You: before and after

I was asked once, point blank, by a someone I admire:

“How would my life be different after working with you?”

She is a successful, self-employed writer (who desires even more success) and she has a husband and a young son.

And I totally got why she was asking this of me. Because, too often, coaches and their ilk will assure you that their particular brand of InfoGenius will lead you to a blazing glory of Life Change the likes of which you cannot begin to imagine.

And they are usually right… in that you can’t quite imagine it. What does a blazing glory look like? Or lead to? (And what exactly should you pack for that trip?)

So it’s completely fair to ask, “How would my life be different after working with you?”

This is what I wrote and sent to her.

(Of course, results may vary. But see if it resonates with you.)

• • •

MONDAY MORNING

You still have your hubbie and your son and your to-do list and your dreams and your dirty dishes to be done.

But what you don’t have is that pit-of-the-stomach anxiety of being pulled in a million different directions at once.

You don’t have that aching guilt that whenever you are doing one of the Things You Should Do you are totally neglecting all of the other, equally important Things.

You are not adrift in a sea of vagueness, wondering HOW you are going to get off this (cool yet no longer stimulating) plateau and up to the next (much awesome-er) level.

Not you.

Because you are dialed in to your passion, because you now know exactly what your next steps needs to be, and because you are now committed to putting your own agenda first, YOU are able to ROCK your day. If you want to. If you’d prefer to glide through it with quiet certainty, you can totally do that too.

When you are doing one thing there’s no nagging guilt about “neglecting” the other stuff because you now have a life that feels interconnected – with each activity and relationship feeding into what you are focused on achieving – so there is no “wasted time”… when you are doing one thing, you comprehend how it is contributing to moving the whole of your career forward.

Playing with your son feeds your career focus. Responding to this particular email feeds your career focus. As does deleting that one. (Even doing the dishes feeds your career focus because it gives you some peace of mind that lets you then write that article without needing to ingest a bag of M&M’s to keep your butt in the chair.)

And you are sure of all this because you have already taken time to make room in your life for what you really want. You have released, purged, and dumped the mental (and physical) clutter of “shoulds” and delayed decisions and other people’s agendas that have been taking up way too much of your time, energy, and money. You now know what you have, and have only what you need and love.

Decisions? Opportunities? Bring them on. Watch you make ‘em cuz you now have filters through which to process them. “How well does this feed my focus?” Boom goes the dynamite.

Weekly/monthly/yearly planning? Yessiree – your agenda is pre-chosen and put front and center in your schedule, or planning chart, or on the back of your hand (cuz, you know, it will sweat off in the palm.)

Faith in yourself? Solid. You re-commit, on this and every Monday, to betting on yourself – with the full intention of winning that bet. (Dance break!)

That’s sounds good. But this is only Monday – the week is still fresh, the dew is still on the leaves. Anything could happen…

MID-WEEK

What if, right in the middle of your week an awesome opportunity of epic proportions is FedEx’d to your doorstep directly from The Universe and you are compelled to significantly shift career gears for the foreseeable future?

Not a problem. You can handle it.

You have been learning from someone who is an expert in helping people successfully and smoothly change course – SO you have been cultivating the mental and emotional flexibility to make transitions nimbly (dare I say, enthusiastically?) Okay, well, at least with the wherewithal say hello to Change through the crack in your door (with the chain still on) yet not so slowly that it picks up its box-o-opportunity and departs because it thinks you’ve left town for good.

But.

What if a wee bit of shite hits the fan and all of a sudden family members are coming to visit TOMORROW with Papers to Sign and Things to Discuss. And they want you to take them to an amusement park… you know, since they’re in town. Nevermind that your server is down.

Not a problem. You can handle it.

You have been learning from someone who is an expert in helping folks who had totally abandoned planning because their schedules were blown to smithereens on a fairly regular basis – SO, you have been cultivating the mental and emotional resiliency to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and deal with life’s hurricane of poop. Plus, you have the passion (and the planning chart) that enable you get back on track come Monday morning (or AsSoonAsHumanlyPossible. After allowing yourself to freak out a little, of course. And then decompress from the freakout.)

But.

What if you just get stuck mid-week (or at any time). Stuuuuck, stuck, stuck, stuck. Stuck.

Not a problem. You won’t stay stuck any longer than is absolutely necessary.

You now have the perspective that being “stuck” is a signal that it’s time to have a conversation or two. And you now have the networking guidelines and the confidence to select and extend yourself to quality people – and you know exactly how to language your requests in ways that lower their defenses and inspires them to help you. Without you feeling icky, intrusive, aggressive, or needy. And you now have one more person on your team who can help connect you to fabulous new resources and peeps!

SATURDAY NIGHT

Because you have gone through the week putting your agenda first, you have the satisfaction and clarity that yeah, pretty much what you wanted to get done this week got done, and what didn’t get done can shift into next week, no harm, no foul, no hemorrhaging energy worrying, regretting, cramming, stressing.

Ahhh, that feels goooood.

But this isn’t just a “feeling” you have. This is not you randomly taking your emotional temperature and arbitrarily deciding “I think that was a good week” or “I should probably work harder next week.”

Nope.

These days, your sense of satisfaction comes from knowing you met the metrics (“I’m gonna do this thing for this many hours or this many times”) that you decided upon at the beginning of your week. You hit your marks and thus efficiently and effectively moved your career forward one more week in the direction of your dream; ample money and progress were actually made.

So tonight – and NOT because you’ve “earned” the right to relax – but because you totally believe that caring for yourself, experiencing pleasure, and nurturing your relationships ARE part of what fuels your business prowess – tonight you will use what you learned to honestly rank your priorities…

…will it be bath then dinner then movie then snuggling… or snuggling, bath, movie, dinner… or snuggling in the bath then dinner in front of the telly…?

And these activities will be enjoyed thoroughly and consciously. You won’t be using them merely as a mental escape while you attempt to recover from burnout.

Nope.

You’ve become great at keeping burnout at bay by establishing external sources of support, accountability, and inspiration that you can draw upon whenever you need them so you are no longer trying to self-generate what you need to keep your career and your spirit going. Thus, when you have down time, you (more often than not) have the energy to embrace it rather than merely collapse into it.

Your Saturday nights are not spent playing catch-up and dreading your Monday mornings.

And your Mondays are spent doing what you know you were put here on Earth to do.

photo: my sister on a stroll in Ireland

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