Ready for Change

I felt bold one year ago when I owned up to hating SMART goals. I chucked the whole idea and committed instead to sitting down everyday with my intentions for the year. So how’d it work out? Is it worth trying, or was my 2010 a failed attempt that will send me scurrying back to Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timebound?

2010: Intentions and Results

I honour my body and my health. I moved to a house with a kitchen that makes me want to cook healthy food. I alternated running, walking, and yoga. Best of all, I get enough sleep all the time. I’m learning that the more I embrace my rhythms, rather than fight them, the healthier I am all around.

I am confident that I am on track to eliminate debt and generate wealth. I tracked what I earned and spent, and I asked for and heeded advice. I stopped giving away my labour and talent for free. I learned to say “no” to work I didn’t want, and I noticed that every time I did say “no”, another opportunity opened up. Then some magic happened too, and I’m beginning 2011 with a bank account balance that fills me with relief rather than stress.

I am open to possibilities, and I am grounded in my own focus. I am learning to say a true yes and a true no: a true yes to possibilities that resonate with my own focus, and a true no to possibilities that do not. I continue to learn this lesson.

I am successful and I am making valuable change in people’s lives. You don’t have to take my word for it–you can read what my profiled clients have to say.

I am open to friendships and I nourish my friendships. I am learning to practice generosity. I have nourished some friendships this year while neglecting others. I have been outlandishly generous one moment, and stingy and hoarding the next. But throughout the year, this intention kept bringing me back to how I want to be, and encouraging me to keep trying.

I show my family, through my actions and my words, that I love them. I now live just three blocks away from my sister and her daughter. My sister and I ran together three mornings a week during the summer, and my niece spent part of both her summer and winter vacations hanging out with me full-time. I skype my parents a few times a week, and send my mom postcards. And I’m now engaged in the creative act of a whole new family (see “I can love and be loved” below).

I recognize my habits and patterns and actively experiment with new ways of being. Some of the things I actively experimented with: letting go of the outcome, abandoning my schedule, not writing things on lists, answering fewer emails, relinquishing the need to be right, decisions that came from courage rather than fear.

I stand, speak, and act with confidence. After a year of paying attention to confidence, I’ve made some progress: when asked about my work, I now answer confidently and proudly that I am a life coach and a therapist, and I believe whole-heartedly in what I do. I step forward more readily with offers of my work, and I am quicker to celebrate my successes with others rather than hiding my light under a bushel.

I laugh everyday. I seek out things that make me laugh and think (like xkcd, or Doonesbury), and value more and more the people who make me laugh. I even married one of them (see below).

I make time to create. I created two homes I love, rewrote a website, finished writing a book, and each month made visioning dreamboards.

I value peace and beauty. I wrote this intention as a reminder to myself that setting up surroundings that I love, spending time looking at leaves on the trees, and sitting in silence are all important and nourishing for me. A wellspring from which everything else is drawn.

I can love and be loved. This intention was scary to write. It was scary to think. It was especially scary to post on a blog. Deep down, are we not all a little bit afraid of being unlovable? And perhaps insecure about our ability to give love? In writing it, I had no inkling that come September I would marry the love of my life. I could not have foreseen that. But I could put out the intention to love and be loved, and, magically, it happened.

2011: What Intentions Will You Make?

Whether you wish to reflect, to set goals, to harness intentions, or just to enjoy excellent company, you are invited to Two Hours of Perspective on January 22, an event I host specifically to create the time and space for people to look back on the year that is past, and gather focus and groundedness for the year to come.

What results might you be celebrating in January 2012? 
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I have been struggling to put one foot in front of the other lately. My list of projects and tasks is piling up, and every time I look at it all I want to do is have a nap. Not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, I keep trying to slog ahead, ignoring that my motivation is shrivelling, my energy is dwindling, and I’m starting to resent things I usually enjoy.

I finally realized that, if I want to actually recoup energy and interest, I can no longer put off taking time off. And then all the Reasons-Why-I-Can’t started piling up: I can’t afford a vacation right now / I can’t take time off work / I already have all these commitments / I’ll be letting people down. Fortunately, eventually my coaching training kicked in and asked me to question both my assumptions and my perspectives.

Ok, I thought. Maybe I can’t go to France for a week. But there must be things that I can take vacation from. I started making a list, and with every item I added I felt more energized.

As you check it out, I invite you to ask yourself, “What do I need a vacation from?” Small or large, I bet that at least part of your self-made vacation is right here, within reach, just waiting for you to kick back with a mojito.

So, here it is: things I can and will take vacation from until September 1st:

• Blogging.
• My RSS Feed.
• Twitter, Facebook, and most of the internet.
• Making daily and weekly to-do lists.
• Tracking how I spend my money. (An end of month total will suffice this month.)
• Sending non-necessary emails / replying to emails that can wait.
• Reading any list-serve or newsletter emails.
• Beating myself up for not doing the project work I was planning to do in August.
• Reading books for next year’s coursework.
• Business development.
• Planning.
• Writing and sending my coaching-tip-of-the-week newsletter.
• Any business-related administrative work that is non-urgent.
• Checking email more than twice a day.
• Writing my Monday notes to self / intentions for the week.
• Scheduling any new social engagements. Spontaneous things – great; scheduled things – stressful.
• Writing letters and postcards.
• That list of phone calls that is on my white board and keeps taunting me with it’s not-yet-done-ness. I’m erasing it – now!
• The radio. I’m going to listen inward instead.
• A weekly assessment of all my tasks, projects, and ideas. (Yes, you may be noticing that I need a break from my usual super-organized and planning self.)
• Trying to control my feelings. If I’m sad, lonely, tired, happy, excited, whatever, I’m just going to go with it instead of trying to figure it out.
• Making decisions.
• Going the extra mile.
• Offering help.
• Trying to be smart.
• Trying to have it figured out.

Wow. What a relief! I’m stunned to see how many things in my average week I can write off if I choose to. Where did they all come from?

And, to round this out, here is what I choose not to take vacation from:

• Email twice a day
• Already scheduled coaching and work commitments
• Social engagements I have already committed to
• Running
• Being an aunt and a sister
• My volunteer gig
• Two business projects that I’ve put a September 1st deadline on
• Dreaming
• Imagining

I’ll be back in September. Until then, you can find me making mojitos. 
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The “aha” is a golden moment in coaching. Sometimes it’s quiet and subtle – a shift in tone, a drop in one’s voice, a powerful few seconds of silence. Sometimes it’s loud and blaring: “I can’t believe I didn’t see that!” “Of course I can!” Sometimes a client is surprised when he or she says something that takes his or her own breath away.

A U.K. researcher, Leigh Longhurst, explored the “aha” moment in the model of coaching I use, Co-Active coaching. From the abstract of the research paper:

Findings reveal that the ‘Aha’ moment is experienced somatically and emotionally as well as cognitively, with the striking of many chords across a spectrum of consciousness from body, to mind, to soul, to spirit (Wilber 1989). The more chords it strikes, the greater the resonance and degree of cognitive and behavioural change.

You can download the entire paper here, and read about the theory behind the “aha”. 
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