Imagine watching an infomercial promising how you can get washboard abs by wearing some device while lying on the couch eating bonbons. We live in a quick fix, instant-gratification culture. When I see book titles akin to How to Find Your Soul’s Purpose, Get Happy, Rich and Famous in Five minutes I want to scream. Let me assure you that creating an inspired life requires that you do your own intellectual, emotional, and spiritual sit ups (and some physical exertion as well). In the end you’ll be glad you nudged yourself off your comfort zone. The life that’s been waiting for you will also rise up to greet you.

• In what ways might you be expecting instant results?
• How well is this really serving you?
• What could you do to “get off your comfort zone” or love yourself more and do the work necessary for your desired growth?

Don’t expect linear progress.

Don’t beat yourself up if it feels at times like you take two steps forward and three steps back. As I’ve said, my clients are bright, successful achievers. It’s natural for all of them to have cycles of creativity and spurts of action, and then experience waves of confusion, doubt, or just needing down time. Rather than punish ourselves for straying from a direct line to a certain goal, we can embrace our process and learn even greater insights about who we are and what works well. We can discern what is a waste of energy – what may feel like pushing the river.

• Become a more curious observer of your process of growth.
• What is your natural process… what works well? What could you embrace instead of fight to change?

I’d love to hear your comments and/or your experience of delving into these questions.
Be well… be inspired,
Marian

Think about it. If everything works out according to our plans, we don’t get to grow.
Dear friends—I wish for you a wonderful, peaceful, fulfilling life. And, I invite you to allow something in that would rock your world. Or at least contemplate what that might be and see what that brings up for you. What if you lost your job, won the lottery, got offered some amazing opportunity, learned you had three months to live? Imagine some wake up call.

Take yourself away from your daily routine for a self-coaching coffee date. Ask yourself “What do I really want?” in a way you have not asked for a long while. Stare out the window and let that roll around.

Challenge some of your answers with “Why?” or “What’s so important about that?… What matters more?” There’s a richer place underneath all the wants. Let go of all of that and deeply ask, “Who am I meant to be?”

After a while, follow up with, “So then, what is mine to do?”

Notice the temptations of train tracks in your work and life. What are some ways to reclaim your grounded, charting-your-own-course self and higher guidance? Don’t just read this. Do it. You deserve that much self-love and self-respect. You will sleep better and, yes, wake up inspired.

I’d love to hear your comments and/or your experience of delving into these questions.
Be well… be inspired,
Marian

A conversation with a publicist added another curve. She was very nice. And her “bare minimum of what any author should commit to in money and effort” was four times what I had been estimating (with other consultants’ head nods). After I got up off the floor, the real opportunity here was another dive into my deepest spiritual center. A long walk. A cup of tea at a café- away from email and the phones. A piece of paper with the words, “What do you really want?” and then “What are you truly called to?”

It’s a fascinating paradox. Things that upset me (at first) lead to breakthroughs in knowing who I am and what I’m meant to be doing with my life energy. (The practice of seeking growth rather than just building frustration is a choice we get to cultivate over time. You let yourself have the initial “Oh Sh-t!” and then you get curious about “Oh. Shift?”)

Something that appears to throw you off course leads to feeling more truly on course.

Continued in part 2

In real life, by end of January–I’ve been blessed with a huge wave of wonderful new clients and the phone is ringing with awesome speaking invitations, and if this continues, I’ll make more money than ever before. Several men have come in for coaching, which I find delightfully funny, considering how my feeble brain was contemplating how “sacred feminine energy” would manifest. Now I’m thinking Divine Mother is a rockin’ CEO. I think my willingness to let go and totally embrace “whatever is meant to be” and trust in prosperity over panic, plays a role in the abundance flowing in.

• Exhale and relax your shoulders. Imagine letting go of all of your goals, assumptions, plans. Feel well-held by a loving universe, a sacred feminine energy- like a mothering embrace that loves you and tells you to rest in her lap.
• Be open to guidance about what is meant to be for your true prosperity.
• Reflect on what you may need to release to allow this to come in.

I’d love to hear your comments and/or questions.
Be well… be inspired,
Marian

Andrea had a higher vision for what we’ll call her P Project. You know– a passionate, higher priority that she felt pregnant with and needed to birth into the world. In spite of scheduling time to work on this, two weeks went by without real progress. We gave her an assignment I call “Spy on Yourself.” Each day for a week, she actively tracked what was taking up her time and energy. We discovered that her email pattern had become the tail that wags the dog, eating up too much time (rather than Andrea intentionally creating her day aligned with her true priorities). Most of us get seduced by the immediacy of email, and fall into pseudo-productivity. We’re not slacking while sipping a martini, but we’re not working on the highest priority, high-ROI stuff either. Email is like a bag of chips– impossible to read just one. To break this spell, Andrea committed to specific email times for 20 minutes each. Within a couple weeks, Andrea was celebrating real momentum and joy in her P project. The idea of scheduling and containing your email is not a newsflash. (I chuckle, recalling Steve Carell’s character in Little Miss Sunshine sarcastically zinging Greg Kinnear’s character with, “Thank you for that brilliant revelation. How much do I owe you?”) You will create a real breakthrough if you understand your unique habits and replace your default pattern.

Get Inspired 30 Day Challenge:   
1) Spy on yourself for a few days.  About once per hour, write down how you are actually spending your time and energy (for your eyes only, so be honest). This will be eye-opening beyond just email. 

It’s also important to remember to not put all of your fulfillment and identity eggs into only one basket. We need to consciously spread our fulfillment across multiple sources or contexts. Daniel’s story also reminds me of holistic health perspectives vs. western medicine. If we had only focused on surgically removing the “bad job” and not looked at the rest of Daniel’s life, his thought habits and soul’s yearnings, we would have missed out on the breakthroughs that seemed to sneak in through side doors.

Even if you know precisely which aspect of your life you want to zero in on, please keep in mind a whole life perspective. The synergy can be magical or noxious. Each part of your life has a potential domino effect on everything else.

It’s fair to say that if Daniel’s job was feeling toxic, that negative energy was infecting other areas of life for a general malaise. It was much more fun to watch how his investment in loving himself enough to pursue the heart’s desire of cooking school spread positive energy into other life areas. This made the job change less pressing if not irrelevant. For Daniel it was not paramount that he make a living with cooking. In fact the more he researched this, the less appealing it became as a career choice. What mattered most was his ability to know himself and create a rewarding whole life. Coaching equipped him to keep making optimal choices in tune with his true spirit.

Continued in Part 3 of 4

To fast forward the story, coaching supported Daniel in exploring cooking school options, how to make arrangements at work, secure financing and so on. He followed through with diligence and enrolled in an evening and weekend culinary arts program. Coaching also helped him be in touch with his core values, and how to make more conscious choices to proactively create fulfillment. Now, here’s where the plot thickens and gets to the core point of this story. Daniel came to coaching calls reporting, “Marian, the funniest things are happening…My job really isn’t so bad lately…I’m getting along with my mother better…I’ve met someone and we’re hitting it off exceedingly well (Daniel had survived a heart-wrenching breakup and had not been actively dating for almost a year).

Continued in part 3 of 4

To fast forward the story, coaching supported Daniel in exploring cooking school options, how to make arrangements at work, secure financing and so on. He followed through with diligence and enrolled in an evening and weekend culinary arts program. Coaching also helped him be in touch with his core values, and how to make more conscious choices to proactively create fulfillment. Now, here’s where the plot thickens and gets to the core point of this story. Daniel came to coaching calls reporting, “Marian, the funniest things are happening…My job really isn’t so bad lately…I’m getting along with my mother better…I’ve met someone and we’re hitting it off exceedingly well (Daniel had survived a heart-wrenching breakup and had not been actively dating for almost a year).

Continued in part 3 of 4

Here’s a true client story I like to call, “Mr. Smith Goes to Cooking School.” I hope this will help you see why you’ll want a whole life perspective.” Daniel Smith came into coaching with a popular lament. “My job is making me miserable. I just need to find a new job and that’s it.” We met in person to launch his coaching, exploring his needs, goals, getting to know more about his life, values, what made him tick and so on. Daniel was getting impatient and a bit crispy around the edges, having been to career counseling, therapy and still fed up with his job and frustrated at the absence of any breakthrough. This was in my first year of coaching and I remember thinking that this might be a tough challenge for both of us. I really liked Daniel and my soul wanted to see him feeling more alive and fulfilled. I was listening for any seeds of passions or inklings of callings during our two-hour-plus discussion. Daniel’s responses were somewhat flat and not all that illuminating. He wasn’t hostile, just understandably cynical and shut down by now. A pre-meeting package included questions like “What would you do if you won the lottery?” and then “What would you do if you discovered you had one year to live?”

Continued in part 2 of 4