Your Courageous Life

Six months of courage from Kate Swoboda on Vimeo.

Oh, dear. Once I finally finished everything I realized that there are a few transitions in this that clip off a word. I hope you’ll forgive me…

One thing that I do with Courageous Year participants is offer the opportunity to take a moment for assessment. I think that this is, rather than being an exercise in self-hate (“Oh, man, now I need to assess myself and see all the ways that I’m STILL not doing what I should be doing…”) it can be an exercise in commitment & accountability and in acknowledgement.

This video felt a little tender to make–I am being courageous and leaning into that tender spot of admitting to fear (“terrifying” is the word I use most!)–but it is honest. Thank you for bearing witness.

Antique shop, Petaluma, CA.

It’s been a few days since my last entry, in which I shared a wee little secret I’d been keeping to myself for a little over a week–that I am writing a book (and by the way, the response to this news? So encouraging. Everything from comments to emails to FB posts–so much love going around).

It has been a really lovely couple of days, marinating in this writing process again. I’m really glad that I gave myself some time to let the work I am doing be my own little secret, to get some momentum. I’ve written before about how it is that we can choose to let telling others be part of our work with commitment and accountability, and in this case I noticed that having started some of the work before announcing the work, I was able to make some headway. I think that had I not started this work and just announced it, first, I would have experienced more fear of the “Oh, shit, I just told people I was going to do this sort of BIG THING, and now I’m going to “have to” do it because I told everyone” variety.

So, okay. I’ve told people what I’m doing. I’ve been working myself. And now the question comes in, one that is so important for projects of any scale, though particularly so with creative projects, and that is how to handle deadlines. Deadlines will either kill you or save you. It’s all in how you hold them.

I’m thinking of getting my M.A. in writing when I’m thinking of this. I had a friend who was really a lovely writer, with the one main consistent critique of her work being that she meandered a bit too much, went on a bit too long with a passage and then lost the narrative thread of the story along the way. And it occurs to me now that perhaps some of our strengths and weaknesses in writing (or anything else) are tied up in how we handle deadlines.

This friend of mine often struck me as paralyzed around deadlines. Our fiction workshops were set up in such a way that at the beginning of a quarter a rotating schedule would be determined to see who would be presenting on a certain day. This was done so that you’d know well in advance when you had something due, and you could make the appropriate number of copies for everyone in the workshop the week prior to when you were reviewed. Then we’d take those copies home, review them, and come to the next week’s class prepared (and the next writer in rotation  would be there with copies for us to take home and review).

Some people in the program wrote in big, passionate bursts–not procrastinating, but clearly following some kind of wave of creativity that would come in big and strong like water crashing onto the surf, then receding. I always leaned towards the “put a bit of time in several days a week” method. Other writers forced themselves to sit at a desk every single day, berating themselves if they missed a day. My friend tended to treat writing like it was “due,” an assignment that she needed to take care of. I can’t remember ever hearing her talk about writing just for pleasure during the two years that we were in school together, and as I look back I wonder how much I really knew her inner workings at all.  But I do remember what I observed, and what I observed was that she avoided writing in the weeks leading up to when something was due. Perhaps she’d do a bit here and there. But she didn’t really, really put time in until just a few days before, and the night before, she had to bring the photocopies to class.

Then she’d show up in class with a worried look on her face, circles under her eyes, her hair clearly unwashed. And she was such a lovely person that I remember really feeling something for her in that, really having empathy for how much struggle she clearly put her tiny body through just to make that deadline. Had she felt she could drop the deadline altogether, I believe she would have. I mentioned that a common critique of her writing was that it was strong, but sometimes meandering–there were threads that went too far, things like that.

Had she had a different relationship with deadlines, would she have given herself time to see where things went to far and been able to edit them out?

This is where we get into deadlines as both friend and foe, the thing that will either kill you or save you. What kind of relationship do you have with deadlines? Do you loathe them? Are they paralyzing? And why?

As I’m working on my own book now, and I have a September deadline, I also have another deadline coming up–my own self-care vacation/hiatus. Back in October of 2009, I sat down with a 2010 Franklin Covey calendar and planned out my own Courageous Year–when I’d like to launch new things, when I’d like to hold retreats, when I’d like to take a vacation so that I could get some rest. I’ve learned over the years that my vacations are like savasanas in yoga, a space I can create between postures to completely relax and thus rejuvenate (P.S. Look for my upcoming article on this in the Courageous Conversations column at Wish Studio).

My savasana will be from June 12th-July 12th. I’ve been giving my postures (my life, my relationship, my work, my creativity) 100% of myself in these past few months, and I look forward now to just letting go in the in-between. I’m still going to be popping into the blog now and again–as someone who’s been blogging since 1998 as a labor of love, not something to do just for marketing props, I find it a perfectly fun thing to do while on vacation–but I do want to have the bulk of my workload mapped out. And I am finishing work on the Across Mediums e-book course, and adding a lot to it, and generally rocking out there.

So it’s all about how I hold the deadline. How much tension do I want to have around it? How will I hold space for meeting a goal? Will I hold it as a “have to” or a “get to”?

I think that deadlines are fantastic motivators. I know how great it feels to meet a goal, and I know that what I’ve found works for me is to create slow but steady work each day. I try not to get too caught up in the days when not a lot happens, or when I realize that after some editing, I’m cutting a substantial amount of work because it just wasn’t a fit. In the end, my ultimate deadline is to create this body of work that I look in the mirror and feel genuinely proud of, and I think that that’s what’s happening with me, with the Courageous Year e-book. I am waking up in the morning enthusiastic about something that I can put my heart behind. That feels amazing.

How do you handle deadlines? When are they helpful, and when are they not?

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Okay. So some of you might remember this post, where I realized that after taking some conscious time away from writing, I was ready to dive back in and start making it a regular part of my life practice, again. It has been a really blissful experience to fall back into this. I have started attending my writing group again. I feel at home.

And then something in me whispered: “It’s time to write that book.”

What book? I’m thinking. Which one? Because if there is anything that a writer has a lot of laying around, it’s those books that have been started but never finished. (“Creative abortions,” my grad school cohort darkly termed such things).

And then I realized what book it was.

The Courageous Year.

Of course.

There have been any number of moments of panic that I’ve had since I started flying solo. Unfortunately, being someone who rocks out at holding space for others does not mean being immune to such pitfalls as looking around in total fear and going, “What the hell am I DO-ing?” And after each of these moments, what I keep coming back to is that what I’m DO-ing is I’m being courageous. What I’m DO-ing is I’m having my own private Courageous Year, right here right now, and the cool thing about that is when I sink down into just living my truth, and that’s all it’s about, a switch gets flipped–the switch from DOing to BEing.

And that BEing is pretty blissful.

Which is why spending three hours in the library today, working on a book called The Courageous Year left me with that same wobbly-legged ecstatic natural high can you believe it life is so beautiful feeling. Also why a quick dig through a box of writing stuff in my closet quickly revealed the early drafts of this that began working on back in 2008, drafts that I had almost completely forgotten about the existence of, drafts that I had bound and sent to various corners of the United States to get feedback from test readers.

My inner little girl is doing the happy dance right now, because my goodness but it’s real–I’m writing a book. And this is something she has always wanted to do, and has done before, but then they get finished and filed away.

This one will get to see the light of day, because I’m going to turn it into a digital e-book. I’m going to include all of the videos and interviews and general courageous goodness and encouragement and the You Matter and the woo woo stuff that’s so fun and the practical tools, and then, because I don’t believe a book on its own can change anything and also because talking to people one-on-one is the best part anyway, I’m going to combine it with coaching. Also, I’m going to form a Courageous Community, giving people working the book the opportunity to connect with one another.

My inner little kid is doing a total happy dance right now because yeah, we’re totally going to combine things she loves and rock out and play with it. Also, she’s pretty happy right now because, uh, we actually already started working on this book. And it’s FUN.

The Courageous Year will be available as a downloadable book in September 2010–and I’m doing pre-orders, now. And rather than trying to do the scarcity-fear-harried-panic thing, I want to inspire “I get a bonus!” glee in anyone who decides to pre-order, so all pre-orders are getting a chunk of immediate downloadable goodness called Shift : Plan. Click here for more details.

Courageous Question: What gleeful, joyful desire lurks beneath your waves? What would have your inner little kid doing the happy dance?

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Okay, then–this is the last and final key (so far, anyway!). If you missed any of the keys, mosey on over to Part One, and then the links to click through each key will be towards the top of the page, arranged chronologically.

Key #10: Trust that your right people will find you. It never ceases to amaze me how right on the universe at large can be. Trust, trust, trust. I learned (or, re-learned) this back in January/February. I was totally stressed during that time, feeling myself acutely in the middle of the throes of “what am I doing?” and “will I be able to pay rent?” Tons of fear. Tons. It was all normal, related to me doing something I was new at. The fear would reach a certain threshold and then I’d use a tool and I’d get unattached to outcome again, and then–calls came in. I know. It sounds all woo-woo. But I’m going to defer to Key #7 on this, and say that my way might differ, but I honor it. When I’m clinging, not only does my life not work but I believe that I block my own access. And when I say that calls come in, I don’t mean that clients necessarily come in. I mean, during the weeks when I was in the thick of it, it was like a dead zone. When I let go of attachment and trusted, a supportive email would come in. An invite to collaborate on something. A new idea that ended up resonating with people. So I’m not talking about letting go of attachments and trusting to get more money (though I don’t knock that). I’m talking about letting go of attachment because it’s a better quality of living and opens us up. We look less desperate and are less inclined to violate Key #9 when we’re open and in acceptance of where we’re at with our process.

So really, perhaps the biggest thing I’m learning as I define for myself what Courageous Marketing looks like for me is that I’m powerful when I both go towards my inner YES/what resonates, as well as when I allow the process to unfold.

I share the Courageous Marketing Manifesto with you because I know that there are some entrepreneurs out there, some people who are also working on how to find ways to get the word out about what they do, to risk being seen, and they want to do what works but they also want to do what feels good and authentic. Feel free to pass this along.

And also? What would you add to this? Are there any Keys that you’ve discovered for yourself that might be helpful to others?

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I’m continuing with my Keys in Courageous Marketing from my Courageous Marketing Manifesto, a way that I’m defining for myself what is comfortable to me and what is not around spreading the word about what I do. If you missed Part One, read it here.

Key #9: Don’t manipulate! Like the coach who had her assistant call me the other week, implying that she was interested in starting a practice with me, saying she wanted to “collect research” when really, she was collecting info on how I run my business? Yeah. I thought that call seemed fishy, and a quick input of the phone number into Google showed me what was up. To not put too fine a point on it–That’s nutty behavior. Not at all authentic. Hopefully not the behavior you encourage in your clients. Call me up and invite me out for a lovely cup of rooibos tea and I’ll tell you anything you wish to know, because I have nothing to hide. But for goodness sakes, no attempts at subterfuge.

QUESTION: What have you seen that you considered manipulative, on the web? Have you had anyone call you as I was called?

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I’m continuing with my Keys in Courageous Marketing from the Courageous Marketing Manifesto, a way that I’m defining for myself what is comfortable to me and what is not around spreading the word about what I do. If you missed Part One, read it here.

Key #8: Create win-wins. My favorite kind of Courageous Marketing, my de-facto, my default, the thing that I like to do the most, is anything that creates a win-win. I admire greatly the people who are so popular on the web that people will blog about them or tweet about what they’re doing without any prompting. Certainly, it would be nice if a whole collection of people were going, “Gee, that Kate Swoboda. She’s spiffy. Let’s share what she does with others” and I needn’t do a thing. But even if that were the case, I think I’d still immensely enjoy win-win marketing: both of us win. So for instance, any time you see an interview online, that’s totally marketing. Of course it is. But to me, it’s win-win marketing. If I do an interview for someone and they post it on their website, I win because their readers learn about me and they win because they get content on their site that their readers want to see. I’m going to spread word about the interview, and so will they. Danielle LaPorte did this beautifully when launching The Fire Starter Sessions, recently (see below for the link).

And if you’ve been thinking of seeing if we could collaborate on an interview, but were afraid to ask? Ask away!

QUESTION: How do you create win-wins with what you do in your job?

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* Truth Never Attacks: An Interview With Danielle LaPorte

I’m continuing with my Keys in Courageous Marketing from the Courageous Marketing Manifesto, a way that I’m defining for myself what is comfortable to me and what is not around spreading the word about what I do. If you missed yesterday’s Key, visit the “flying solo” category.

Key #7: Honor my work in my way, even if it differs. You’ve probably noticed that just about every other coaching site out there has packages. Lots and lots and lots of packages. Small packages and big ones and upgrades. I’ve heard that some coaching schools include courses on marketing as part of their programs and that the package thing is big. For years now, I’ve thought about the package concept. Did it work for me? And what I keep coming back to is that it’s not a match. For some coaches, it seems to work beautifully in attracting clients. It doesn’t vibe for me. Mostly because I think to myself that I worked for two years (and continue to find ways to work more) to gain a specific skillset in how I show up, how I am present, with another human being, and that that skillset is valuable and outside the realm of needing to be packaged to help ease someone into buying. I don’t see therapists–who trained in their own, different but just as valuable skillset–offering packages. Or doctors. Or lawyers. Or teachers. Or artists. Or accountants. Or really anyone, except in a few select industries and the coaching industry happens to be one of them. So I just do a flat-rate because that’s what resonates with me and I know I’m worth my rate (and other coaches can laugh at me and roll around naked in piles of cash; that’s okay). This doesn’t just happen with packages, by the way. It happens with how coaches use certain terms (the inner critic vs. gremlin vs. monster vs. self-hate vs. whatever being a term that many people differ greatly on). At the end of the day, I’m behind my choice and trusting that they are behind theirs (so I honor them for that. My way’s not better, it’s just my way).

On Monday, I’ll be updating with Key #8, Create win-wins. In the meantime:

QUESTION: How do you honor yourself with what you do? Is there anything that’s commonly practiced by others in your field, that you consciously choose not to do because it just doesn’t resonate for you?

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I’m continuing with my Keys in Courageous Marketing from yesterday’s Courageous Marketing Manifesto, a way that I’m defining for myself what is comfortable to me and what is not around spreading the word about what I do. If you missed yesterday’s Part One, read it here.

So we continue:

Key #6: Don’t over-do it. Now, the “over-doing” it part is highly personal. So as you read what I write next, keep in mind that I’m just sharing what works for me, within my own concept of Courageous Marketing. For instance, I think “over-doing it” shows up in the form of attaching one’s business name to everything. I personally am turned off when I’m in a space that is supposed to be ad/marketing free, such as an e-course, and someone is using an icon of their business instead of a photo, or their business name as a username, or a tagged link to their business appears with every post. I find it has the opposite effect–instead of being more interested in what the person might offer, I want to get away from it. It doesn’t feel authentic, because I know that that person is not their business. The person is a person first– a brand or business, second. Now, I have heard that it’s something like for every 1,000 times someone sees your business name, only 1% of the time will someone act. Something like that. I wonder if that idea is changing in the new business world, because people today know when they’re being marketed to. I know that that top-level athlete doesn’t really drink a ton of soda in order to improve his basketball game–he’d be an idiot to do that. You know it, too. So I’m thinking that over-marketing it something like telling a joke one too many times. I’d rather open my heart in a real way with you the few times I do encounter you, than practically use blinking text and a highlighter to let you know when I’m opening an e-course again (And again, some marketing people might laugh at me while they roll around naked in their cold, hard cash; that’s okay).

Tomorrow, and each day for the next several days, I’ll be posting one new Key, some piece that resonates with me about how to share what I do in a way that honors who I am. Are you on board?

So I share the Courageous Marketing Manifesto with you because I know that there are some entrepreneurs out there, some people who are also working on how to find ways to get the word out about what they do, to risk being seen, and they want to do what works but they also want to do what feels good and authentic. Feel free to pass this along.

QUESTION: What would you add to this? What is “too much” for you? How do you know the difference (for you) between “too much” and “fear of being seen”?

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* The Courageous Marketing Manifesto (Part One)

* Truth Never Attacks: An Interview With Danielle LaPorte

On the side of a newspaper dispenser in San Francisco.

Okay. So. Those of you who have been following my blog for awhile now, know that an area of seeming discontent for me has been around marketing.

Here I am. I run a business. I need to “market myself.”

But what exactly does that mean? I found it both surprising and–to be completely honest–a bit disappointing that much of my time would necessarily be taken up with learning about, and implementing, something that involved “marketing myself.” I laugh to think of it now, but it seriously did not occur to me that this was something I’d need to spend much time on beyond getting my website in good shape, SEO-wise. And as a side note? I am not a fan of the word “marketing.” It’s too similar in my head to another m-word…”manipulation.”

It seems to me that at the heart of most marketing messages is some attempt on the part of the person/entity doing the marketing to make whatever is being sold seem as easy and effortless to implement as possible. And I have been so, so resistant to participating in that because let’s be real. With what I do, working with people–frankly, sometimes transforming yourself and rocking out your life, and sometimes even just relaxing enough to have fun and PLAY is not so easy and effortless, is it? I’m not committed to a Story that it “has to” be hard and I’m convinced that a ton of fun can be had along the way. But the quick n’ snappy , 1-2-3 steps to a perfect life thing? Nah.

There are a few keys I think I’m picking up along the way, and I’m pulling them together into my idea of what I call “courageous marketing.” Yes, that’s right. I am redefining it for myself because in the face of some of the stuff I see online, it seems I have the choice to either get defeated or to empower myself to construct it for me.

So here’s Part 1 of my Courageous Marketing Manifesto, complete with handy-dandy Keys that I use to determine what works for me, and what doesn’t.

Key #1: Show up online like I show up in the world. That is to say: silly, tenderly irreverent, funny, joyFULL, committed to my vision, in process, willing to ask good questions, observant, intelligent, serious, not too serious, willing to be utterly random. This is #1 for me, because if I start even trying to write copy that conforms to anything I’m not actually interested in writing about, my joy levels go way down–and that is not why I decided to start doing work that I love.

Key #2: Make my courageous marketing work about how I can a.) get the word out about what I do, while b.) being completely transparent as to what I see the process being about, while c.) letting people know that I’ve done my own work, I continue to do my work, and I know my shizzle and can help someone through.

Key #3: While soliciting people to learn from, ask lots of questions to begin with to make sure you’re connecting with someone who has a shared vision. Early on in trying to learn more about how to spread word of what I do, I purchased this e-book/consultant package. I was super-excited, spent a bunch of time (we’re talking hours and hours) going over this e-book, prepping my questions. The consultant was billed as hot stuff, we had a half hour, and I wanted to be ready to rock and roll. But when it came down to the consult? They hadn’t looked at my website or concept or anything.  Scheduling the consult itself was a nightmare of unreturned emails and unnecessary complications. And the call itself? A nightmare of rushing, plus a disrespectful tone of voice at one point. I will never purchase something from that person, again, and I’d hesitate strongly before purchasing something from anyone they collaborated with. BUT–at the end of the day, we’re all adults, here. You and me–we’re grownups, now. We gotta ask questions, beforehand. If we need something, we gotta speak up and say what we need. I made assumptions about how the process would work based on my own standards. My standards aren’t everyone else’s.

Key #4: When something new doesn’t feel like a match, give it time rather than speaking in absolutes. There was a point in time when I swore that I hated Twitter. Now I find it kind of fun. I’m trying to notice where, when I think of a new way to share what I do with others, I might hesitate because I’m afraid of either a.) risking/being seen or b.) judgement/coming across as one of those “marketing types.” The fear is a comfort zone issue, not a marketing issue.

Key #5: Stick to your guns when it really hits a nerve. Perhaps the thing I’ve found most appalling when I’ve read about marketing is the encouragement to suck up to people who get a lot of traffic so that they’ll think you want to be friends and then start pimping your stuff. This hits my “manipulation” button in big ways. I’m open to the idea that I might reframe it more positively in the future (see Key #4), and yet at this point, it seems vitally important to me that I’m only connecting with people with whom I genuinely resonate, and that I let those connections be organic. I want to connect with people who have open hearts and a willingness to share their wisdom. Period. And I hope that anyone who reaches out to me has the same desire. Period.

I’ll be updating these Keys each day this week–check back for more.

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I’ve been a fan of Danielle LaPorte from White Hot Truth for some time. I resonate deeply with people who are stepping into who they are, where they are, and being honest about that process (even if it goes against the status quo. Even if it might not always be “perfect”).

She’s starting a new program (a world wide premiere, in fact) of Fire Starter Sessions via digital book, and presented the opportunity to fans to interview her about who she is and what she does and why she does it and how she does it and…you get the idea.

The interview is here for you to listen to–this is a basic embedded sound file, so hopefully your computer’s music software will support it! There’s lots of great stuff in here, including some wisdom on stepping into speaking your truth: “Truth never attacks.”

Truth Never Attacks: An interview with Danielle LaPorte from Kate Swoboda on Vimeo.

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View of the Bay Bridge. February, 2010.

When I was in graduate school getting my Master’s in English (Creative Writing), I remember Pam Houston saying on the topic of first novels and the rush to publication, “You’re only a virgin, once.”

There was so much communicated in that statement. I felt as though for one instant, I could see that for as badly as I wanted to publish a book, I needed to watch out and make sure that the moment did not blow me by, because this space of not-knowing, of not being pressured to produce (because apparently, the 2nd-novel pressure is a hell all unto itself) was in fact a great thing. There is space in that place before there are any expectations.

I haven’t yet published a book (more than a few unpublished novels and short stories are filed away in my cabinet drawers; after years of pushing myself to send out my writing every single month, without fail, I have taken a conscious hiatus from all of it for the past two years). I don’t know what it’s like to feel pressure to produce a second novel, or to owe my writing to anyone on a consistent basis, and yet I am learning what it is like to invest myself fully in what I am passionate about. I am learning where my “off” switch is, and I am learning when to turn it off myself without waiting for sickness or exhaustion to tell me DANGER, WILL ROBINSON, TURN OFF NOW.

I really resonated with this article from Chris Guillebeau on working for yourself. In particular, with what he mentions about the crisis management aspect of things. Spambots are attacking my server, pinging and trying to find ways in, attempting to register themselves as members of my e-course? There’s no IT department to call for that. And unlike the days when the college I worked for sent students registration packets, login information, etc., that is work that I am doing myself. Not to mention navigating what feels authentic to me around marketing/getting the word out about what I do, without spending so much time on that that it no longer feels like I’m able to devote time to the work of growing who I am, keeping grounded with my personal tools, meeting with clients, responding to emails, etc.

Several people have asked me if I have any regrets. My answer? No. Absolutely not. I have no doubt in my mind that this space, right here, is where I’m meant to be at for this time in my life. Do you ever feel hit with that inner knowing, even when things are challenging? That’s what I feel I’m navigating. I like doing all that I do.

At the same time that I like it, it really surprised me when earlier this week I had some trouble sleeping and knew–just knew–that the reason for that was that I had way too much going on for this week. There really was nothing to be done about it–except offload my Story that it all “had to” be done and be willing to parcel out more time for self-care (which I promptly got started on). Assorted techie issues that go on behind the scenes have been causing enough problems that I’m doing some major reworking and overhauling and this work, quite simply, needs to be done. That’s all. But related to Chris’s comments on the unexpected things that go along with working for yourself, and in my quest to be totally transparent about my experience of working for myself, I gotta say: it did not even occur to me, not even once, when I was leaving my job, that I would have weeks where techie issues would require me being on the computer for long spaces of time. Now that I’m here, it’s like, “Well, duh. Who did you think would take care of that?” I simply didn’t! I was too excited about writing about courageousness, opening up more client time, and interacting with people.

And ohmigosh, this is of course the week when spring has sprung and it’s juicy and delicious and sunshine-ey outside, with the light just beckoning for me to come out and PLAY! Snap photos! Play hookey and see if the boss notices!

(Oh, wait. I’m the Boss Lady? Hmmm.)

There are a few things I’m doing that really help with the feelings of overwhelm that can come up, however. A big one is padding everything. I add an extra 15-30 minutes onto each task in my daily calendar, assuming it will take more time than originally slated to take. If it doesn’t take that extra time, then whew! I get some time to just stare off into space, have some tea, sit on the porch in a patch of that sunshine. If it does take that extra time, I’m covered. Pad, pad, pad. I’m a big Time Padder.

Also, I take huge cues from Rich and Yvonne Dutra-St.John of the Challenge Day organization. These folks, who have an MTV show about their work starting soon, who have been on Oprah multiple times, (and who are slated to be interviewed for my e-course–yowza!), are some of the busiest people on the planet. Yet the way they plan their calendar is via their priorities–they plan time for one another first, and then the other stuff comes second. My coach, Matthew, often reminds me that if you want to know what someone is really about, look more at what they do than what they say. Rich & Yvonne prioritize their relationship, and that’s not just talk. Taking a tip from them, Andy and I set aside Saturdays for each other. Both of us are inordinately busy, with Andy frequently enough needing to turn away design work (so if you are ever interested in having him do something for you, contact him well in advance of the deliverable date and be prepared to pay for good quality time and good quality work), plus we have time with friends, periods that we schedule to get alone time away from one another and immersed in solo fun, workshops, groups we participate in, photoshoots…before we began setting Saturdays aside as our day, every day was jam packed and we’d tell ourselves, “Well, we haven’t seen one another all week, but we’ll spend time together on the weekends.” And then the weekends got that way, too. More than once I’ve noticed a bit of “energy” coming from people when I declined to make plans on a Saturday because that day is a day we hold for one another, and yet I know that my highest priority is my relationship to myself, followed by my relationship to my partner, and if I don’t make space for those two in my life, I get grumpy real quick.

So I think sometimes of Pam’s comment about only being a virgin once, and I think about how busy life has become since I began working for myself. I think of simplifying, and feel really grateful that Andy and I had begun doing that work before we traveled and house-sat last year. I was thinking today that really, we don’t have much more than we absolutely need. The clutter that comes into my life now is of the time-oriented variety, and as long as I pad liberally and don’t attach to much of a “have to” Story to anything, and as long as I’m willing to shift in response to noticing that I’m not particularly happy (placing happiness as a higher priority than getting work done), my life works.

Two book recommendations related to this: Jen Louden’s “The Life Organizer” and “Living the Simple Life” by Elaine St. James are both excellent and practical resources that offer ways to work with micro-movements, not the overwhelming to-do list project of a complete life overhaul.

The Courageous Year begins in less than two weeks, and the first thing we start out with is Self-Care. How are you doing with Self-Care, lately? What creative ways have you managed your time and made time for your highest priorities, first?

I have a Marketing Guru.

We met by happenstance in the midst of an e-course. We decided to trade coaching for marketing help. And right away, one thing became very clear: I was the coach, helping someone step into BIG living and being seen in their life. And my Marketing Guru became my coach, helping me to step into BIG marketing and being seen in my profession (which is in alignment with my life and thus often feels very much like “my life”).

And really, they are in so many ways the same thing, with the same processes and stumbling blocks. Little brain goes: “I am going to take a risk and do something new that I have never done before, and I’m almost guaranteed to make mistakes and I’ve been taught by most of the people in my life that mistakes are bad. Now what?”

Confession: I have an inner critic that tells me all the time that I am “doing it wrong.”

However, I can comfortably confess that because I know that I’m not alone in that. (P.S. All of you Etsy shop owners, we’re in this together!)

I’ll daresay that for most people, the question of how to get word out about their new business is the most daunting aspect of the new business. I’ve been coaching for years now. I’m excited about it, always learning something new, etc. And when I first began coaching, I worried that I was “doing it wrong” but luckily I had mentors and people around me helping me, giving me feedback (and I still have those people).

My Marketing Guru got me all set up and ready to go and SEO-optimized and full of ideas. That’s as far as she could take me. Now the rest of the work is my own. And, that is also like life–when I work with a coaching client, we can brainstorm, clarify, and be accountable around practices. But ultimately, the client is the one who puts that into practice in their life. At some point, one must risk being seen for who they are and what they stand for.

My experience of “marketing” (a word I still feel a little ick around) is about 10% updating my site or spreading word, and 90% fear of being seen.

Because, ick–being seen can be so uncomfortable. It can be so misinterpreted. It can so often be confused with selling something. And I don’t want to “sell anything” to anyone. I much prefer the idea that I’m offering something and perhaps they like it. And if they don’t, they’ll pass, and that’s cool, too.

Chris Guillebeau once said: “I try to avoid ‘selling’ in general–even though that’s technically what happens with products. Instead of the selling mentality, though, I think more about offering solutions to problems. If someone has a problem and they like my proposed solution, great. If not, I’m not really interested in pressuring them to change their mind.”

Right. What he said. That’s what I want to do.

Except sometimes, the stretch of being seen feels even like that–how much is too much? How often is too often?

I felt super triggered a few weeks ago when someone made a comment on Facebook about someone who marketed themselves too much and too often. I immediately went to a space of, “Oh, gosh, I bet I do that. I bet I’m wrong.” (I’m not suggesting that the person making the comment was wrong–I’m owning that my reaction to reading it was to be triggered, to step into an old habit around thinking I’m fucking it up).

I was able to recognize when I was triggered that that’s what was going on–I was triggered. That’s my work. My responsibility. Not theirs. Also, I still have hangups around self-promotion. Is it fake? Is it cheesy and schmaltzy? Can people tell that when I’m describing The Courageous Year as a really powerful process, I’m really believing that and not just using some ad-lingo that sounded good?

What helped immensely when I was triggered? Recognizing that this was work around fear of being seen, of being too much, of playing life “too big.” Marianne Williamson and the fear of success and no one is served by our playing small. All of that.

My coach routinely says to myself or my partner (whom he also coaches): “Risk annihilation.” The first time I ever told him that I was afraid of, you know, failing and ending up in a cardboard box and all of that, he smiled and said, “So?”

Which sounds looney.

But the thing is, if I’m seriously living my vision for myself, taking risks, and being willing to embrace everything that comes into the circle of my existence rather than picking and choosing (which really amounts to playing it safe), I’m probably going to “fuck it all up.” Except he would rephrase that as simply “learning from life.”

And part of this big vision I have, which is–when I stop to get perspective, also helpful!–is not such a huge massive dream. To do work that I love and support myself? Nah. I’m not exactly re-inventing the wheel, here. People do this. People have done this. People will continue to do it.

Where are the scariest places in your life for you to “be seen” for who you are? Is there anything that you would like to do, but that you avoid for fear of being seen (i.e., in a business, in relationships)? Any other small business or Etsy shop owners out there who know what I’m talking about with this marketing stuff? And how do you deal with the days when you worry about being seen?

P.S. According to random.org, Caiti is the winner of the PolaPremium giveaway! Congrats!

The Courageous Year started on Monday, though I opened it up for logging in as early as Saturday. WOW. What unexpected pleasures, what surprising challenges. I know that there’s a lot of talk among all of us who are doing e-courses as to what we use to cobble everything together, so I thought I’d share a bit about my experience with one particular content management system, Expression Engine.

As Andy was coding the backend for The Courageous Year, we were frequently needing to post to the support forums at EE to get advice on how to have them tweaked. Sometimes, the responses were helpful. Other times…not as much. I had an experience of posting to one forum to try and get help where a moderator was a little brusque with me, and that didn’t feel great. Yet I stuck with EE because a.) all of that work had already been put into developing the site, and b.) there just really isn’t a lot of great software out there that supports what many of us are trying to do with e-courses–integrating together a way to post exercises/lessons, give participants a way to connect with one another (via forums, usually), and have a login process of some sort. I’m aware of Ning, and don’t have anything in particular against it, except that they charge $25 a month if you want to skin your own site and not have ads everywhere, and even then one would still need to find/pay a developer for some good coding work.

What has been most frustrating about EE is that the things that “mess up” with this system are just such standard, easy things. For instance, when I post a weblog entry, there’s an option to have a new forum topic appear that is linked to that entry. Fantastic. Problem? If I post-date that entry because I want it to go live next week instead of immediately, the entry will wait to post on the correct date, but the forum thread posts immediately. I can’t figure out how to change it. I posted to the support area about this issue. No response so far, other than one user saying that they weren’t sure it could be done. And why not? It just seems like such bad form within the software itself–why allow me the capability to post-date an entry and then make the forum topic go live immediately, instead of synching with the entry? If I’m post-dating an entry and associating a forum topic with that particular entry, wouldn’t it make intuitive sense that the user wants the forum topic to post when the entry posts? The end result is that I am unable to set something to post and leave it alone, trusting that it will simply execute itself. Instead, if I want a forum topic to coincide with the entry, I need to login each and every morning to get that topic started.

What was most frustrating about EE was that the glitch that showed up prevented a smooth username/password process for some participants. I tested out this process myself (before we went “live” with the site) by doing a fake registration, and things worked just fine, so I typed up the instructions and had them ready to go. It is a pretty standard procedure–registering a username and password, getting a confirmation email, clicking the link in the email and then being able to login. Yet some participants did not receive that confirmation email, so they were waiting for it to come through and never seeing it (not even in their SPAM folders) which meant that I needed to keep logging into the backend to “activate pending members.” How can something so simple be messed up? I had already done things like check to see if only certain people were being affected–i.e., if only Yahoo or Gmail users were being affected. Nope, that wasn’t the issue. Granted, everyone was able to get in because I would activate their usernames and passwords on my end, but if a system is supposed to be self-generating, I think it needs to actually work.

And again, the response from EE was not as quick as I would have liked for paid software. If I were using free open source software, where the support boards are staffed by volunteers who believe in the software, I’d expect to wait several days, maybe even a week to get help. But when I purchased a site license and commerical license, I believe that it’s out of line that I would need to go back into the support forums and nudge my topic to the top of the list so that it will be addressed rather than seemingly forgotten or overlooked. When I noticed that response time was slow before the Christmas holidays, I thought, “Well, it’s the holidays, this happens.” Unfortunately, I just went back into the system today, January 20th, and nudged an unanswered question to the top of the support forums list.

The last thing I’ll speak to in my review of whether or not EE is a good option for e-courses is the layout used in the backend to input entries. Entering a weblog entry on EE is ugly, offers few formatting options and even those are ridiculously basic, and the “preview” mode does not actually work to show me a realistic preview of what my entry will look like, with the CSS formatting. All “preview” mode does is show me a list of the text I entered, completely unformatted and without proper paragraph breaks or even the correct text size as determined by the CSS file that I created. Perhaps unfairly, I’m comparing my experience with EE to an experience such as using WordPress for uploading a new journal entry–WordPress is like poetry. Smooth, clean, easy, intuitive in its layout, with a simple control panel, the option to flip between a Visual/WYSWYG editor or a coding, HTML editor, and the preview function actually shows me what my formatted and complete entry will look like.

Again, this type of thing strikes me as a simple feature that EE could easily build into their site to make it cleaner looking and more functional (I call it “not functional” when, if I hit “preview,” I simply see a jumble of text. Of course if I hit “preview” I want to “preview” what the *actual* entry is going to look like, formatted and ready to go!).

Here is what I will say has been positive about Expression Engine: For one thing, it is really nice not to cobble together the e-course in a piecemeal fashion. Many e-courses are pulling forum capabilities from one place, developing entries from another place, and then use a .htaccess system (easily hackable) to password protect the course for users. Expression Engine is streamlined and an all-in-one package on the USER end. My concerns with it as described in this entry have mostly to do with my backend experience, not with what the people using the e-course are seeing. So if someone is pulling together an e-course or in need of a content management system and they are willing to put up with the limitations I describe above, they could do so knowing that their users would not necessarily be affected.

I also really like that the forums setup is pretty clean and the individual member walls can be customized so that the user can input a lot of information about themselves that personalizes their experience, search for all posts by a particular user, etc. The forum navigation is also cleaner and easier to “see” than my experience when using Ning. I have not had any issues integrating videos into the e-course through embedding code, and theoretically, if all works as it is supposed to, opening another level of The Courageous Year or even taking on a new round of participants will be very simple–instead of re-creating the entire thing, I’ll need only to create a new “module” and then assign new members to that new “module” so that members from one group don’t see what another group is doing, and vice-versa. From an e-course standpoint, this is a helpful thing!

Then again, I haven’t yet gotten to working out those modules yet, so I confess I feel a bit of a hesitance to assume that it’s all going to work as smoothly as I’m thinking it should…there might be some intense backend coding work to do to get a new module ready for new users.

And can I just give a shout out to the wonderful participants who were really patient if they ran into any snafus? Thank you thank you.

Three days in and things are executing as they should, people are interacting, and the fun is beginning.

Polaroid, Oakland Chinatown. December 2009.

I feel in this moment very much the way I remember feeling in school, right before the teacher said “You may now pick up your pencils and begin the exam,” or in gym class when the teacher was lining us up for a race: “Ready…set…go!”

Also, very much the way I have felt before leaving for international trips; time seems stretchy and weird and I feel wired even without the help of caffeine (which I have been successfully avoiding in the past week, by the way–finally feeling that my latte habit was going into overdrive).

The first level of The Courageous Year begins officially on Monday, but the participants will start using the site this weekend. I am trying to really s-l-o-w down and savor this moment right before something I’ve been working on for months begins. Ever notice how easy it is to work towards something and then when it arrives, it’s just done and over and then your mind is off to “What’s the next thing?” I am a do-er, a mover, a shaker, a project person, and without some due consciousness, I can totally be off to “What’s the next thing?” in a split second.

So I’m trying to really just be in the split seconds, in the moments in-between. I’m trying to really just sink into my life more. Be there when I’m there. No rush anything to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.

What about you? What do you do/where do you go when, in life, you want to slow down and be completely awake to whatever is right before you?

P.S. I can tell when comparing the number of registrants I have recorded versus how many people I see signed up for the Participants only mailing list that some Participants are not signed up for that announcement list–which is what I’ll use to help you log in to the site! If you are doing The Courageous Year and haven’t already signed up for the Participants-only mailing list (a separate list than the announcement list used in general here on Your Courageous Life), please check your Welcome Packet for information on how to get on that Participants mailing list and get the info you need!

So it is the end of the day  and my first thought when I sat down to write was something like, “Jeez Louise, I did not get anything done today!”

Then I remembered my new thing that I’m doing. I would like to share with you my new thing–are you ready? My new thing is: at the end of the day, I am writing down what I actually did accomplish. I am doing this because otherwise I do things like think, “I did not get anything done today!” and then that feels really defeating. I’m approaching it all backwards (hopefully not “ass backwards”) and find that it gets much easier to do that than to think about what I had intended to do today and did not get done. Also, it is a lovely opportunity to confront my Story that I am valuable if I “do” things rather than embracing a story that I have value simply by “who I be.”

Things that I intended to do today that did not quite happen:

* make videos for e-course

* finish PDFs for e-course

* pick up the house

* make time for process work/my personal coaching tools

I was pretty attached to getting those things done. What actually happened?

* returned something to a store that is located a half-hour away (man, that needed to happen; I was getting sick of looking at it sitting next to the door).

* played “Buzzer” by Dar Williams over and over in the car and mulled over what I want to do with it to turn it into a video (we’ll call this a creative brainstorming meeting among the CEO/CFO/VIP/boss lady of Your Courageous Life–me–and the Creative Director–also me).

* answered a whole lotta emails.

* wrote design ideas for my next tattoo on my arm with a Micron pen to test things out.

* indulged in some diversions by Facebook when my mere mention of cowboy boots prompted some interesting comments.

* navigated my way through a maze of options for recording my interview with the Cafe Gratitude peeps on Thursday and finally found something that should work in terms of price, functionality, and quality. So hopefully now I’m set for that interview, though it did kill an hour at the store (would you believe I went to the store without the camera and then had to run back home and get it to make sure I was buying compatible cards, etc.? Would you believe it? Could you?).

* had sessions with two clients.

I have some time before Andy gets home and we indulge in a date night, some Biggest Loser fun, and then working some of our relationship tools (this is far more fun than it sounds).

If you really knew me, you’d know that I would like to take one important thing off of the list of things I had intended to do today and switch them over to the “done” side of things, and if you really, really knew me, you’d know that the thing I have the most resistance towards doing is making space for the process work. Ugh (says Resistance). Getting clear with myself? Taking time to acknowledge and move through anger, sadness? Blecch (says Resistance)! Think of what I’m grateful for? Get in integrity with me? Acknowledge myself for the things I’m doing well? Fuggedaboutit (my Resistance also tries out thug accents).

Which means that you know what I’m going to get off of the computer and do right now–even though my office needs a pickup and the first thing I want to do is tell myself that I should do that first, or clean the rest of the house while the vacuum is out, or…

Yeah. I’m going to dive straight into the place where I have the most Resistance. Please don’t believe it’s “easy.” I just know I’m going to do it.

Is there anything you’ve been Resisting lately that you’d like to just own up to (perhaps in the comments?) and then get off of the information super highway and just dive right in?

The cover of the e-book. Click this image to download the PDF (3.1 megs; it will take about 2 minutes).

Wow! The past ten days have been interesting, to say the very least. When I first conceived of doing the Job Suckage Challenge the first ten days of January, it was with the thought that I’d likely be banked in Philadelphia with Andy’s family right after the new year, and I wanted to have something going on with the blog without feeling I had to be tied to the computer doing updates. So I set up the Stop the Job Suckage Challenge for those days, and then the Philadelphia plans ended up not happening, so in the most technical of senses, even though the e-course does not start until one week from today, and even though I had closed coaching client calls in order to accommodate this planned trip, last week was my first week of “work” from home.

And, I have to say, it was a good one. I like being my own boss lady.

One thing that is an adjustment for me–and I anticipated that it would be, because of what I’d noticed about myself whenever I did freelance work on breaks from teaching or when I took a semester off of teaching, before–is that there’s a lot of reframing of what “work” means when I am working from home. Basically, it is sometimes a little more difficult for me to get that fresh and clean “productive” feeling when the work feels like such fun.

As an English prof, I “knew” that I had worked because I had lead a class, or I had designed a lesson plan, or I had re-read an article and annotated it in preparation to discuss it with students. There was this whole list of activities that could be defined as “work” that would then be applied to a very specific context. And yes, many of them were fun, however, I was not passionate about a lot of them (I just don’t get excited about thesis statements and topic sentences…and many of my colleagues did, and could argue passionately about teaching methods that would best explain thesis statements and topic sentences, which was my #1 sign that while I was definitely dedicated to helping students and interacting with people, I was not cut out for long-term English teaching).

The “work” I did last week looked really different–most notably sketching/writing this e-book. My intent was not to actually write an e-book, it was to jot down ideas. I wanted to create an overarching page for the website in which I defined/clarified what I mean by “courageous living,” and then the pages sort of took on a mind of their own. I felt it was important to define this because sometimes, when I read self-help-ey types of websites, I cringe. I cringe at false promises of happiness (what I call “30 days to perfection” coaching); I cringe at the push to just believe it, and it will come  (“fairy dust” coaching); I cringe at boot camp drills (“I’m going to yell your ass into changing” coaching).

If you cringe at those things, too, we would probably be good friends. **

I actually really cringe at the word “coaching,” which brings me to a post I know I’ve been meaning to write for awhile, and it’s my whole thing about explaining what it is that I do. Thus, on my most recent business card, I didn’t even PUT the term “life coach” on it, simply because I do not like the term, which could be my own waste of $22 to print incomplete business cards, but hey–I’m on this kick where I’m doing a whole lot of things that don’t make any technical sense but if it feels right, I go with it.

I am thinking that it would probably be easier to “get” where I’m coming from with some of this if you checked out the e-book, first, so I’ll give you a bit of time to download that and review it and then come back here. It will take about 2 minutes to download and is a very, very fast read.

(Pause).

Okay, so back to the challenge of explaining what I do. It can be a challenge for the following reasons:

1.) People don’t know what a “life coach” even is.

2.) When people do know what a “life coach” is, they’ve generally heard jokes that make coaching sound like a total joke, or know someone who went to a school for a few months, go certified, and is now trying to help people go through extreme life crises for the same price per hour as someone who went and got a Ph.D. and did supervised clinical hours. I understand how that might look to people (though I don’t get why someone who went to school to be a therapist, theoretically a profession involving caring and compassion and ideas about respect for one another, would send me the nastiest email last year telling me that I was “dangerous”).

3.) People make fun of life coaches. Who wants to be part of a group that gets made fun of?

4.) In addition to coaching, I do paid portrait photography work and I write fiction (currently unpaid, though not without its moments). I also designed this website (oh yes, that was me, not the boyfriend!) and have had people inquire about getting help with creative direction on their sites, figuring out how to pull something that represents them, etc. and I get pretty excited by that idea, too. Bottom line? I am not totally comfortable with the idea of settling on just one thing when I am, frankly, inspired by and passionate about so much. Also, doing these different things helps balance the others out.

At the end of the day, I stick with the term “coaching” because choosing other words such as “consultant” don’t quite work (I think of a big corporate conglomerate when I hear that word, myself), and Havi has the corner on “habits educator.” Technically,  the State of California does allow me to legally call myself a “counselor,” but I hesitate to use that term because I work with people in other states where legally, the term “counselor” must be attributed to a license, and I don’t want to walk into that murky area of whether I can call myself a “counselor” while working with someone who lives in a state where I am not supposed to call myself that. And in the most technical of senses, I don’t know that what I do falls totally into “counseling,”  (often it feels more like holding space and helping people with “clarifying”) and there are so many different definitions of what that (counseling) even means, anyway.

Whew. Are you exhausted yet?

But for what it’s worth, I do give these things a lot of thought. (Also, for what it’s worth, my coaching/counseling education involved two years of training and lots of supervised counseling practice–not mail order exercise packets–and I use a sliding scale for rates).

So what am I getting at? Oh, yes–we were talking about how I define courageous living and why I felt it necessary to share it. I felt it necessary to share because I want my sincerity to be seen, and because when it hit me that it was totally okay to 1.) Feel the fear, 2.) Do it anyway, and 3.) This resulted in transformation, it was like WOWZA, A-ha, Kazam! Like, here’s this way of being that I can step into when I’m looking around and wondering what the hell to do next, and I’ve been doing it this whole time–now I can just do it consciously. And then, realizing that this was something that anyone could do, and that I could help people do it by holding space as they were going through their own process? That was huge for me.

I hope you enjoy the e-book and I look forward to spreading more goodness over the next few days, including plans to announce a new E-Course for the artists and creatives out there called “Across Mediums.” Registration for the course will be really limited, so if you’re interested in joining, you’ll want to register for the Announcement List (see left-hand side) as that’s where I’ll send out notice first explaining how to get involved.

Also to be announced soon–I will be in Italy again in October of this year and am arranging a retreat there! This retreat will be oriented completely and totally around pleasure–good food, good wine, good sleeps, good people. Space for this retreat will be limited to only ten people, so again, see the Announcement List if Italy is on your list of dream destinations.

** Yeah, sometimes when I step totally outside of myself and think about how it might look to you or someone else that I have been adopting “kate courageous” or the theme of courage, it occurs to me that this might seem like yet another chintzy marketing scheme. I stick with it because every time I do that internal check, what comes back for me is that I’m choosing to orient my life around something (courage) and it resonates with me and feels good to me. Thus, I keep on keeping on.

Wow. 

We’ve arrived at the final day.

You have determined your ideal day, noticed the qualities you’d like to implement in your life, brainstormed solutions, identified resistance, put yourself in integrity, used collaboration.

Tomorrow is Monday.

Maybe you are habitually afflicted with “a case of the Mondays.”

Like anything else, that is a choice…

Exercise #1: Whether you are shifting careers or still looking into your next move, make a timeline.

If you’re shifting careers entirely, make a timeline for how you will transition out and into what career. 

If you’re still experimenting with career options, make a timeline that notes all of the people you’ll talk to and steps you’ll take.

Put timeline dates into your 2010 calendar.

Exercise #2–the “I really do want to shift things litmus test”–share your timeline with someone who you know will gently keep you accountable. Set up a way to check in with them on at least a monthly basis to report your progress. They need not be your ruler…they’re just someone who will listen to what you say you’re going to do.

Exercise #3–the “There is no doubt in my mind that I don’t want to be stuck in a crummy job forever and I will take action rather than procrastinate test”–share your plans with lots of people, via email, via the internet, via the information super highway, and directly ask for their support.

Then, DO IT ANYWAY, regardless of whether or not they give it.

The journey of stopping the Job Suckage may not be over in only ten days. If you want continued support, consider signing up for the first ten weeks of The Courageous Year, where you’ll have the option of receiving additional support in making the changes you want to make. I also work with people one-on-one, starting with a free complimentary coaching session, to help you work through the transitional challenges that come with stepping into your dream career.

Finally, 

CONGRATULATIONS!

You made it to the end. It is a courageous act just to ask yourself some of these questions and consider the responses that come up.

What’s next? You decide. I support you in courageously stepping forward to live 100% fully alive in all areas of your life, including doing what you love as your livelihood.

* This ten-day series is designed to help you kickstart a new way of approaching your job or career. Over ten days, we’ll explore how to look objectively at the job/career situation you’re in, and clarify where to go next. For some, that might mean not leaving a job but drastically improving it in some meaningful way. For others, this series will provide some help with clarifying your next career move or pave the way to a transition. You’re strongly encouraged to complete all ten steps, in order, to see what answers you arrive at.

Today, mix it up and do the opposite of whatever you’ve been doing.

If you’ve been avoiding challenges, hop in there and get caught up. Take action. Go, now–do.

If you’ve been meeting each challenges, let things marinate. Relax. See what else comes up when you create space around this issue.

And, please do report anything you’ve noticed as you’ve come along on this series, in the comments below! I look forward to hearing how it’s been going.

* This ten-day series is designed to help you kickstart a new way of approaching your job or career. Over ten days, we’ll explore how to look objectively at the job/career situation you’re in, and clarify where to go next. For some, that might mean not leaving a job but drastically improving it in some meaningful way. For others, this series will provide some help with clarifying your next career move or pave the way to a transition. You’re strongly encouraged to complete all ten steps, in order, to see what answers you arrive at.

Day Eight: Collaborate

(Nice how all of that rhymes, huh?)

If you are still considering ideas for a career move, it’s time to collaborate. If you know the career you want to go into, it’s time to collaborate.

For those of you still considering–ask to interview people who are involved in lines of work that you might possibly be interested in. Ask what they love about what they do and what is a challenge. People like being interviewed, so you might be surprised by how many people are totally into this (also, people like it when you buy them a cup of coffee or send them a Peet’s card). Try to get a really real picture of their jobs. Don’t back away from asking tough questions. 

For those of you who know your line of work–ask to interview people in that line of work, and ask what things they  would do differently, or what mistakes they made that they’d do differently, and what they learned. Ask about things like unexpected costs. Ask if they have any job openings where you can intern for awhile. Take a risk.

I once thought that it would be a dream of mine to be a working fine artist. I had some solo shows at cafes and other local places. I learned by doing that it was not something that I ultimately wanted to do. I wish that I had asked more questions of someone in the business, beforehand. In case you’re thinking of becoming a fine artist, here’s my brief personal run-down: 

The Good:

Creativity, art, collaboration, the thrill of seeing your work hung, opening nights, attention, getting messy, people who love your work and tell you so.

The not as good:

Hanging a new show (physically demanding), finding storage space for art, the constant marketing, not making much money on a show given how many hours go into it…which leads to stressing about money.

I learned that I personally preferred to make art in my home rather than do shows. That’s just me. Another artist–someone who’s more invested and more passionate about art-making–might decide that all of my “not so goods” are worth it to her, and they have the perseverance to surmount those challenges.

Either way, isn’t it good to be advised of the challenges before jumping in?

So, who will you be contacting today?

* This ten-day series is designed to help you kickstart a new way of approaching your job or career. Over ten days, we’ll explore how to look objectively at the job/career situation you’re in, and clarify where to go next. For some, that might mean not leaving a job but drastically improving it in some meaningful way. For others, this series will provide some help with clarifying your next career move or pave the way to a transition. You’re strongly encouraged to complete all ten steps, in order, to see what answers you arrive at.

“I’m going along with all of this, but I still know that I don’t want to be in this line of work. Now what?”

First, let’s start with those of you who may not know what line of work you want to go into, and then we’ll get to those of you who know what you want to do and want to take the leap.

Please note that these are both super-involved topics, and I’m going to be aiming for brevity and directness.

If you’re not sure what other line of work you’d like to do–talk to your closest friends and ask them what line of work they would imagine you doing, knowing the kind of person that you are. I consider this far more effective than a college career counselor administering an aptitude test. I took those in college and none of them told me what feedback from my friends told me: that I wanted to call the shots, that I wanted to balance between working with people and flying solo, that I had an interest in problem-solving, that I wanted to incorporate creativity, that I get bored with repetitive tasks.

Who knew? Life coaching is a career where I get to “call the shots” by setting my own schedule and working for myself; I work with people one-on-one for their sessions but “fly solo” when I work by studying up on human relationships or working in my home office; it’s all about problem-solving (the kind that can actually be solved or reframed); I get to incorporate creativity all of the time through writing or website design or just having a schedule where I have time for that. And trust me, there is nothing boring or repetitive about it.

My friends never said “life coach” when I asked them what they saw me doing. They used the phrases above. Notice that no one suggested I go into sales.

What jobs are you drawn to? I didn’t know coaching existed as a career until I happened to read an email about it (passed along to me by a college career counselor). Everything in me said “YES!” when I read that description.

What careers have you heard of, where you thought, “THAT sounds so cool!”

I’ve worked with coaching clients before who described five seemingly unrelated creative things they wanted to do, and then followed that up with, “But there is no career that has all of that.”

Meanwhile, I was listening to that thinking, “Oh, she’s talking about becoming a Creative Director.”

The client thought the job didn’t exist. I knew such a position did exist.

And, as Yvonne Dutra-St.John of the Challenge Day organization is fond of saying when she describes how she ended up becoming a leader/co-founder/author: “The job for me didn’t exist yet. I created it.”

Those of you who are uncertain about your next move are in a great place. You get to experiment and try things out. You also get to choose whether you look at that as an unfair burden or as something exciting!

Now, for those of you who already know exactly what you want to do: How can you make that happen for you, part time? Etsy is everyone’s favorite for crafty selling.

Worried that you aren’t yet experienced enough to do what you want to do? Give it away for free. People tend to worry less about experience when it’s free. Worried you don’t have enough experience to work as a home organizational consultant in some capacity? Start consulting for free–organize your neighbor’s closet, note what you learn, and don’t charge a dime. Positive that you can’t book photoshoots because you didn’t go to school for photography? Do it for free.

Or if you know that it’s not possible to implement it part-time, how willing are you to start announcing to family, friends, loved ones that you intend to start __________ by [ this date ] ?

You have no idea what will come out of the woodwork. You might meet someone tomorrow who can hand you the opportunity to make the switch you want to make. That won’t happen if you keep quiet about it.

For every barrier that comes up, choose to take the approach that you will find the time, money, skills, or capability–the solution will present itself. Resistance will tell you that it’s got to be all or nothing, that you have to have it all figured out now (or five minutes ago). Resistance will tell you that if you can’t quit your job and do exactly what you want full time right now, it’s not worth it.

Okay, then–to what are you more committed? Resistance, or something bigger?

* This ten-day series is designed to help you kickstart a new way of approaching your job or career. Over ten days, we’ll explore how to look objectively at the job/career situation you’re in, and clarify where to go next. For some, that might mean not leaving a job but drastically improving it in some meaningful way. For others, this series will provide some help with clarifying your next career move or pave the way to a transition. You’re strongly encouraged to complete all ten steps, in order, to see what answers you arrive at.

Day Six–whew! 

You’ve looked at how to be in integrity (if you skipped the last post, it’s really important–pause, read, then come back here).

Now it’s time for action. Look at your list of possible solutions from days three and four.

Choose between 3-5 items (challenge yourself to go beyond that, even) and implement them.

Now.

Not tomorrow. Not next week.

Now.

It’s Wednesday. You can do this. You don’t have to do it perfectly. You don’t have to see the effects immediately. 

You don’t “have to” do anything–you GET to do this. Chances are good that if you are reading this, you are living in one of the lucky countries where changes such as, say, improving communication skills in the workplace or having a more balanced schedule are “luxury problems.” I don’t say that to guilt you; I say it to encourage you to take advantage of how fortunate you are. Use your power.

Get started.

Tomorrow we’ll address: “I’m going along with all of this, but I still don’t want to be in this line of work. Now what?”

* This ten-day series is designed to help you kickstart a new way of approaching your job or career. Over ten days, we’ll explore how to look objectively at the job/career situation you’re in, and clarify where to go next. For some, that might mean not leaving a job but drastically improving it in some meaningful way. For others, this series will provide some help with clarifying your next career move or pave the way to a transition. You’re strongly encouraged to complete all ten steps, in order, to see what answers you arrive at.

Whenever I used to go to my coach and complain about my previous job, he would ask me how I could effect some kind of change. I was a college teacher and, for instance, one thing I didn’t like was how I would cave in to students because I wanted them to like me. However, I didn’t like me when I used rigid, strict control to keep from being manipulated. I blamed the students a lot for why I didn’t like my job; I wanted to jump ship and quit.

My coach reminded me that I was in charge of whether I liked my job, and that liking myself/my job was tied closely to integrity, and that it’s not a good idea to leave any relationship (personal, friendship, or otherwise) without first “cleaning up your side” and getting fully in integrity.

So today, Day Five, we get into…INTEGRITY.

Integrity is: when your words and actions match, and they are in alignment with your values, beliefs, commitments and life vision.

I was not liking my job because I was out of integrity all over the place. I was complaining rather than doing (words and actions not matching; violation of my life vision–no one has a life vision that involves “complaining a lot”). I was setting up rules and breaking my own rules (more words and actions not matching, breaking commitments). When I was super-strict, I was enforcing rules in ways that were contrary to who I wanted to be in the classroom (contradiction of my values/beliefs). 

I could go on, but I think it’s obvious–I wanted to blame the students, talk about how awful they could be, blame their parents, blame society, blame budget cuts, blame violent neighborhoods, blame blame blame.

But really? I was in charge of bringing my best to the classroom, and it was really hard to do that when I was a.) out of integrity and b.) topping that with a whopping pile of blame to try and avoid owning my part in all of it.

So, it’s time for a tough question: Where in your current job/career are you out of integrity?

Looking at who/what you blame as the cause of unhappiness is an important place to start. There’s probably lots of juice there.

And, by the way–kudos to you for being willing to even consider looking at this, because it’s tough. Noticing where we’re out of integrity is really, really simple (as a step) yet really, really hard (to embrace).

Of all the steps I took, this was the most important. I knew that if I didn’t “clean up my side” and get into integrity before leaving that relationship, I’d just bring the same old patterns to my next job. I’d still abuse myself in the same ways, blame others in the same ways, and try not to own my own part.

A funny thing happened when I did get in integrity with myself around the guidelines I was setting up with students–when I clarified the message I wanted to send and then stuck to it, letting go of the worry that I wouldn’t be liked–students actually thanked me for being strict. They said things about how it kept them motivated. Even better? The occasional belligerent challenges I’d been subjected to when a student didn’t like it if I asked them to turn papers in on time disappeared–in fact, students said things to me when turning in something late, like, “Hey, I know I’m turning this in late, and I’m sorry about that…”

Once the students were no longer the source of blame, my Resistance/Ego/Inner Critic/Fearful Self shifted, and then spent some time blaming the administration, or society, or the curriculum. 

And one by one, looking at my part, getting into integrity with me, I slooowly dropped the resentment I had around my job. 

This didn’t mean that I chose to stay in that job (why, as some of you may have heard…I’m my own Boss Lady/CEO/CFO/VIP). I ultimately knew that teaching English was not quite the right line of work for me–and I discovered that when I even took the very powerful step of getting in integrity by totally creating a curriculum that I was excited about (rather than complain about the dull curriculum that I’d thought I was forced to work with) and then realized that at the end of it all, my heart was still called to something different.

Getting in integrity with your job–doing all that you can to bring the qualities you know you want in your life into your job, right here, right now, no waiting, no putting the onus on someone else to “fix it” or change it–this is BIG. It’s powerful. 

It’s not something you do because you want to stay in the same line of work–it’s something to undertake because it feels more powerful to live that way. It is THE thing that can shift any job, any relationship.

So–again with this question–what are you more committed to? Resistance, or stopping the Job Suckage, aka, getting into integrity, aka, getting fully into your life?

P.S. If you are still interested in signing up for The Courageous Year but you missed the January 1 deadline, I’m extending it to January 15th! If you are contemplating making big changes this year, this course will support you with that–with exercises, interviews, discussion forums, live conference calls, and who knows what more we’ll dream up? Sign up for the e-course today.

* This ten-day series is designed to help you kickstart a new way of approaching your job or career. Over ten days, we’ll explore how to look objectively at the job/career situation you’re in, and clarify where to go next. For some, that might mean not leaving a job but drastically improving it in some meaningful way. For others, this series will provide some help with clarifying your next career move or pave the way to a transition. You’re strongly encouraged to complete all ten steps, in order, to see what answers you arrive at.

Day Four: The “Can’ts.”

Perhaps you read yesterday’s post and decided that you “can’t” find any solutions to incorporating a particular quality into your current career/job.

Perhaps because there’s no time, no money, or because someone else won’t let you.

Yesterday I offered the example of bringing creativity into the workplace, and offered some example hypothetical solutions. One was to see if people from the office would be interested in getting together for a once a month art group.

Resistance–which is codename for that fear-based part of ourselves that doesn’t want to try anything new because it would be, ugh, hard–is going to say something about how that’s a lot of effort, and you don’t even like the people from work anyway, and no one else is creative, and they’re not creative the way you want them to be creative, and you don’t have a house where that could happen, and you’d feel stupid if you put it out there and no one responded, and…

Okay, cool. So Resistance has all of that come up. Now–what are you more committed to? Resistance, or stopping the Job Suckage?

If, right now, you’re more committed to Resistance, that’s okay. No need to cue the grand inquisitor. You’re not bad or wrong. You’re just at where you’re at.

If you read that and thought, “No, you don’t get it, I’m not committed to Resistance–I want to CHANGE,” then we circle right back to that list of brainstorming, and all of the myriad possible ways that life could get shaken up and look different because you were courageous enough to take a new step. 

Whatever Resistance comes up for you, accept it and then work through it. Beating down Resistance with happy affirmations does not work (you heard it here, first). Accepting that you have Resistance, that “Can’ts” come up, is part of the work. Courageously making a different choice is another part of the work.

What are you more committed to?

Maybe you’re overworked at your office and you want peace. Maybe you brainstormed solutions like, “Delegate work to someone else” because you were thinking of any possibility, but really, you can’t imagine that that will ever be a possibility–there are budget cuts, there is no one else who can take the work, etc.

Okay, fine–that might not ever happen. In what other ways can you bring peace to the workplace? Five minute meditation? Closing your eyes and breathing for thirty seconds?

Resistance is going to pop up and go–”But that’s not what I WANT, I want the kind of peace that comes from not having as much work; it won’t work for me to close my eyes and meditate, I NEED the solution to be that someone else takes this work off of my hands!”

Recognize that that is Resistance. Resistance is going to tell you that it’s all or nothing. Resistance is going to tell you that taking any step that is not THE SOLUTION is wrong.

So, to what are you more committed?

Review your list of brainstorming items. Put a star next to the ones that you most wish would happen. Put a checkmark next to the ones that you notice you are most Resistant to–the ones you believe are most impossible to have happen.

Challenge: start daydreaming about the changes you most wish would happen, working out possibilities like you’d move puzzle pieces around to see where things fit. Notice the Resistance that comes up.

* This ten-day series is designed to help you kickstart a new way of approaching your job or career. Over ten days, we’ll explore how to look objectively at the job/career situation you’re in, and clarify where to go next. For some, that might mean not leaving a job but drastically improving it in some meaningful way. For others, this series will provide some help with clarifying your next career move or pave the way to a transition. You’re strongly encouraged to complete all ten steps, in order, to see what answers you arrive at.

Badda-bing, Badda-boom! You have now…

1.) Written out your ideal day, from start to finish

2.) Identified the most important qualities of that ideal day.

(If you haven’t done these first two steps and want to see the previous days, click the “job suckage” category to the left of this entry)

Today, Day Three, it’s time to get pro-active.

Exercise: Brainstorm at least 3 different ways that each quality could some how be incorporated into your current job situation. Brainstorm solutions even if you think that they aren’t likely to happen (note: fire-bombing is not an option).

For instance, perhaps you work for a large corporate entity and you have identified that “creativity” is a quality to bring into your ideal day. Perhaps you are a receptionist, and the idea that you will ever be able to fulfill your longing to become a mixed-media artist while somehow sitting at that desk seems like it’s a total pipe dream. The goal with this exercise is to bring the quality of creativity into your current workspace, because bringing the qualities that are important to you into your current job will make the job seem just a smidge better. It empowers you to create the life you want, with the circumstances you’ve got–and that is Powerful with a big, phat-ass “P.”

Here are some possible brainstorms for such a hypothetical situation:

1.) make art on my lunch break

2.) organize people from work into a monthly art group

3.) carry around art in my wallet/purse/briefcase and look at it often

4.) creatively answer the phone–make it a game to see how many creative ways I can think of to make everyone I talk to feel really great as a result of talking to me

5.) create a piece of artwork, scan it, set it as my desktop screensaver.

Those are just a few random ideas for one quality–creativity. Brainstorm at least three ideas for each quality you’d like to bring into your current job/workplace. The value of how the small things add up is best explained in a quote I heard once. A CEO had turned around a failing company and people asked him how he did it. He replied, “It’s not that we did one thing, 100% better. We did 100 things, just 1% better.”

Lots of “1% betters” can add up to “100% better.”

Now why would you do this, if you know for absolute certain that you are in the WRONG JOB?

I encourage you to do this because this is the 100% fail-safe way to a.) test out whether the jobby-job is the real issue or the scapegoat issue for why life is not working, and b.) because it’s more powerful to make positive shifts even in situations you dislike than it is to wallow, and c.) because if you’re still in the WRONG JOB, theoretically you have not up and quit because you need to wait to do that…you need another job, or to build up your biz on the side, or for Obama to push universal health coverage through so that your kidlets won’t end up with untreated cases of rickets because you jumped ship from that employer HMO. And if you’re in the WRONG JOB for the next three months or year or whatever, why not make it a little more palatable? Why not build some character? Why wallow when there is possibility around every corner?

I’m kind of laughing at myself as I type this, because I absolutely know that when I started to do this work myself, I was all, “Are you kidding me?” It seemed like a colossal waste of time.

And now, on the other side of all of that, having taken these steps, I see how important it was that I acted with all of the integrity I could muster. I felt stronger and more powerful every time I made a choice to put my all into what I was doing. For someone having doubts, I’d ask–what would that feel like for you?

I’ll also add that tomorrow, I’m going to address the “Can’ts” that might have come up for some of you in response to this call for action.

Get started–no need to wait for the right time, the right MOOD, the right pencil, the right…just dive right in and brainstorm at least 3 solutions for each quality that you identified in the previous exercise. Left your qualities list at home? Lost it? The dog ate it? Start brainstorming just based on what you remember, and fill in the blanks later.

* This ten-day series is designed to help you kickstart a new way of approaching your job or career. Over ten days, we’ll explore how to look objectively at the job/career situation you’re in, and clarify where to go next. For some, that might mean not leaving a job but drastically improving it in some meaningful way. For others, this series will provide some help with clarifying your next career move or pave the way to a transition. You’re strongly encouraged to complete all ten steps, in order, to see what answers you arrive at.

Congrats, you’ve arrived at Day Two. If you haven’t already read and completed the exercise from Day One, head over there first and see what’s the what before reading further–yesterday’s practice builds on today’s practice.  Click the link on the left under Categories that says “job suckage.”

Okay–Day Two–so I’m sure many of you may have noticed that there is this thing we do in our modern day society where we get sucked into media advertising and think that if we had SomeThing or SomeThings, we’d be happy. Even though we “get” that it’s all a lie, a funny thing happens on the way to the Circus–we buy yet another book or pair of pretty shoes.

Media research has shown again and again that when we buy Things, we envision that the having of the Thing will confer upon us certain qualities that we associate with the Thing. Clothing is an easy example–branding is so obvious. What’s the branding of a store like The Gap compared to a store like Bebe? If you buy something from The Gap, you’re probably imagining that you’ll take on certain qualities such as looking streamlined and being comfortable. The clothing, of course, does not actually DO this–it’s just an idea we have. And if you get something from Bebe? You’re probably imagining how hot you’ll look. Yet again–it’s just an idea. The clothing does not automatically make you hot.

So we have tendencies to buy Things that are either ideas or image boosters. The book (ideas) and the pair of pretty shoes (image boosters) can be an excellent accompaniment to the ride, but they won’t get you as far as tapping into the qualities and going after the qualities rather than the stuff that we think will get us those qualities.

For example–I’ll just out myself here–I have been known to go through a particularly difficult stretch  in my life and then go out and get a new book, thinking that that’s what will help. That book might promise to organize my life in five easy steps, or teach me positive communication tools, or get me on a new enlightened path to meditation. I buy the book, then read part of the book, then my funk passes so maybe I don’t even finish the book.

It was never about the book.

I bought that book because of the qualities I decided it represented; I hoped that (perhaps by osmosis) I would have those qualities because I bought the book.

But–it was never about the book.

So yesterday you wrote about your ideal day, and part of that exercise was to write about how you felt throughout that day. That’s important, because for this next step I’d like you to review what you wrote and pick out ten qualities/feelings that stick out to you. Prioritize them if you feel so inclined, or organize them neatly in a binder (just don’t go out and buy a book on getting organized to complete this piece of the exercise…)

What does that have to do with stopping the job suckage?

Wait for it…wait for it… I have an idea that if you believe your job sucks, you’ve worked out all of the angles for why it sucks. We don’t need to spend more time there in the Suckage and arrive at those same answers. Looking at your ideal day and the qualities inherent within is part of turning things around at your current job, while you’re still there, or moving towards a new career path.

Tomorrow, I’ll connect these qualities very directly to the Job Suckage issue!

Stop the Job Suckage: Day One of Ten

* This ten-day series is designed to help you kickstart a new way of approaching your job or career. Over ten days, we’ll explore how to look objectively at the job/career situation you’re in, and clarify where to go next. For some, that might mean not leaving a job but drastically improving it in some meaningful way. For others, this series will provide some help with clarifying your next career move or pave the way to a transition. You’re strongly encouraged to complete all ten steps, in order, to see what answers you arrive at.

So, perhaps you have already decided that Your Job Sucks. As a human species, when we think something sucks, we tend to start noticing more and more of the suckage and less and less of what is actually working in our lives. To be fair, the suckage can feel like exactly that–something sucking the life out of you, slowly, via office politics, uninspiring work, threats of downsizing, budget cuts, an impossible workload.

So here’s where we’ll start with day one–what does a complete, whole, 100% fully alive day look like for you? When do you wake up? Where are you living? Who is living with you? What do you have for breakfast? How do you organize your time? How much time do you spend watching television or checking the internet? How much time do you spend with your kids, friends, partner? How do you feel when you wake up in the morning? What practices do you use to keep yourself grounded? At what time do you start and stop work each day? When are you eating meals? What does your house look like? Are you working from an outside office or an office in your home or for a local company or do you have no office at all–are you completely outdoors? How do you spend your leisure time in the evenings?

Exercise: Write down your ideal day, from start to finish. This would encompass a typical day of you living your ideal life with your ideal career and your ideal control over time and money. In particular, be sure to write not just what you DO with your day, but add in how you FEEL as you’re doing it. Are you feeling….alert, awake, peaceful, calm, inspired, overjoyed, passionate, excited, light, free, connected, authentic, joyful, creative…?

Don’t worry–I’m not going to ask you to burn sage and chant with this writing, but you will want to complete it before we get into Day Two!

P.S. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar. Keep your hand moving. Don’t worry about forming a perfect composition. Don’t wait for the right time, the right writing notebook, the right pen, the right computer. Hop in and see what happens.

sneak peek of my office. pictures coming!

I noticed this thing that happened over the weekend, on Saturday. Basically, as Saturday afternoon wound into Saturday evening, I started to mentally run through what was coming up next. The thought process was something like, “Okay, so let’s see: today is Saturday, tomorrow’s Sunday. What’s going on tomorrow? Anything I need to get done before Monday?”

There was this immediate dip in my mood and then, following that, remembering that in fact I am not teaching this upcoming Monday, and this caused an immediate lift, a sense of palpable relief. My work for the past year has been to notice that dip as the weekend started to wind down, and to remind myself not to give it too much power.

It occurred to me that I’ve been doing that dance with the weekend for a loooong time–far longer than I’d like to admit to the blogosphere, in fact. Some weekends I was able to not give Monday too much power, and other weekends, I was far less successful. There are a lot of dimensions of this that I could write about and will go into some other time–for now, I want to write about how strange it feels to realize that there is nothing for me to “push against,” work-wise, any longer.

Does that make any sense?

There’s this “thing” about work–people like to complain about their jobs. In fact, it seems to me that jobs are an easy dumping ground for most of life’s problems. Jobs become the thing that constrain our time and “suck our souls.” As a coach, I’ve noticed that each of us–that includes me–have our defaults for where we’ll put our blame/drama, and work is often enough the place where we put that blame/drama because job titles don’t get hurt feelings when you call them names, the way our loved ones would if we were blaming them (though for all of us at times, that can be another source of blame).

This Monday is the first Monday of the rest of my life. I have an entirely different set of questions to confront about my working life, namely about what it means for me to be/feel productive.  There is no longer that thing to “push against,” in the work realm, so my work now becomes making sure that whatever tendencies I have to create drama or complain don’t get pushed into some other area just to fill the void.

I’m also sort of in awe of the spaciousness of that void–of how big it got. I don’t yet have words to explain what it is like to see what I’m passionate about move into center focus, instead of being something I work on on the sides. I’m already noticing that it feels really weird to manage my computer time–the computer is often enough a source of both work and entertainment. Where do the two overlap?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the steps it took for me to actually let go of my teaching job–because it was really, really hard–and realized that my coach and I approached it all in a very methodical way designed to be as in integrity as possible. I wrote down each piece and what I’m going to do is this–starting on January 1st, 2010, I’m going to post ten consecutive steps towards Stopping the Job Suckage.

For humor’s sake (when your job sucks, you need a little humor) we’re going to call it the Stopping the Job Suckage Challenge, and because I think it’s funny, I made badges:

Right-click and Save-As to download these images and then put them on your own blog or Facebook page. Link back to this so that people will know what in the world you’re talking about:
http://www.yourcourageouslife.com/blog/2009/12/20/a-case-of-the-mondays/

Over the course of  ten days, I’ll outline the ten steps that you can take to a.) help your job suck less right now (maybe even to the point where you’ll discover that you like it, after all), and b.) help you start moving towards what you really want to do if you find that that’s still where you’re at, and c.) help you to handle that process with as much personal integrity as possible.

I followed each of these steps and have felt incredibly grateful for it–my last night of teaching was a night where I found myself actually wanting to slow down and be totally present to the process. I have never before left a job with that feeling–in the past, I have been counting down the hours and minutes until I “could finally leave.”

What would it be like to actually look forward to going to work in the morning? It’s actually possible to take steps towards that. I have already heard from a lot of Courageous Year participants that starting a new line of work is something they’re wanting to do in this new year ( registration for The Courageous Year ends on January 1st!) and I’m excited about helping others find work that feeds their souls. I believe that if we were all approaching work differently and finding ways to help work feed us, the world would be a very different place.

By the way, part of Courageous Living is–absolutely–doing work that feeds your soul. There are ten days remaining to get a $200 discount on the April Courageous Living Retreat in San Francisco, CA (total cost: $400 if you register a deposit by January 1). In addition to beautiful sunsets, our own private house, catered meals by an amazing chef, walking to the beach, and all sorts of Courageous schwag, health counselor Valerie Tookes and photographer Vivienne McMaster will be participating in the retreat as well as offering free consults or a mini-photo session. Learn more on the retreats page.

Come Alive ~ Courageous Living Retreats from Kate Swoboda on Vimeo.

In September, the very day that I decided that I would let go of teaching, the first symptoms hit of what I would now tentatively diagnose as an ulcer. In all of the blog reading I’ve done about people who have left jobs with some kind of security in favor of a path that offered no official “security” but a sense of fulfillment, I only recall people talking about whimsical journeys. Cue the fairy dust! I don’t recall anyone talking about feeling as if they were getting an ulcer. 

So let me be the first (if I am), to report: Quitting your job and starting a new career path can cause something that feels suspiciously like an ulcer.

But truly, it’s hilarious. Hilarious! The hilarious thing is that I was sitting on the couch today, doing deep breathing, and I was completely okay with all of it, not in the sense that I was giving up and not caring but in the sense that I was simply taking it in stride, surrendering to it, accepting that this was part of the package that I chose, that this is how my body is choosing to express some of the fear that is coming up–the tummy is sore.

Perhaps the stomach upset doesn’t bother me so much for other reasons–reasons like the e-course filling, or feeling inspired around new ideas for the April retreat, or seeing my available session times for January filling more than a month in advance (there are four remaining, so contact me ASAP if you want to set up a coaching session).

I am so very grateful. I am walking into our new house with gratitude, into my yellow studio with gratitude, into every single morning with gratitude. When the fear does come up, it is less and less about “If I do this, will anyone even care?” and more and more, “Wow, I’m doing this–what if I screw it up?”

And that, too–riding that fear–is also part of the journey.

I mean, that’s just it–it. I am completely and totally and utterly thrilled, and so thankful, and so excited, at the same time that my stomach can be in pain to varying degrees or I feel fear and worry about being a screwup.

That’s it.

That’s all.

“That’s all” is a nice place to be.

* * *

Here’s a re-post of the link to Stacy’s beautiful courage necklaces.

And–those of you who signed up for the Courageous Year–in your digital Welcome Packet there is information about adding yourself to the mailing list that will be private for your group. I’m going to start sending announcements to that list in the coming weeks, so please add yourself as soon as you can.

Oh yes, and–I give advance notice about giveaways, retreat discounts, etc. via Twitter and Facebook. I also pass along any beautiful links, book recommendations, or inspiring quotations that come my way. If you’re not already getting the official announcements, get added!

If I chose one metaphor for my life in the past year, it would be the snow globe. In general, everything has felt so shaken up, so topsy-turvy, but in a beautiful way (the kind of way where you might be tempted to shake it up again, just to watch it happen), and now the pieces seem to be slowly floating down into a slower space.

The odd part about all of it is that underlying everything that happens lately, I have this larger sense of fate. I feel as if I have stepped off the track of being the arbiter of my life, someone who has sat down to identify goals in a purposeful way and then worked her ass off to attain them, and that now there is something bigger and more magical at play and I am just riding that ride. There is a lot of deja vu, a lot of hanging back and then when something happens kind of shaking my head at the “rightness” that I feel, and then sensing that, yes, it was all supposed to turn out just this way.

For instance, even with the troubles we’ve had with the house that we’ve just moved into–the plumbing lines that backed up, and the newer problem that has presented itself with the electrical system (!)–despite those troubles, I don’t question for a second whether this is the right place to be. It just feels right. In other houses where we’ve been when troubles have arisen it only confirmed what I knew–what I’d felt leading up to the signing of the papers, the red flag warnings that had been whispering at me to think about the choice just a bit more. For whatever reason, with this house it is my story that because it feels right, it is right despite the challenges. Thus, living here feels perfectly okay (in fact, I feel inordinately proud that we made the decision–walking in the house, I feel that sense of “Ah…” that I have been missing the past few years).

There is a kind of magic (energy? presence? spirit? who knows) that seems at work in the background, and I think it is always there but in this particular cycle of my life I feel more present to it. I feel guided by it, protected by it. I feel more committed to doing only that which resonates and trusting that if something does not resonate–even if it’s something that “should” resonate for some reason–there is something to that. I feel willing to listen. I have felt this way to varying degrees since Italy. Sometimes I think to myself that the only thing any human needs to get “right” on what they want is a week away from their everyday life. I find that every time I take myself out of my daily routines, issues that I think I’m challenged by become more clear, and then I can return to the routines with that insight.

I feel really grateful because I know I have felt this guidance before in my life and then it slipped away (or perhaps it’s something that just naturally cycles through, changing like seasons, waxing and waning?). It feels good to have this, especially now, because I also have big waves of fear come up–there is so much more money flowing out of my life in this moment than into it, and my inner little kid, happy as she is that I will no longer force her to do a job she is ready to let go of, is looking at the money part and going, “What the fuck are you doing? Who put you in charge?”

In a few minutes, I’m going to slip out of the house and head to one of my favorite places, Cafe Gratitude. They’re holding a workshop on abundance and I feel all sorts of things–afraid, resistant, excited, open–but mostly I’m hoping that this workshop is just an opening to sinking deeper into a sense of being held by the world. I’m also really, really grateful that there is a place I can go to get even further insights into stepping completely into being abundance. I’ve done a lot of money work in the past few years, and I’m proud of all of it, yet in many ways it feels like an onion being peeled as I discover another way that old patterns around scarcity or lack show up in my life (most recently, by the way, my old learned story about money, “Rich people are selfish and out of touch with the suffering of others” has shown up in feeling sudden bits of self-consciousness that someone might come into my home and think that because Andy and I are paying more rent and buying new furniture, I’ll be viewed as “selfish and out of touch with the suffering of others.” That was a huge wake up call for me yesterday–just when I thought that that story had played itself out fully…)

I’ll be excited to report back!

Please right-click and save-as to download this badge if you’d like to put it on your website–direct it back to www.thecourageousyear.com

So, at this point, you wonderful people have pretty much made my day so many times that I can’t quite fathom any of what is happening, and I am so very grateful for all of it, again and again and again.

Yesterday was a record day for the number of signups in one day for The Courageous Year.

I’m sending all participants a little special something in the mail, and those letters are making their way to all corners of the world–today I will send something to Greece (!), I’ve sent packages to Canada, the U.K., and all corners of the United States.

Still more of you have volunteered to pass out Courageous Cards in your area.

What are Courageous Cards?  They’re cards that dare people to dream. You leave them in special places like yoga studios or coffee shops, or (like my mother) in little nooks and crannies of bookstores (I so love the idea that someone would be browsing in a bookstore, which is a favorite activity of mine, and run across one of my cards), and trust that the right person will find it at the right time, and that when they do some little whisper or glimmer inside of them will breathe and go, “Hey. Hey, you. You’re courageous. You can do this thing you want to do. You can make this shift you want to make.”

Today alone, mail is going out to Oregon, Ohio, Florida, San Francisco, Toronto, British Columbia, Missouri, Massachusetts, Edinburgh (!), Colorado, and New Yawk.

That’s not counting the 15 or so packets that I sent out two weeks ago, which also went to places as diverse as Ireland and Chicago.

I needed to order more cards from my printer, yesterday!

So basically, I am giddy and so excited for what this year will bring for myself and the people participating. And the enthusiasm has really made me sit up straighter and put some additional pressure on the pedal to make this good. To check every single detail that I can and to really, truly, bring this course alive because it’s not just about the course or the individual goals of the participants, but I see some larger possibility here, both for connection between people as well as creating the world we want to live in. I see something so bold and beautiful and COURAGEOUS about all of this. 

I want you to know that I still have days, even whole weeks, where fear just runs my ass (I was going to phrase that more delicately, but I figured y’all appreciate honesty!). I mean, I seriously have these moments where my stomach is in knots, and then that goes away and I trust that it’s all going to be okay. 

Then the knots come back and I’m going nuts-o again. I’m riding this wave. I’m just trusting that if I do what I know has worked for me time and time again, things are going to be okay: Feel afraid, do it anyway, transform.

If you would like to get on the list for my next mail out of Courageous Cards to leave in your area, please let me know–email me and send me your address. And if you’re interested in learning more about The Courageous Year, feel free to click on the link and go.

P.S. Several people have emailed me to ask if I’m going to monitor enrollments to make sure that the course isn’t too large and overwhelming. The answer? Absolutely. I’m using a Content Management System (CMS) that will allow me to put the people enrolled into separate groups so that things remain more intimate, and I’ll also have a lot of control over the discussion forums–I can set up categories, for instance, so that things are organized and threads are easier to find.

We are moving our things out of storage this upcoming weekend–wowza–and theoretically, we’ll start to unpack even though we still have some time left at this house-sit and we’ll be sleeping here for a while longer, feeding the cats, making sure things are locked up nice and tight (and having the benefit of a more relaxed moving process, we hope!). By Thursday of next week, we’ll be completely and totally back into our new place.

I’m really excited to be moving back to Alameda, which has always felt like “home,” and which I’ve missed dearly since we began house-sitting early this year.

But it was good for us to take this time. We got away from a housing situation that wasn’t working for us, saved money, traveled, explored other neighborhoods. I fell completely and totally in love with a kitty that I’m already feeling incredibly sad about leaving–we’re talking, I tear up when I look at her and imagine how next week, I’ll get home and she won’t be there and that’s just heartbreaking so I don’t want to think about it–but there is still the slimmest of slight possibilities that her owner will get back and decide that it would be okay to give her to us. [[ cross your fingers with me, please! ]]

House-sitting has also given us the benefit of this beautiful sky, which I had to share (nope–no Photoshop here, I promise). Our current house-sit is in Kensington, the hilly area above Albany, California. This bazillion dollar view was just one of the treats of this space. In the mornings I would watch as the fog burned off or I’d have the inside track on whether or not it would be a hot day, because any day where there’s no fog in the morning in the Bay Area is probably a warmer day! The sunsets would just astonish me. I’d walk through the kitchen or happen to look out the window and then–WOW–stop whatever I was doing to just go outside and quietly stare at the sky as daylight sank into night.

I’ve appreciated this time to get away from all of my “stuff” when we packed it into the storage unit. I just wanted a new, fresh start. There is a part of me that wonders how much I will keep once we start unloading boxes this weekend. After all of this moving and traveling, I find very little use for hanging on to things, and knowing that anything I bought would put me in the position of needing to store it or haul it has certainly curbed whatever tendencies I might have previously had for hoarding (I mean, I’m not much of a tchotchke buyer to begin with, but still). 

I’ve appreciated the opportunity to see both how I wanted to live and how I didn’t want to live. To live in someone’s home is to get a window into their lives. Perhaps if some part of me had ever wondered if I would want a house tucked away in the hills or given that thought any romantic energy, it seems to be disavowed for now–it’s seriously far more of a pain in the booty to tack an extra 20 minutes of commuting onto even the most random of errands than it’s worth to me at this point in my life (Basically, I’d rather commute out to the retreat area rather than living out there!).

And I’ve also learned–Andy concurs with this–that there is value in saving up money to purchase the home furnishings/looks that we really value, rather than getting something cheap from IKEA because it’s not expensive and sorta-kinda-mostly fits the bill. One of the houses that we stayed in was just so beautiful and perfectly put together, and it was evident that real care and investment had gone into getting quality items and creating a home, and I admired that immensely.

Fear is coming up, too. I mean, it’s crazy to think that these housing choices are made based on, basically, 20-30 minutes of walking through a place, tops. Will the place be too small, and we didn’t realize that when we were there because there was no furniture, and we’ll get in and hate how cramped it feels? Will there be some loud garage band next door that we just aren’t aware of yet? An infestation of ants underneath the house, just waiting for some nice new person to move in so they can take over the cereal supply? Drug dealers on the corner?

Okay, so this is sort of laughable–I don’t really think most of the fears I’ve had could really happen (okay, except for the too small fear and the garage band fear), but you can see where the “disaster planning” side of me wants to go with this. It’s taking a lot to reign things in!

And in addition to all of this, there is teaching and feeling far more distracted than I can ever remember feeling, my hoarse voice that hasn’t recovered fully in part because I keep talking (go figure), and getting The Courageous Year and Your Courageous Life going. I am sending out goody packets to people who want to help spread the word about what I’m doing–one part postcards to drop off at your local coffee shop when you head out for coffee (or your office, yoga studio, etc.), and another part free, fun greeting cards that I’m gifting people with because I’m so grateful. (If you want me to send you a packet, email me with your address and I’ll give you the hookup: kate -at- thiscourageouslife -dot- com).

And I’m sending a letter to each and every Courageous Year participant (crossing my fingers that they get to the international folks), but I won’t say much more about that because, you know, I want it to be a surpriiiiise.

And of course, there’s the Keri Smith giveaway going on here (ends 10pm Pacific on 10/28…)

There is so much going on that I am excited for two weeks from now, when I predict we’ll be packed and snuggled into our new home, and at least this will be one massive transition off of the checklist!

What. A. Long. Weekend. 

There were arguments! There was a complete lack of integrity! There was recouping! There was fear and anxiety over making major decisions! There was walking into a house that we were looking at as a backup and going, “Oh. This works so much better than the other one, and it won’t look like an abandoned shack for 8-10 weeks while waiting to be painted.”

There was the last-minute app! And the references! And the financial statements! And the feeling nutso calling the other place to cancel just hours before we were due to give a decision!

Chaos!

I do not want to repeat!

However, by the time you read this my 8am class will be seeing a real, live brain in class. That’s kind of cool.

And also, there’s free stuff here for iPhone users.

And a new article by Alma posted here.

And a daily dose of inspiration here.

Which means there’s no case o’ the Mondays…here. Or if there is, I’m sure it’s nothing a non-fat single shot flat vanilla latte won’t cure.

At the Marin Headlands

When I began telling people about letting go of teaching, everyone I spoke with was supportive. I was surprised by this. I anticipated hearing more, “But what about…money/time/health insurance/making it?” types of fears. Instead, people congratulated me on making the shift, and what I was left with was my own little room of these fears.

They weren’t anyone else’s–they were my own.

Then, as the weeks went by and I began building the websites and they were starting to take shape, I needed to define for myself what my hopes were. My hopes were simple: that initially, the sites would have resonance–and that ultimately, the e-course and retreats would fill.** 

“I get that the e-course starts in three months, so people aren’t going to sign up right away,” I told Andy before the sites launched. “All I want right now is resonance; I want to see that what I’m wanting to do resonates with people in a positive way. To me, that would look like supportive emails or comments. People saying ‘Like’ when I post the link on Facebook. Sharing the video with others. Stuff like that.”

By Thursday of last week, it was clear that I needed a break from the computer. I’d managed to come down with a cold right after a visit from my sister, my arm was hurting, my carpal tunnel was flared up, etc. Starting Friday, I decided to just…let…go...and take a break from the computer for a few days.

So you could have knocked me over with a feather when I got a call from someone who had registered for the course on Saturday afternoon, while Andy and I were out looking at apartments (it would seem at this point that we are likely letting go of house-sitting because the hurdy-gurdy moving around is wearing on us). And then I get home and try to log in on the computer, now excited to see what else is there–but the internet is down! Nonononono! gah!–and then finally later the internet is back up, and…oh my gosh. People are signing up for the e-course. Three months in advance. And joining the mailing list-serve. And sending me emails. And being so unbelievably wonderful and supportive and kind that I just want to send all of you the good things of life…things like gerber daisies. And buttercream cake. And vanilla lattes.

Holy tamale, Batman!

The personal work that I’ve been doing for years now means so much to me, mostly because it has gotten me out of a really, really stuck space. Being a Life Coach means so much to me. The e-course–something I’ve been thinking of doing for years, to the point where I’ve kept all of these little bits of notes in a file-folder that I’ve dragged around to every house I’ve moved into (and if you’re counting, that’s a lot of moving)–it means so much to me.

The fact that any of you see enough resonance to sign up this early in the game means more than I can say. You are helping me to create my own Courageous Year. I can promise you–this is not going to be some half-hearted, pitch it together at the last minute kind of deal. I’m putting my heart and soul into this course and hoping (trusting!) that when all of us collectively step into that space, something pretty amazing will be created–this group of people who are letting go of whatever doesn’t serve us to step into a vision for something new and more powerful.

** April 2010 retreat dates to be announced soon! Sign up for the mailing list over at http://www.yourcourageouslife.com for the announcement when I have our space confirmed.

Ready for something new: new blog, new coaching site, new e-course

I don’t even know how to start this entry. For reals. I’m sort of laughing at myself because I feel almost…I dunno, shy to explain all that I’ve been up to the past few weeks. Like I’m going to show you some part of myself that is really hopeful, and that likes being so hopeful and wants to hold that for just a little bit longer before I open it up and put it out there–the possibility that in fact, you’ll think it’s ridiculous. Or that you’ll love it and yet it still just won’t work. All of those Gremlin fears rise to the surface at these moments, and it’s only the strength I’ve cultivated and that I will choose to stand in that keeps me typing.

I could start in so many, many different areas. I guess I’ll start by saying that I feel very vulnerable about all of it, and this is the thing I am most reluctant to admit to anyone–so this must be the best place to start. When all else fails: tell the truth!

Well first, the URL change–which is actually the last thing to change in a series of changing events, but since you’re here, I’ll start here. I’ve had the domain name selftaughtgirl.com for many years. When I bought it, I had this idea in my head that it was a fitting name because I was, in so many ways, “self taught.” I carried with me a story that whatever I had achieved in my life, I had done by my own good graces and with a lot of grit and determination to surmount any obstacle or challenge that might arise.

And it’s funny, because after the past few weeks of working harder than I can ever remember working in my life, on something that means a lot to me, it hit me just less than a week ago that in fact, I was never “self taught.” I was never alone. Where in the world did I get that idea? When I think back, I think of so many helping hands or moments of grace where something unfolded in just the way that I needed it to unfold. The idea that I was alone and creating my own path without collaboration or help was just a story. Thus, I purchased a URL that I think more accurately expresses what I really believe myself to be about.

Then rewind, to go back further…

I keep trying to feel my way to remembering “where this story began.” Where did this chapter begin? 

I’m still not sure. I can say that this most recent trip to Italy changed me in big ways. The realization that I want to become a mother changed me in big ways. I have been actively stretching myself into a new space ever since.

And then a few weeks ago, as part of doing Mondo Beyondo, as part of the growing realization that I wasn’t feeling fulfilled by teaching any longer and that I was no longer getting the gifts I’d hoped to get, I started looking around and asking myself what I really wanted to shift in my life. I’d felt so good in Italy, so whole. The weeks after my return from Italy were also full of that goodness and wholeness and then when school began again, the balance slowly began to waiver and totter–then bam!–back to feeling pressed. The headaches began.

If there is one thing I always told myself growing up, it was that I would not work a job just for the money. I watched as both of my parents worked jobs that they massively resented in order to put food on the table. I have always been determined not to do that to myself. As I’ve become an adult myself, I’ve learned that part of the work is to work on myself–that unhappy people are unhappy in jobs everywhere, regardless of what the job was. 

Now, I generally consider myself to be a pretty aware, “with it” person around what is true/resonates for me, but somehow I had just completely missed that I was not happy with teaching and that I craved something different. When I asked myself what I craved, the answer was just sitting right there, with no real work: I want to fully step into being a Life Coach. I’ve done it for the past three years, I love doing it, and I want to do more of it. Also, I want to lead retreats. And finally, I want to actually put together that e-course I’ve been kicking around ideas with for the past few years.

But right on the heels of that admission came this: but you can’t do that you can’t quit teaching you can’t give up the security what about the money what about the job what about the security in this economy are you crazy that’s ridiculous teaching isn’t that bad so just shut up and deal with it.

And I feel very fortunate that I had that reaction and it happened during a moment of clarity, because had it happened at some other point, I’m not sure I would have “heard” it. When I heard myself in this way, loud and clear, I went: “What? Excuse me, what? That is not me.”

But of course, it was me. I sat there and let it sink in that what I wanted to do was let go of my job as a teacher of English and step into being a different kind of teacher. I just let that sink…in…that this was what I really, really wanted. I watched as that run-together voice of fear came back. 

I began to cry, because now I have enough experience that I heard that run-together fearful voice the way I would hear it if I were holding space as a Life Coach for a client. I cried with compassion for all the times I’ve heard that voice in my clients, and I cried with fear,  knowing that now I knew what I wanted to do and there was nothing to hide behind. I knew that I would be out of integrity with myself if I stayed in a job that was not fulfilling me fully, even if there are many parts of it that are wonderful, just because I was afraid of the “what about the money” part.

I had a friend once who had dated a guy for a bit. He seemed pretty nice. We were IM’ing one day and she mentioned that she had broken up with him. I asked her why, because she’d never expressed any truly serious, deep issues with him, and she replied–and I can see the IM clear as day–”Because I was only 75% happy, and I wasn’t willing to settle for 75%.” 

And I thought: WOW. I admired it. Some might read that kind of statement as narcissism. I read it as a declaration to the world that is about living big, and being unafraid to do so.

The entire weekend before I gave my leave of absence from teaching, I was sick to my stomach. I felt as if I’d swallowed rocks. I woke up in the middle of the night with my stomach in agony. I was terrified to do it. And then, that Monday, I typed out my letter and headed in to campus and knocked on my Chair’s door, spoke with her briefly without getting into too much drama-laden detail, she was completely supportive, and then I left. 

I felt lighter, having done it. I manifested, I read books about wishing. Then, I buckled down and got to work.

I had known that my coaching website felt sadly outdated for awhile. That was what I worked on, first. I give you:

http://www.yourcourageouslife.com

and then I began working on the e-course. I have known for awhile that I wanted to do an e-course, something that got more in-depth than many of the e-courses I’ve seen (and that is not to knock them–I think that they look lovely and sound like a lot of fun, and Mondo Beyondo was a wonderful experience for me). Having worked as a Coach these past few years, I’ve arrived at a place where I combine a lot of magical thinking and play in my work with the nuts and bolts tools and making powerful choices. I’ve wanted to make a course that did that for some time.

Here it is: http://www.thecourageousyear.com

So between thiscourageouslife.com, yourcourageouslife.com, and the courageousyear.com, you might notice a theme. And no, it’s not that my design skills have improved over the years. That word–courageous–has carried me farther than anything in my life. It is this word that I realized, as I was thinking about the domain selftaughtgirl.com, was really responsible for whatever I have created. 

I define courage as feeling the fear, doing it anyway, transforming. Whatever I have achieved in my life has not been because I was alone and “self taught,” it has been the result of tremendous courage and the helping hands of so many beautiful souls and experiences.

The past few weeks, I’ve been working as if I had two jobs. Teaching, teaching, teaching, coaching, coaching, coaching. I sense a huge shift in the very way that I’m setting all of this up, as compared to any of my other freelance endeavors. The other things I was setting up were things that I could do in my spare time. I am setting this up as the sole focus of my work. This has involved new bank accounts, setting up a meeting with a financial consultant, meeting and starting to work with a marketing person (who, I think, I will start referring to as my “marketing guru” because I think she’s so damned good). Also, lots of telling the truth–admitting again and again that I feel afraid, admitting again and again that my hope is that this leave of absence is in fact permanent and that I make a true transition to a new career, the one my heart has been yearning for ever since I left graduate school, really (I read an article at the career development office about a woman who had become a Life Coach, and something in my heart said “I want to do that” but it was another few years before I would act).

And with all of these very scary steps, I am learning in a bigger and deeper way what courage really is. I had had no idea that I was so afraid until that moment when it all sort of descended. Then there was the lightness of letting go and the past few weeks there has been the stress of trying to build something–and I have had many, many frustrated moments where I’ve suddenly asked myself, “What the hell am I doing? Am I crazy? Do I even want to do this?” (Note to self: they usually happen when I am Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. Or sitting in front of the computer for far too long, trying to get oooooonnnneeee more thing done because I was so excited about this 10/01/09 launch date). 

And now, after all that, I feel more of a sense of just being along for the ride, and being curious, and being willing to see what is on the other side of the fear. I have wished, I have worked hard, I have hoped and I have had fear, and now I release it into the world, the way I would open my palm to let a small bird fly.

~ with so much gratitude ~

Last night, I was giving my students some last-minute study time before their first test of the semester. I had a nagging feeling that the stack of tests in front of me seemed a little too slim for the number of students that were in the class, so I quickly counted them.

Oh, man–not enough tests. What to do? Nothing but find a photocopier and copy four more.

I left the room with the tests while my students studied, and headed up a flight of stairs, crossing my fingers that I would find a photocopier that wasn’t broken (and this is, often enough, a challenge–someday when I win the lottery, I am totally going to donate brand new, spiffy photocopiers to the college). I was walking down a long hallway when I passed a bulletin board that featured photographs of the current deans of the college, arranged by discipline, and the top administrators who work under those deans. And as I passed this display, I suddenly felt this huge sense of connection to something larger than me, to this institution and all that it aims to do, to every student I’ve ever come into contact with, and an overwhelming rush of gratitude for everything in my life, including teaching, even though I am making a choice to let it go.

I felt such gratitude that I have had the honor of teaching students. I felt such gratitude that I have been privileged enough to teach for this institution, which is a place where I have seen teachers who genuinely, truly care about students, who regularly sacrifice themselves and time with their families to stay late and conference, plan the best lesson plans, meet with other teachers to get ideas or collectively improve courses. This lovely community college, so beleaguered with challenges, just does the best it can with them and what comes out, actually, is pretty damned good.

I felt such gratitude that I stuck with the challenges my Coach had placed before me–to not leave the job in a huff of frustration or in the darkest moments, but instead to fully clean up my side, to get in integrity with me. I felt such gratitude for that because I’ve met teachers who waited too long, who didn’t get out until they were utterly worn down and leaving felt simply like surviving. I’ve felt worn down like that before and had I not had the good fortune to take time to restore myself, I might be even more worn down, now.

My thoughts were these: Thank you thank you thank you, such big gratitude, for the experience of sticking through for all of the right reasons–to work on me. Thank you thank you thank you, such big gratitude, for the clarity to know when it’s time to let go.

I notice a softening inside of myself around the fear. The fear moves in waves. Over the weekend, as I was going back and forth, back and forth, the fear was so intense that I was waking up with stomach cramps in the middle of the night. I felt as if I’d eaten gravel. Nearly every food made my stomach hurt, so I ate very little. This, too, was a surprise. Everything about the fear with this decision has been a surprise to me, the decision to let go of teaching itself has been a surprise, the reckoning with myself and what I really want has been a surprise.

I went to the crunchy-granola natural pharmacy nearby to pick up some pro-biotics and a naturopath checked out my tongue and also suggested some Chinese herbs. Within twenty-four hours of taking the pro-biotics and herbs, my days of stomach troubles were significantly abated and then much better, and I felt held.

And I thought to myself, “I want to remember everything about this.” I want to remember how difficult it was, because it has become very clear to me that this experience of letting one job go in order to pursue another career is not about money or health insurance. Instead, I am very curious about who this woman is who is so unexpectedly afraid, and I am even more curious to see who she is, what she looks like, on the other side of that fear.

I am interested to see what the edges of me look like, the places that are more raw and less put-together.

I feel so much more alive.

I have been working and am continuing to work on what my next direction will be. What has come to me has been really swift, really clear, really directed. I finished the website design for the site that will go with this idea in only one hour, and that is practically unheard of for me (usually, I have about ten “false start” designs, that cover the span of a few days!).

I’m making the announcements on October 1st and sharing it all. I’m so excited. As Jill Scott says, “I’m living my life like it’s golden.”

~ in gratitude ~

The last few days have been really intense, largely because I had a kick-ass session with my own Coach, got really honest with myself, and arrived at a choice that terrifies me even as it thrills me:

I am taking a leave of absence from teaching.

Here’s what happened: Thursday night I arrived at my Coach’s place in a total funk. I blame it on Mondo Beyondo (in the best possible way). The thing is, when I signed up for the course what I thought I would get out of it was a chance to connect with other like-minded souls, to have fun playing around with wishing and dreaming, stuff like that. In my head, the importance that I attached to it was all very light. It was more of an attitude of, “This will be fun,” rather than “This will change the choices I make in my immediate future.”

Taking a few weeks to focus on wishing and dreaming puts a mirror up for how I am living my life and how close I am to living the way that I want to live. When I made my Mondo Beyondo list, I was pleased to realize/discover that my desires were not so very far off. I was at least on the right track, I realized. But like a seed planted, all of these little ideas that I had written down, made public, and started to talk about suddenly had lives of their own. I kept thinking about and was stumped by this: You know what you want, Kate. So what is keeping you from going after it? If you’re thisclose, what are you not stepping into?

I didn’t even realize, until I made that list, how close I was to what I was wanting in so many areas. What was keeping me from fully embracing it, then? And again and again, what kept coming up was a feeling of fear and the thought, “I can’t quit teaching.”

So, okay–Life Coach Red Flags, here. Red Flag #1: Making choices based on fear. #2: Noticing that I was holding on to the fear rather than just letting . #3: The word can’t.

And as I kept writing and journaling, what I kept coming to again and again was that in this moment, I want to let go of teaching English.

I do not know why this would be such a hard truth to admit. Plenty of people dislike their jobs, and I wouldn’t even say that I “dislike” teaching English so much as I have realized–not at that moment but after the last five days of parsing it out–that I simply do not believe it is good for me to continue right now. But what immediately came up, aside from fear over money replacement and loss of health insurance, was all of this…gunk. I have never had gunk come up like this before. Sure, it was scary to start doing photoshoots (confession: before every one I do, I still have thoughts like, “What if I completely mess this up???” It’s a weird photographer’s stage fright!). Sure, it was scary to start my coaching training a few years back and then to develop a coaching business and then to take my first coaching calls. Sure, it was scary to go to Europe for 30 days and to live in Florence this summer (what if I’m lonely? what if I get mugged? what if Andy and I grow apart because I’m gone for too long? what if not speaking the language completely overwhelms me? what if…?). Sure, it has been scary to send out my writing and it has never felt good to receive a rejection notice.

However, I have just courageously stepped into all of those previous fears. Nothing ever felt so big.

Letting go of teaching is BIG for me, mostly because my relationship to it has been sort of like a dysfunctional relationship with a boyfriend you know you need to let go of, but there’s some good stuff there so you kind of hang on, hoping it will work out. I have known that teaching was not working for me in all the ways I wanted it to work for me, and yet I also knew that there were areas where I was out of integrity, or that teaching held gifts, or that there was something new for me to discover, so I held on (that and, I love working with the students. Whenever we laugh in the class, whenever I see groups excitedly discussing a new idea, whenever a student who was previously failing gets it and starts rocking out, I feel like a million-bazillion dollars, so I was hoping that this would carry me through).

Every semester, I have finished the semester identifying habits that I want to work on or shift for the next semester. I think it’s a great teacher practice. And every new semester, I have walked into the classroom thinking, “That’s it! This is the semester I will…”

And it’s so funny, because it’s always blown up in my pretty little face. I was sort of talking about this with my Sept 3rd entry (not sure how to link to that). I would get better at XYZ thing that I had said, “Teaching will work better for me if I master ___” about, and then that XYZ thing would get better but then something else would crop up–immediately! Within weeks of the new semester! It was crazy! So I’d get to work on that, and then the cycle would repeat itself. I’d say, “Maybe teaching just isn’t working for me anymore.” I’d list all the things in my head that weren’t working. And then I’d think of how really great the students are, and maybe I’d think a few fearful thoughts about not having perfectly steady income, and I’d go, “Nope. Not going to let go, just yet.”

And then this semester…oh, good god. I did all of this work last May with my coach around showing up more powerfully in the classroom, recognizing where I am fearful of students not liking me and then getting lax on my own rules and resenting them when they take advantage of me, things like that. And this semester, I have walked into the classroom more powerfully, and that fear is gone. It has hit the dust. I am not afraid any longer of my students disliking me.

No other problems have walked in to replace that problem. The semester is progressing smooth as pie…

…And I still want to let go of the job. I still struggle with not resenting getting up for work. I still get these massive headaches before I am supposed to go in to teach.

I’ve coached many people who are dissatisfied with their jobs and some think a new career path will make them happy. Many of them have even already considered that maybe the job isn’t the problem, but how can one know the difference between blaming a job for problems versus just not being in the right line of work? I believe it all boils down to integrity. If we are out of integrity in many areas of our lives, there’s inevitably something (a relationship, job, body image, etc.) to be used as the blame for why we are unhappy. If we are totally in integrity, to the best of our ability, and we still notice dissatisfaction in these really huge ways, then that means something just isn’t in alignment with our vision for ourselves, and the dissatisfaction is trying to tell us something.

This is why I’ve worked so hard to figure out how to become the best teacher that I could be. I have never liked the idea that I might let go of one line of work and bounce around to another when the real issue is me trying to avoid being totally in integrity with myself. These past few days of soul-searching have shown me that I am as in integrity as I know how to be, and it is time for a real change.

I’m excellent at what I do. I’m knowledgeable about English instruction for the levels I teach and the demographics served (remedial, ESL, learning disabilities), I’m willing to try new things, I’m innovative, I look for every excuse to bring creativity into the classroom, I try not to assign anything that would make me yawn myself. I dislike the commute but I arrive on time, every time, almost always early, I’ve developed systems to ease grading, I avoid dealing with bureaucracy almost entirely, I’m now a seasoned rock star at diffusing discipline problems, I get that grading done and come in and lecture anyway even if I feel physical problems, I work on managing the stress, I don’t check my email nearly as often as I used to and don’t do a stitch of teaching-related work on the weekends any more, and I’m organized to the point of annoyance and usually keep pretty on top of remembering things. I am interested in my students and want them to lead remarkable lives, I talk to them outside of class if they need support, I hold extra office hours. I recognize, during difficult student encounters, that everyone is doing the best they can with what they’ve got and that whatever challenge is presented by a student is one that can teach me something. I recognize that the hostility often comes from some source of pain. I have cultivated more patience than I’ve ever thought possible, and the experience of being a teacher has taught me more about classism in our society than any book.

If I can learn all of that, and still not quite feel right with myself when I wake up in the mornings to teach a class, then that tells me that at least for now, I have some exploring to do outside of the classroom.

I am typing all of this in the afternoon, just hours before I will drive in to my department and talk to my Chair and offer my written notice. I am setting this to post this evening, after it’s all done (because I’d kind of be an ass-clown to announce something like this to the Internet before I spoke to my immediate supervisor). I am nervous, and excited, and…all swirly.

There is so much more to say–especially because since making this decision Thursday all sorts of new and exciting stuff has come down the pipeline–but will have to leave you with this, for now.

Okay–calling all people who have an opinion!

If you really knew me, you’d know that marketing is a huge learning curve for me. Actually, I dislike it a lot because I see so much inauthenticity, and that’s part of the reason it’s a learning curve. Authentic marketing is fantastic. When someone is genuinely excited to share a neat idea or pass along something great, I love seeing that and being part of the enthusiasm. What I find difficult, especially on the web, is seeing places where I suspect that the marketing is not authentic. For instance, when researching travel, I frequently come across websites where someone tries to pretend as though they had a personally great experience with a hotel, when in fact it’s just someone faking the personal in order to pimp the hotel. Not cool.

That said, I also know that marketing is not a dirty word, so I’m getting more into reading about it and talking to people about it. One question that keeps coming up for me is feeling that there’s “too much” going on with my websites.

The trajectory looks something like this–the blog, thisyhere one, is what came first.

Wanting to have a writing portfolio is what came next, and as I branched out into doing photography, what eventually came forth was http://www.katecourageous.com.

Coaching, under the website http://www.healgrowcreate.com was next. For years, I only worked with clients individually. Now I want to branch out into doing more workshops, retreats, and finally (!) getting brave enough to put forth the e-course I’ve always been dreaming of doing.

The Courageous Traveler was a passion that I came to. I’m excited about travel, enjoy writing about it and talking about it with people, and wanted to play with that a bit online.

Four websites. All of them have a different look. And now the question–Should I consolidate them in some way? If not, what are the reasons to keep them separate? If so, what are the benefits of consolidating? Do you find the different websites confusing in any way? Or is it good that they are separate–does this keep them nice and compartmentalized, with one site focused on one particular thing, and that’s it?

Here’s my line of thinking: I want a person to go to any of these websites and just find whatever information they might want to find about the other things that I do on each website. So I would like it if someone who visits this journal also has the option of seeing that I have creative pursuits and work for myself, both because that’s a piece of understanding me and where I’m coming from, and also because I find that my best clients are people who find me through my journal. They already get what I’m about on some level.

I’d like someone who visits Kate Courageous.com to see that I also coach. However, I established healgrowcreate.com as its own separate website because I thought it would be good to give someone who was considering coaching a lot of information about the subject. I’d also like anyone considering coaching–especially because so many of my clients are creative entrepreneurs taking bold leaps into scary territory like working for themselves–to know that I, too, know what it is like to put myself out there creatively. I feel like there’s too much that I want to say about coaching and retreats to glob it all in with katecourageous. That’s a “pro” for keeping the websites separate–the information sort of stays organized within its own place. Yet with separate websites, this becomes more places a person to click in order to find information. Someone who finds me via katecourageous.com would have to click over to healgrowcreate.com to get information about retreats, unless I make several different “retreats” pages (which is the current mode I’m in). That’s more places to make updates–to the katecourageous.com page, plus the healgrowcreate.com page, etc. So that’s a “con” for keeping them separate.

Truth be told I don’t actually mind making multiple updates–if I know for sure that the multiple sites are not causing confusion for readers.

So, I’m incredibly curious (and feeling really vulnerable in asking for feedback). Is it confusing that I have a blog, a writing/photography portfolio, and a coaching website? Should they all be consolidated to one? Or should they remain separate?

Ideas either via comments or email (kate -at- selftaughtgirl -dot- com) are appreciated.

Flying Books. San Francisco.

I was saying to Andy the other day that despite the fact that we are very busy lately–he is inundated with freelance work and I am doing my usual juggle of putting time and attention into one passion and then another–I have this strong sense within that we are building something. The word “juggle” seems an apt metaphor, though the image to conjure up is one of someone with all of the balls in the air, having fun with it, passing one to the next hand with ease. A lot going on, while having this intense focus.

I am going through a reading/personal growth phase. I go through these a few times a year. During these phases, I enter this space where I simply cannot get enough of any kind of book with a message about personal growth, wishing, manifesting, believing in oneself, etc. I always enjoy these periods immensely–what could be better than immersing oneself in positive thinking? Sounds like a win-win to me–and then I eventually ebb out of them when I hit a place where I feel burned out on analyzing my life and want only to live it, not to think about my choices quite so deeply. I think the two sides complement one another; I see them both as a good thing.

One of the books I’ve read recently was Jill Bolte Taylor’s book, “A Stroke of Insight,” which was also named after her now infamous TED talk (and if you haven’t seen it, or if you got bored somewhere around the middle and didn’t watch it all the way through because it was twenty minutes long, you’re missing out! See it to the end; it’s worth it!).

I really loved this passage: “Although there are certain limbic system (emotional) programs that can be triggered automatically, it takes less than ninety seconds for one of these programs to be triggered, surge through our body, and then be completely flushed out of our bloodstream. My anger response, for example, is a programmed response that can be set off automatically. Once triggered, the chemical released by my brain surges through my body and I have a physiological experience. Within ninety seconds from the initial trigger, the chemical component of my anger has completely dissipated from my blood and my automatic response is over. If, however, I remain angry after those ninety seconds have passed, then it is because I have chosen to let that circuit continue to run. Moment by moment, I make the choice to either hook into my neurocircuitry or move back into the present moment, allowing that reaction to melt away as fleeting physiology” (153).

I loved it because anger is not an emotion I am unfamiliar with. I think back to how much time I have spent being angry, often over things that didn’t matter, and it seems like such wasted time. Yet I would have well-meaning people tell me, “Well, don’t let it get to you. Don’t get angry; just let it be. Let go of that negative energy.”

And for years I’d always have this (angry) response of, “Gee, thanks for your insight. Why, I’ll just go flip the ‘anger’ switch and then I won’t be angry anymore! Great! It’s that easy, right? Sure it is!” (Sure it is, you freaking New Age weirdo. Now run along and go pet some crystals and cleanse your aura.)

I had such a response because: A.) I had/have a little kid inside with her own unhealed stuff, and that little kid was always told that she was not allowed to have her anger, and anyone who has ever told a little kid not to feel whatever emotion they are feeling has seen the result–they don’t like it. B.) These people made it seem so easy, and I didn’t feel “heard,” or like they acknowledged that I was struggling . C.) I felt totally controlled by my anger. The thought that it was something I could control felt utterly unrealistic. D.) I was (and in some ways, still can be) addicted to my anger, using it as a way to keep myself a Victim, and anyone’s assertion that I had more power than my Victim wanted to believe I had was a threat to Victim/Ego/Gremlin. Victim/Ego/Gremlin wants to stay in charge, so if someone suggests letting go of the anger–boy howdy, those aspects of myself were not liking that.

Today, I stand in a place where I have shifted a lot around the anger. I don’t get angry as often. I don’t get angry as fast. I don’t get as angry as I did; the level is lower. I look at my part in the situation faster. And when I do miss the mark and blow my top and get angry, I get calm a lot faster and let it go a whole lot faster. I used to have a fight with Andy and be pissed at him for an entire day. These days, if we get into an argument I’m mad for all of ten minutes before I want to shift it.

Now, I think ten minutes is pretty damned good, and I honor myself for that. However, when I read Jill Taylor’s book, and in particular that passage, something really clicked for me. I think I had believed that the reason I managed to get anger down from an entire day to only ten minutes was due to a combination of getting more mature, doing more to acknowledge and honor my inner little kid, finding people who could support me so that anger didn’t have to be my only response (sadness, I believe, is always underneath the lid of anger–and I believe we pull the weed out by the root when we process through the sadness, so having those people available helps), and doing more to step into my own power and not be a victim. Basically, lots of getting honest/real with what was real for me in a moment (the anger) and then allowing it (processing it out) with support, and then choosing something different.

But when I read that passage, and read that it’s really only about 90 seconds…it was just like, “Whoa.” Ninety seconds? That’s it?

This just seems so incredibly powerful to me. For one thing, it completely rips the head off of the story I carried for a long time that I didn’t or couldn’t control my anger. So any time Victim/Ego/Gremlin wants to start chattering in my ear about that, I have this little bit of scientific evidence to pass on.

I’ve been thinking about what other emotions this applies to. I remember that when I taught public speaking, someone told me that it takes only one full minute for the initial stress rush that people experience when speaking to subside. The rush that causes the sweaty palms, dry throat, etc., will be fully over and done in only one minute if the person does not let their mind take over with inner critic chatter (which only stimulates more symptoms because the body has a new rush in response to those thoughts). So I would encourage my students to just keep telling themselves, “Once this minute is over, I won’t have a red face anymore” or “Once this minute is over, I won’t be shaking as much.” I’d also have them focus on their breathing. And for many of them, knowing that it was only going to be one awkward minute seemed to really help.

So what other areas could this be applied to? How about fear.

Oooooh, fear. This has been coming up for me a lot lately, as I continue to get deep with acknowledging what I really want for myself, for my life. There’s been a lot of asking “How Big can I live?” these days (hence all of the spiritual and personal growth).

Sometimes I will just be walking along and then have some thought of fear and it can stay with me for a few hours.

Or does it?

After reading Taylor’s book, I strongly suspect that it is the same for fear as it is for anger. There is probably an initial surge and then it’s done, rifinito (finished). And probably within 90 seconds to three minutes, somewhere in that range, and when I say that it “stays with me for a few hours,” I bet what really happens is that I choose to run a certain circuit of old patterns, habits, and interpretations.

Now, I of course already knew that this is what fear is–the running of old patterns, habits, and interpretations, and believing that they will be our present and future. However, what I’m getting at is just how small the part is that we actually cannot control, the part that is automatic, the part that is a surge through our body. It’s only a few minutes, at most.

So what are most of us doing with all of those hours, all of those days?

Investigator Kate is on the case to answer that very question–and I hope that others will be on the lookout for answers, too.