Proactive vs. Reactive

The Bay Area is a demanding place to live. The culture around you says “do more”, “achieve more”, “be better than the next guy”, “be the parent who gets to say ‘my kid was accepted into Harvard’”. It’s all about success and competition to achieve success. There are financial demands, high expectations to meet (at work/school/home) and we all put pressure on ourselves to meet them, whether they’re self-imposed or employer-perceived. How proactive are you in your own life? Do you intentionally plan to do things, and then do them? Or do you find that something often comes up and derails your plans? Of course, being proactive in your life means you have to have the TIME to be proactive. Right? Not enough hours in the day? Sound familiar?

What would happen if you committed to clearing your weekend calendar for a month? Okay, so you have soccer games for the kids on Saturdays and there’s baseball practice too. But what if you found yourself with time on your hands to do whatever you wanted with it? What would you REALLY do? Is the first thing that comes to mind home improvements? Finally tackling that project that’s been staring you in the face for a year? That’s being REACTIVE. It’s allowing something else to dictate how you spend your time. It’s not a choice, it’s an obligation. Don’t get me wrong, yes, you need to set aside time to get that done. But, what if, when you cleared your calendar for that month, you scheduled the time to complete that tedious project? Then, maybe had time to go out to eat with the family? OR, have a spontaneous night out with friends? How would it feel to deliberately tackle that project, because you CHOSE to, rather than doing it because you HAD to? Put some good music on, make it fun. You might find that your pride and sense of accomplishment actually increase and you might actually come to enjoy the same task that you’ve been avoiding.

If you find yourself just trying to keep up, you’re not alone. A metaphor that I often use when people just don’t want to do it anymore is “Unplugging From The Matrix”. You have control over your own life, if you choose to exercise it. You don’t HAVE to do anything. How you budget your time is completely up to you. BUT, you can bet your bippie that you will enjoy the life you create when you give yourself the gift of more hours in a day. Push getting your car washed to tomorrow if it doesn’t HAVE to be done today. And then use that time to go get yourself a cup of coffee and read for an hour. Try it. Put your to do list on a calendared schedule, so you don’t feel the stress and anxiety of those tasks swirling in your head. Intentionality and perception are the keys to success. Exercise what you DO have control over, your life is what you make it and you can make it exactly what you want it to be.

Take a Flying LEAP!

If you haven’t read my Peanut Butter and Jelly blog, you can check it out and read about the WAKE UP moment the proceeded taking the biggest leap of faith I have ever taken.

I’m here to share with you how doing something that scares you can lead to feeling really ALIVE in your own life! My story started with hearing myself with resentment in my voice describing how monotonous my life had become, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for my kids’ lunches everyday. This story won’t ring true for everyone, but may be relatable in another capacity, or perhaps with someone you know. 

Sometimes you need to wake up to yourself one day and realize that you deserve better than who you’ve allowed yourself to become; accepting circumstances, complacency and going through the motions of life. I don’t mean this in the ‘being in a bad relationship’ sense, but rather not living your best life. In this story, I surprised even myself with how quickly I made a decision and jumped without looking back. For anyone who knew me prior to this, that is something I NEVER would have done. I was probably one of the world’s most annoyingly indecisive people and it used to drive people around me batty (ahem… my husband) and made me feel awful every time I did it. It drained my self-confidence and I was completely unaware of the impact it had.

If I’m honest, once I had made the decision to quit my job and go through the 10-month coach training program, each and every step I took toward actually DOING it scared the tar out of me. The day I called my boss to quit my comfortable no-brainer job, I was literally shaking, crying as I tried to get the words “I quit” out and had a lump in my throat the entire conversation. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had never talked to someone who had gone through this program before and there are SO many other options available, I had a fear that I had chosen the wrong one. Sound familiar to anyone? But, looking back, this is where my attitude of “well, if I’m wrong, I’ll learn a hard lesson and grow from it” first appeared, although I didn’t realize it at the time.

I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew that anything was better than where I was.

It just so happened to be the best decision I ever made; and it had nothing to do with becoming a good coach. It had everything to do with becoming a better person.

The classes I took were 3-days long, Friday - Sunday. The first class was Fundamentals and it happened to fall over a weekend that all 3 of my girls were away at camp, so I invited my husband to come and join me for dinner close to campus. Between how fast I was talking and trying to project my voice over the loud music I couldn’t wait to tell him all about all that I had learned. I was SO excited and I loved it SO much, I felt ALIVE for the first time in a long time not only because of what I was learning but because I had taken a leap of faith and was reaping the rewards of my courage. 

My husband told me that on the way home from meeting me for dinner, he was on the phone with his mom crying tears of joy for how much better and different I was after just one day of class. He has since told me that even if I never earned a single penny from being a coach, he would have paid for that program all over again, just for the way it changed me as a person. Our marriage is better, I’m a better mom, friend and more attentive human being. This is not marketing for coach training but rather to get you to go DO THE THING that you’ve always wanted to do, big or small. Push past your fear and stop asking “HOW” you’ll do it. Run it like a science experiment and witness the results. Notice the impact on you and on others around you. Much to my surprise, I had 4 different people approach me and say that I inspired them to do something they had wanted to do, mainly career/job changes and thanked me for setting the example. Bottom line: Take a step toward what you’ve wanted to do and notice what opens up in you and to you as a result of your courage. 

Throughout the time with my clients, I have coached and supported many people into doing things that were outside of their comfort zones. Not only have they reported the same ALIVENESS that I have felt, they have experienced HUGE changes and astounding amounts of happiness for taking their own leaps of faith. Friends, it’s THE best way to live if you give it a chance. I IMPLORE you take a leap of faith, even if it’s small. Just TRY something that makes you a little uncomfortable and see what you discover. Was it as scary as you thought? Did you learn or grow from it? Or, if you need support in making that leap, reach out to reach out to a trusted coach to support you. YOU are WORTH the investment. What’s something you’ve always wanted to do but have never done? OR, what’s something that you’ve been doing over and over and you want to break up the monotony but don’t know how? Whatever you do, don’t allow yourself to stay stuck. You only get one life. Live FULLY ALIVE!

A Dose Of Reality

We have a picture in our minds of how life is "supposed to be". We graduate high school, on to college, have a career, get married, have kids and live happily ever after, right?! What happens when life doesn't go that way? You do everything you can to avoid bad relationships, but they somehow find you. Or the company you worked so hard to get into goes through mass layoffs and you find yourself without a job. How do you handle it?

I have three daughters. My eldest just started high school and my twin girls, jr. high (Lord, help me). Like any other parents, we did our best with raising our kids to be normal, healthy, God-loving girls. We are not perfectionists by any stretch, but we have encouraged our kids to do their best in school, respect others, play team sports and grow up to be strong, confident women. My husband and I are a great team, we have stable careers and live in a nice neighborhood. The life I dreamed of was coming to fruition, right?! 

When my oldest daughter hit the pre-teens and her behavior changed. Shocking, yes, I know. As with any girl with hormones changing, we thought nothing of it and chalked it up to puberty. We did the best we could to maintain a zero tolerance policy around disrespecting her family while gently teaching her the best ways to maintain her anger, fear and confidence issues. We experienced difficult days, happy days and everything in between. But as time went on, it got worse, not better, despite our tireless efforts to partner with her through these difficult years. 

One day as my daughter and I were in the kitchen, I just blurted out an observation (to be honest, I vaguely remember this, but my daughter remembers it well) "I think you might be dealing with anxiety". By this time, this monster had followed us for 2 years without being identified or understood and usually resulted in punishments for yelling and/or being disrespectful. As soon as I said the word anxiety, my daughter took it upon herself to do some research and felt like she identified with many of the symptoms that she read about. I knew that she had dealt with difficult friendships and bullying, and that she rarely got invited to birthday parties or any social functions that may have been normal for a jr. high school girl, but I never made the connection that there could be something bigger and more sinister at stake. 

As time has gone on, I have found myself sharing fairly openly with friends about her (and thus, our) struggles with anxiety. As someone who does not suffer from it, I am doing everything within my power to learn as much as I can in order to equip her with the tools that she will need to manage herself when she's triggered. But this is the first time that I feel like I'm facing something bigger than me and I'm needing to rely on our faith, other people's experiences, and my strength as a coach and a mom to persevere. I have been prepared to set aside everything I've worked for in this past year in order to prioritize helping my daughter. This is by far, the most difficult thing I have ever been through; being a mother who cannot help her child and my heart is with the millions of moms out there with struggles much larger than this. I have made suggestion after suggestion about what she can do, but as they say, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink". This is something she has to decide to do on her own, and it's a daily struggle. Through the years my heart has broken every time I have heard of my friends' daughters being invited to all the usual social activities of a normal 14 year old girl and mine sits in her room dealing with anxiety. The only reprieve she's had more recently comes because she says she "puts on a mask" in front of others and it has helped her make friends. As much as people try not to judge a book by its cover; it happens all the time.  It's one thing to teach adults that you don't know what a person is going through until you walk in their shoes but teaching compassion and acceptance of others to a bunch of jr. highers? Easier said than done. 

Lesson learned

June 1, 2018: 8th grade promotion. A day I have looked forward to for a very long time. A day I get to stand next to my daughter and celebrate with her. Celebrate the blood sweat and tears that went into getting her this far and preparing her for high school. People are standing around, taking family pictures with all their smiles and flowers and my family?! Standing in the corner, trying to console our out of control crying and hyperventilating 14-year old daughter who just wants to leave as quickly as possible. I made the biggest mistake by looking at Facebook and all of our friends posing for proud-moment pictures with their families and friends. My family? No photos with the beautiful lei we bought her, no photos with her among her happy friends holding their promotion certificates. I was crushed and deeply saddened for her.

As time has gone one, we've all learned what we're dealing with and perhaps we are beginning to gain some traction. She has learned coping techniques that are helping her manage in stressful situations. Now that she is in her first few weeks of high school, my prayer for her is simply this: She does not allow this to define her and that the kids at school can see past a girl who may seem a bit off at times, and perhaps approach her with compassion and curiosity. It takes a diamond in the rough to do something like that, but as with every special lady, she deserves diamonds. 

Peanut Butter and Jelly

I have shared this story with a few people through my coach training and it has grown in significance as I have retold it, so it's time for me to be vulnerable as much as I expect that of my clients. Here goes:

I struggled with confidence in my life when I was young as much as the next person. Looking back, as difficult as it may have seemed at the time, I had the same self-doubt, fears and feelings of loneliness as any other person. But nothing could have prepared me for what I would face in the future.

After going to college and getting married, I set off in my career in Public Relations, despite having gone to school for Psychology. I felt a bit directionless, but was okay with knowing I had a job and a work ethic to see me through. My husband and I hadn't decided whether or not we wanted children, so my career WAS my direction. Life threw us our first curve ball when the tragedy of 9/11 happened. We had only been married 11 months. My husband had just caught a plane to New York the night before. I was home alone when the phone woke me up at 6 a.m. It was my husband who said "turn on the TV, the phones are about to go dead here, just know that I'm OK... I love you." CLICK. When I turned the TV on and realized the devastation that was taking place, my mind almost instantly changed about having children. Same for my husband. We realized that there was more to life than getting up and going to work to earn money. Fast forward 2 1/2 years, I gave birth to our first daughter. The joy she brought to our lives and the way our marriage was enriched was overwhelming. I never knew I had so much MORE love in my heart to give. That was my first leap of faith.

A few years later, my husband's job moved us to Texas. We learned shortly thereafter that we were pregnant again. This time, we learned that we were expecting TWIN girls. Due to the high costs of child care for 3 children under the age of 3, we decided that it was best for me to stay home. Nursing twins for 12 months is no easy feat - MAD respect to all the moms out there who have done that for a year and longer! During that year, I began to feel the weight of trying to keep up with life. And THAT'S where it began...

I LOST myself. I began to think that constantly doing for others was what I was supposed to do. There was little time for myself, despite having a supportive husband. People always say that a day can take forever, but a year goes by in a flash. My days felt like they lasted FOREVER and the phase of life I was in would take a lifetime! I'll never forget being on my knees sobbing when my twins were 5 months old when I called a friend and asked "when does this get easier"? I felt incredible GUILT for feeling that way, and was conflicted by wanting the babies to hurry up and get older so they could start putting their OWN shoes on and feeling the need to cherish each and every precious moment of toddlerhood. 

Fast forward 4 years. We were living back home in the Bay Area due to a job transfer for my husband's work. We were back among our childhood friends with family close by. It was a blessing, but life got busier with keeping up with the pace of seeing friends and family and with kids getting older and beginning extracurricular activities. I had found a job that allowed me to work from home part time. I was overjoyed and remember thinking "Wow, there are so many women out there who would kill for a job like mine where you get to stay home, raise your kids AND earn a paycheck (albeit, small)". I would take the kids to school, come home, pour myself a cup of coffee and settle in to my same green chair, day in and day out. My job took little to no thinking and didn't challenge me at all. All the while, the GUILT in my head would tell me "think about how LUCKY you are to be able to earn a paycheck from home" but I was dying inside from the MONOTONY my life had taken on.

One morning, I was in the kitchen making a PEANUT BUTTER and JELLY sandwich for my girls when my husband came downstairs and said "whatcha doin'?" My response stopped me in my tracks "oh, just making a PEANUT BUTTER and JELLY sandwich... that's WHAT I DO". In that moment, I heard my disdain and resentment and thought to myself "SHAME on you for letting yourself get to this point. What example are you setting for your kids?". While that WAS my wake-up moment, I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life or how to change it and began to put pressure on myself to figure it out. Going back to work didn't seem like an option yet. I stayed in that job for 7 years, slowly dying, until one day... 

I was having lunch with a friend who told me that she had hired a Coach. I asked her how coaching was different than therapy and what kinds of things they were doing together. As she was telling me about it, I noticed myself sitting on the edge of my chair listening intently on what she was saying. By the end of that conversation, I said to her "THAT'S what I want to do! That sounds awesome!" A few months later, I quit my mundane job that was sucking the life out of me, enrolled in CTI (The Coaches Training Institute) and began my 10-month-long journey, training to be a credentialed, certified coach. 

As I sit here now, having just gotten the news that I passed my written exam, I'm 1-hour away from coaching the required 100 hours and all my paperwork is turned in awaiting the date of my oral exam, I look back on my journey and I have met SO many people who have been through something very similar. It is SUCH a common tale for people to get sucked into the conundrum of being grateful for what they have, being afraid of change, and putting everyone else first in their lives. I don't mean you need to be selfish, but you DO need to take care of yourself. You cannot be at your best and successful in all aspects of your own life if you're not truly happy. When you are living your best life, you will EXUDE positive energy that comes from living your truth and your relationships will be more fulfilling in return. EVERYTHING changes for the better. I have grown EXPONENTIALLY as a person. I LOVE life, I LOVE people, I am running my own business, and have a spring in my step again. I have celebrated with my clients, and I have cried with my clients, but all in the name of honoring their OWN growth and transformation. Stop and notice things in your day that fulfill you or give you a moment's pause. Mine was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich; and it changed my life! 

 *I obtained my CPCC Certification in June of 2018!!!