Friday Quickie: Money Fears

Some days money fears have me by the balls.

And this week I was reminded of the best way out of this place: just do something.

By doing something I mean taking the tiniest bit of action that moves me in the direction I want to go. Simple things like: reaching out and talking to someone. Sending out an email to announce coaching offerings. Reading a blog or listening to a lesson on how to market new products. Or writing my blog. Emptying the dishwasher. Going for a run. Taking a walk to do some creative brainstorming. Looking at a piece of art, like the Rothko "No. 13," above.

My 2c is this: Action is the best way to work through fear.

When you're living in the space of creation, there is no room for fear. So ask yourself this:

What am I going to create today?

And sometimes a great salve is connecting with another human being that says: You're not alone. You can do it.

You can do it! Happy Friday.

Any comments on how you stare down fears, especially money fear$, let 'em rip.

What's Your Story -- In Six Words?

Hemingway allegedly said his best work was this six-word story:

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Here's one by Margaret Atwood:

"Longed for him. Got him. Shit."

Which makes me think about other ways to use a six-word story.

And when I say "story" I mean anything.  Your life story. Your state of mind; your work-life manifesto; a new-biz plan. 

The six-word story of who you are, what you're doing,  what you're trying to create, or what you've been up to for the last six months.

So what would a series of six-word stories say about your life?

OK, I'll start:

Fired! Now I can be me again.

Just launched biz. To be continued ...

I coach. You can do it.

People say they can't write. Bullshit.

After my heart broke, compassion entered.

How to start writing? Move fingers.

Time to write blog. Aaaak! Done.

Why go walking? To see herons.

So those are some of my six-word stories. How would yours go?

Drop off any of your stories in Comments.

Thanks to Sonya for inspiring the post of Six Word Stories.

A To Do List for Visual People

I came up with a new way to Not Forget Things today.

While working on a coaching tool called a Life Wheel, I saw a way to unlock my recent state of overwhelmation -- aka, being pummeled with wordy to-do-lists.Like many 21st-century multi-taskers, I have this ongoing worry note that important items I need to attend to will be forgotten and will drop through phantom cracks.

And with 10 million word docs and zillions of pieces of papers and a bajillion notebooks, I am almost up to here with words that represent a reminder to do anything.

So I put my Major To Dos in a Wheel and added color. Something about the roundness softened it too.

It's simple:

*Get a piece of paper. *Draw a big circle. *Divide it into eight sections (pieces of pie). *Name your eight areas of To Dos. *Colored them in with pastel crayons, if you'd like. *Itemize each section with some of the most immediate To Dos (or Get-to-dos). *Don't forget the fun stuff that feeds you. (e.g., one of mine was Creativity). *Put it somehwere you can see it. *Throw out old To-Do list that has been up on fridge for past month.

Have you noticed?

The wheel also looks like a compass. I find I can look at this Visual To Do list as: forward motion or a directional. Both, very comforting and encouraging.

My To-Do list doubles as a guide that says: do some of these and you'll get there.

No longer an admonishing finger telling me what I again didn't do.

So, give it a whirl?

And if you have something to add on the subject of To Do lists, let 'er rip.

Learning about Self Love from Taya, 8 years old.

  I’ve been talking about my niece, Taya and one extraordinary page from her story, Arizona.

Here’s the page, titled “Me.” Click on it to see it in full view.

The last line has been my mentor and muse for the last couple weeks.

Here’s a fruitful question for the week:

If you embraced this very simplistic unwavering “I love myself” belief, what kind of decisions would you make in the next week?

If you didn’t question how kick-ass you were, who would you be moving through your life?

Got a Bad Case of Information Overload? How to stay on your path.

Good news! There’s a ton of information and resources at our fingertips in 2009.

Oh no! There’s such an annoying ton of information and resources attacking us in 2009.

I remember feeling this way when the Web first came on the popular scene in the mid-90s.

There was so much information and stuff out there on the Web. Yay! But again, there was so much information and stuff on the Web. Overload Waaah!

So here some of us are again. Maybe out of a job or thinking of doing that business we’ve always thought about since the working world is sucky right now. Which means, trying to learn about social networking and chasing down the scent of new opportunities that suit our talents.

Enter: Twitter, Facebook, blogging, WordPress, LinkedIn, widgets, and so forth.

People who are mastering these content and networking projects and folding them into their consulting/coaching/writing businesses are doing really well, too.

So, to enter this world as a relative outsider and learn about it all and jump in and do a little tweet here, a little profile-updating there, status report here, re-tweeting there. There may be a euphoric jump and getting it, and then—

A friend sends me an email with the subject line: “This should help.” It’s an article that takes some new spin on what social networking, especially Twitter, will do for me. I’m already having a hard enough time keeping my song going in the Twitter tree. But the thing is, I’m staying in the tree, singing my occasional song or duet.

And then something, like the “This should help” email is just one piece of information too much and I want to run under the covers. Or call the Waaambulance.

Information overload. It descends, or hits you from all sides or falls out of the sky like a scattering of rain and hail and shoes and buttons and gold coins falling all around you in a bunch of tangled heaps.

Great. What on earth are you supposed to do with that? Or, maybe it’s:

Now, how do I apply my information and learnings and all this new stuff?

Let’s consider how some people may fare in this new media world:

Some people just won’t go there. They don’t really need to, they’re not curious and they don’t want the floodgates unleashing the roaring messy river.

Others will tip toe in and then hit a What-the-F wall and fall out of the learning and involvement of the new social media Web 2.0 world. Which is what I am tempted to do, and often.

How about a success strategy: Tell yourself you’re in brainstorming and information-gathering mode. It’s the playing phase. And if you are trying to take action and write definitive business and marketing plans before you know exactly what your products, services and perfect customers all are—before you’ve adequately completed your info-gathering, creative brainstorming phase—your mind-body-soul is likely to go into a very uncomfortable state.*

So today’s best question might be: Why do I feel this info overload state of overwhelm that makes me crave dark rooms and thick bed covers?

Possible best answer: I could be pushing myself to the next state of action-taking that I—and my budding biz idea—are not quite ready for. So, consider staying in the discovery playfield while typing up parts of a biz plan here and there or keeping a document called Great Ideas.

So for any of us who are wading into the social media and new biz waters and feel like it’s all TOO MUCH, consider this:

1. It is a lot. All this information and changing our ways of communicating and all the expert opinions. Take a deep breath. Stick with what you’re doing, you’ll learn what you need to know and implement in good time, as it fits your pace and needs.

2. As you continue on with the research and dipping yourself in new knowledge and discoveries—as you move closer to creating something new and wonderful for yourself, your commitment will waver. This is the time when No’s and inner Gollums and nasty voices come in. That’s their job and they yell louder and get nastier the closer you get to the juicy good stuff. (One of my recent ones was “You’ll never make it.” It was mean and chilling and seductive. Shudders. It made me cry! And then I gave it the finger, called it a liar and moved on.)

Trudge past the gremlin voices. Be the strong and creative and curious person who stays on your path. Get your fans and cheerleaders around you.

In time, you can be one of the clever minxes offering services to others who will need to pay you good money for your expertise. You will be offering your talent, gift, amazing knowledge base and working with others in a way that might even fall under Dream Job I Never Dared Make Happen. And working with a dream list of clients because you spent time shrieking through all that information and research and overloading that made it possible for you to find your distinct message and business offering.

If you stay the course while others fall off course and maybe get back on again, while you stayed the course--you will be ahead of the game.

Trust your path, your pace and your curiosities. Indulge them.

And now, let’s end with a quote:

“Trust yourself. Then you will know how to live.” -- Goethe

*This post was inspired by a group coaching call from Pamela Slim at Escape From Cubicle Nation. I recommend her Coaching gym.

I love me

My niece, Taya wrote a very shot memoir in third grade. It was made into a book and I had the pleasure of reading it yesterday.

It's called "Arizona" and tells the story of a family vacation at my parents' house in Scottsdale, AZ.

My favorite line from her story is on the page titled "Me."

She tells us she has brown hair and blue eyes and two best friends and ice skates at level 4.

Then she ends it with this:

"I love me."

Of course it made me laugh and it still does but I found it so hopeful and comforting. I wonder if all of us felt this way about ourselves at some time -- that we really loved ourselves and who we were. Not in a secret private way that we'd never admit out loud, but in a matter-of-fact them's-the-facts, "My name is Tatyana, I have brown hair and I like ice cream, I am a writer and I love me." The end.

Not to get all new-agey about "self love," but really. Don't you hope Taya, and all the other kids we adore, feel this way about themsevles forever? I find myself wondering, What could my niece's life be like if she held on to this "I-love-me" quality for the rest of her years and through teenage-hood and into her 20's, 30's, 40's...?

Since reading "Arizona" by Taya Mishel I've been breaking out into choruses of "I love me" during the day. I do it because it's like a new favorite song by someone I love. And the more I say it, the more it giddy-fies me.

Plus, it's a really ostentatious thing to say--out loud or to yourself.

Most of the time I say this to myself, but today I said it out loud while in the company of my friend Liz.

"I love me," I said out loud in the locker room after swimming. "I love me," I said while we did some work at her office. "I love me," I declared at the beach among the gays and teenagers talking at such a thrill pitch they can't hear an inch from their social circle.

Go ahead, say it. I dare you.

It feels damn delicious. At least you'll get a good giggle out of it, and who doesn't need that?

How to write a bio that isn’t boring and hateful but has YOU YOU YOU written all over it.

So how terribly boring are some people’s professional client-seeking bios?

I’m having a day where I really hate bios, especially writer’s bios that show up in lit journals like the one I edit. (Next issue creative bios only.)

So today I was updating my Web site and felt a stick-up-my-arse at the bio page. Enough with this trying-to-impress bio b.s. Today was the day to try something totally new.

So here it is. I don’t know if it works but I’m trying it on!

And keep in mind, this is a bio written for a particular kind of audience and client base; people who might appreciate this style and work really well with me, and vv. Call it my siren song. And let it be known, I’m  jumping off the very wise principle Havi Brooks writes about at The Fluent Self. She advocates finding your “Right People,” and letting them find you. This means you get to create conversations just for the group you want to hang with and help and work with and get along with, and you and everyone, world included, is happier.

Ok, read on. Right from Web page.

A bio, three ways. (Part 1 only here) 1. A story I grew up as a happy bright active kid in the states and in Rome. I played well with others and spent a lot of time in my bedroom daydreaming and performing "Hair" and "Jesus Christ Superstar" into my mirror. I had a two tone crimson shag carpet. I did every sport I could get my hands on and was secretly shy with foreign parents and one younger brother and a giant orange cat named Tom.

I left home and traveled to Europe alone on a one-way ticket (I got a free ticket home, too). Next came the move to a big beautiful noisy art-filled city where I did big-city things like working at a women's magazine and writing and loving and partying and thinking and talking and laughing and screaming and then ...

Heartbreak. Getting fired. Watching some of my dreams fall away like coat buttons after a rough night. Next, I lost the perky confidence of my youthy-youth and started to mope around thinking, "Hey! I'm just a sham everyone's smarter." Until the wiser and slightly jaded part of me realized we were all faking it, and the people feigning confidence best were winning, and so I figured, "Hell, I'm smart enough too." And then ...

I left the big city and returned to my birth city and as I moved down my path I was stuck, suddenly there was this OUCH OOH, what's prickling me and I was lost in Dante's thick woods but I was just 29-years-old. And I came out of it when I let myself do what I really, really, really wanted to do. Then I went into the woods again at 33 and out again and in there at 40 again and so on, meaning: I have been on my path and off my path. I have had my ass kicked and heart broken and lost people I love. I have found myself, lost myself, deconstructed myself, build myself back up, and spent a few years getting lost riding the Waaaambulance.

Eventually I learned that life is a multi-colored series of transitions and thresholds. Like, a non-stop set of waves. Life is not, as I once thought, about finding your high note and holding it for ever. You are never "squared away" like my mother wishes, nor do you ever "have it all together" and "being on top of your game" is just bullshit. OK, so we hold these amazing moments for five minutes and then WHACK, it starts over. But in a good way, really!

Then I arrived at a place where I looked at my own little story and took responsibility for all of it ALL OF IT and boy. [Tears] I learned something. The imagination has a lot of good creative power that you can hone and flex and it will get you through anything. You have to make friends with it first, and learn to use it, like a powerful magic sword.

So many times I arrived at the chapter that's titled: How the hell did I get myself into these dark prickly woods? But I have also arrived at the chapter with the open sunny meadow and wildflowers, with my eyes blinking and my jaw dropped, wondering: How the hell did I ever get to this beautiful and cool and mysterious god-forsaken place? Wow ... cool... shivers, thank you.

And the moral, or gift of this story, has left me with a big-heart desire to help other people find their way through and out of the woods. I want to help people live a life that is fulfilling and creative and happifying. Filled with imagination.

Keats said it so well: "I am certain of nothing but the Holiness of the Heart's affections and the Truth of the Imagination." I agree. With one addition: Imagination + Action = Freedom. I am a do-er. Amen. The end.

******

So, what kind of bio would you write if you really dug deep and sung your siren song to your Right People?

Part 1 of 3, bio, from: http://www.tatyanamishel.com/bio.htm

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