about what others are thinking of me I decided to think about this situation in a new framework. I decided to think about how I handled it differently than it could have been in the past.

Normally this would have been a very stressful morning but I was able to think about it in perspective and not make any assumptions about what others are thinking about my team and about me. Instead I have been more able to see individual moments as individual moments not as moments fraught with emotional landmines. This process is truly all about growth and moving forward with my life and nowhere is this process more apparent than at work, in my professional life.

Today could have seemed disastrous and have gotten away from me quickly but I was able to handle each situation as it came.

Everyone was adaptable and worked together as a team. I could not have asked for anything better this morning and for this day.