When Force Doesn't Work

I’ve been busy with my hands and my ears lately.  In fact, I’ve been so busy, I haven’t had the time to write on my blog.  Writing is a form of speaking and I guess I haven’t had much to say.  My self- expression has taken the form of preparing meals, wrapping presents, rearranging furniture, arranging flowers, etc.   When I have not been doing that, I have been listening to my clients sharing their frustrations and fears. 

Last weekend, I facilitated a workshop on the topic of the rewards and challenges of being a professional bi-cultural woman.  Most of the women had experienced either first hand or second hand (through their parents’ experiences) challenges prior to their education and success.  In fact, the driving force behind their accomplishments was the lack that their families had experienced.  Determined to not experience the hardship of their families, they were pushed to excel to create a better life for themselves and their children.

This type of determination is what most successes in the material and physical world are made of.  What feels wrong is when the drive or push becomes a meaningless compulsion out of habit.  And it always ends up that way, when we keep on pushing because we think it is the way.  Not only isn’t it fun to be pushy, but it stops producing or produces the wrong results.  Many times, our forceful ways are misinterpreted or we might get pushed back. 

When we are programmed to push and force things to happen, even after a defeat, we get right back up ready for the next battle.  This attitude may have been rewarded in athletics or at war, but at work or in life, it is not looked upon that way.  This is when the unraveling occurs.  What used to work, what you either learned from someone or taught yourself is no longer true.  So, how must you be?

Questions to Ponder:
1)    If you find yourself in a situation where nothing that used to work works anymore, what do you do?
2)    What are some things that you used to tell yourself when you were younger and now, you wonder if they are true?
3)    When have you pushed or forced something to happen?  And how did it turn out?

Spiritual life coaching is a process where you are allowed and encouraged to question all belief systems that no longer serve you.  Through this type of coaching, you will re-create your own reality where you live by your own inner values expressing them, and finding more meaning in the smallest of things.  If you are interested in learning more about spiritual life coaching with me, please contact me.

What Are You Feeding On?

This post is written with Professional Bi-cultural women in mind.  The “she” in the article is anyone and everyone I have coached.

I keep on ending up where I started with my coaching conversations.  It goes something like this: “so what do you really want?”  Rarely do I get a straight answer.  Most of the time she goes on explaining something that happened or is happening, hoping that I can infer what it is that she wants.  I’ll listen and go back to the same question.  She gets frustrated, she says she doesn’t know, or she comes up with another story.

We walk together to the same place, the place we started.  Sometimes I am the provocateur, sometimes a teacher, a companion, a friend, and most of the time she knows that I have walked in those exact same steps.  She trusts that I won’t belittle the pain, frustration or exhaustion she is feeling.  In fact, I won’t even pretend to take it away.  She knows that I honor her journey, her choices, and her experience.  I have nothing to gain or lose regardless of what she does or doesn’t do.
 
We sometimes gently and other times, not so gently investigate her food source.  What has she been feeding on I ask.  Sometimes it is an old memory, the way things used to be, a fantasy, or a dream.  Sometimes it is her work, she likes being busy, it numbs the feelings.  Sometimes it is her children or her family.  Sometimes it is an ex-husband who just won’t go away.  Sometimes it is worry about the future, what will happen to her or her children.  Sometimes it is the fear of the “what ifs”, her ending up in a situation she had worked so hard not to end up in.  Sometimes it is her addiction to control and to perfect.  Sometimes it is the drama in her life, her work, or on TV.  And sometimes it is food, when she isn’t even hungry.
 
Once we know what she is really hungry for, then we ask the question again: what do you really want?  From this place, abstaining from the junk she really doesn’t want to be feeding on anymore, she can go within and embrace who she truly is and then the real journey begins. 

This is why I love what I do.  I get to walk with amazing women who inspire me with their courage, honesty and a desire to change every day. 

Questions to Ponder:
1)    What have you been feeding on?
2)    What are you really hungry for?
3)    How will you know you’ve found what you’ve really wanted?

Spiritual life coaching is a process that helps clarify your real wants and desires in life.  Without the filters and feeding tubes, you can now make conscious choices about where you want to go and how you want to get there.  If you’d like to investigate if spiritual life coaching might help you on your journey, please contact me.

Inner and Outer Values

As a bi-cultural woman I shouldn’t be surprised that most of my clients are other professional bi-cultural women.  I have observed what I’d like to call a challenge of inner vs. outer values.  This is not limited to bi-cultural women, but they are the ones who have brought this to my attention.

I’d like to think of inner values as those we’ve had for what may seem forever.  For example, take Jane, when asked, “What are your top 3 values?”  She mentions: freedom, courage, and justice.  Based on my interactions with her, it was obvious that honesty was high up there.  So I asked her why she didn’t choose honesty, and she was puzzled herself.  She said, “I guess it’s just the way I am, so I don’t even think about it”.   Inner values are those you don’t have to think about, they are part of who you inherently are.  You would possess and express those values regardless of your circumstances.  You might not even notice it in someone else unless of course they weren’t.  But, that’s another discussion.

Jane is a bi-cultural woman who is a first generation American.  Her parents moved to the U.S. when she was only 10.  She had to quickly adapt to a new environment, language, etc.  She had to go through being the new kid in school, the new kid who dressed and spoke differently.  She had to adjust quickly and learn to be tough so she could survive the challenge of being the different one.  She developed the outer values of freedom, courage and justice during this time and she has applied it in her life and career since.
 
Outer values are developed through challenges and difficult situations that provide the right circumstances.  Whether these were always Jane’s values and had been sitting in a dormant state until she moved to another country, we’ll never know and is irrelevant to this discussion.
Outer values are the ones my clients use to navigate through life and challenges.  It’s what is at the top of their mind, and consciousness.  It’s what they rely on when things go wrong.  Ironically, it is also what they struggle with. 

For example, Jane’s outer value of freedom is something she talks about all the time.  She sees herself free from what other people think, not afraid to push the envelope, a daring to be different quality.  However, in her professional life, she is very careful with how she presents herself.  She appears to those she works with as a very professional and conservative person.  Freedom is a selected value that she uses when she wants to, it is not an inherent inner value.  She likes to please authority, and her bosses.  However, if something goes wrong at work, if her bosses expect her to lie for example, and her inner value is honesty, she will use freedom, her outer value to get out of that situation.  This of course comes across to her bosses as something unexpected.  They might even think of her as someone impulsive or erratic because they never saw it coming.  When we don’t express all of our values consistently, we can be misunderstood.

What if Jane felt truly free?  What if she showed up at work the same way she shows up with her friends or family?  What if she allowed her creativity and unconventionality to be expressed at work?  Would she still use freedom as a crutch to rely on when things got bad?  Or would freedom be something she’d be known for like her honesty? 

I’d like to think of our outer values as opportunities for development or conversion into inner values.  It takes practice, a mirror and a coach to help us strengthen and consistently use those values so that they become part of our inner or core self if we so choose.

Questions to Ponder:
1)    What are your top 3 inner values?
2)    What are your top 3 outer values?
3)    When do you use your outer values and with whom?

Spiritual life coaching is a client driven process where you can explore your values and determine how you express them in your life and/or work.  If you are interested in learning about how you could be consistently in congruence with your own values, please contact me for a complimentary 30 minute consultation.

Attention vs. Acceptance

This post is related to the previous post and regarding women waking up.  The women I work with are all high achieving professionals who are tired of playing the same games and achieving the same small results.  They are highly productive doers who refuse to do what others tell them to when it doesn’t make sense to do so.   In fact, they are here to change the way business is done.  They are intelligent women, engaged in whatever it is they do and understand how things work and are frustrated about how it just doesn’t make sense anymore.   Their engagement is a result of their attention.  They have attended to their accomplishments and broken with tradition either in their own family units, their ancestral lines, cultural norms, or society in general in order to get here. 

In the pauses that they take with me, we often speak of acceptance.  It is a new concept for them as it was and is for me.  Acceptance embodies a sense of non-doing which seems like the unnatural result of what one would expect if you are being highly attentive and engaged.  In other words, if I care, I must do something.  Caring and doing seem to go hand in hand.  Acceptance does not deny caring, in fact, it is the purest form of caring.  It is caring but not taking the responsibility for the object of your caring.

Acceptance is caring plus trust.

For example, if as a parent you are involved with your child’s education, you send them to the best schools you can afford, you help create an environment that is conducive to doing their school work, you encourage them and help them when they ask for it, you talk to their teachers, etc.  But ultimately, their success in school is up to them.  In fact, if you try to do more than provide the right environment and be interested, it can back fire.  Kids do not appreciate overly involved parents and need independence and to know that they are trusted.  This is an example of acceptance.   If the kid is not interested in doing well or is not pushing himself hard enough, you cannot beat it into him.  You accept.  Or do you?

An inauthentic form of acceptance is an act filled with empty words.  Our demeanor and attitude reflects our level of acceptance.

Sometimes we hide our egos in the guise of responsibility.  We claim that we are responsible for our children, our schools, our community and our country.  And really the motivating factor for our actions is always our ego.  It is about how we want to look or be perceived.  I want to be a good parent.  I want to be better than my parents.  I want to be there for my kids.  I want to offer my kids what I didn’t have growing up.  These enter our consciousness and all they are, are justifications for trying to control a situation that seems to be out of control. 

Acceptance is about allowing.  Can we allow our children to become who they want to be, even if that person is not someone we like or approve of?  Funny thing is , they don’t really know what they want.  So, can we allow them to be someone that they do not quite understand?  Can we live with that level of uncertainty when it comes to our most treasured assets, our children? 

Peace of mind is achieved with a healthy balance of “being” and “doing” that is sourced from “being”.  In other words, when you allow and accept, you pay attention and now can take action if needed.  When you show up being responsible for only you and to only yourself, you are a role model to others.  Your motivation for doing anything is not for control or for correction, but because it brings you joy.  And what better to model than that!

Questions to Ponder:
1)    When and what do you accept and allow?
2)    Who and what are you responsible for?
3)    What does the term acceptance mean to you?

If you are a highly accomplished professional and are finding yourself tired, hopeless, and disappointed in the quality of your life, your relationships, and the sacrifices you’ve had to make for your career, you might consider spiritual life coaching to connect with the bigger picture of your life in a safe, non-judgmental space.  If you would like to learn more about spiritual life coaching with me, please contact me for a complimentary consultation.

Awakening Women

I work with and encounter professional women in their late thirties into their early fifties.  Many are going through huge transitions, some are getting the itch to make a change, and others are just plain dissatisfied but don't know how to go about making the tough decisions.  I call them awakening women.  They are waking up from the dream of a life they have created but does not fit them anymore.  There are many of us and no, we are not crazy, hormonal, or imbalanced.  This is not just a phase, it is very real and is crying out for our attention.  We are finally stirred to wake up. 

Here is my top 10 list of signs of women waking up:

1.  They are taking all kinds of inventories (past friends, boyfriends, jobs, places they've lived, etc.)
2.  They consider or dream about running away
3.  They are overwhelmed by all the activity and expectations by others in their lives
4.  They are reading self-help and spiritual books, taking yoga and meditation classes, going to a therapist or a coach
5.  They start hanging out with their girlfriends more often
6.  They fantasize about a simpler life
7.  They tell themselves they have to do this for a few more years and then they'll do what they're really passionate about
8.  They realize most conversations bore them and they are not engaged in the day to day part of their lives
9.  They realize they are not fully satisfied with having it all
10.  They wonder what happened to the person they were years ago


Questions to Ponder:
1)  Do any of the signs above ring a bell for you?  Do you have signs of your own you'd like to share?
2)  How are you responding to your awakening?
3)  What gets in the way of expressing who you really are?

I would like to spend more time writing about this topic because I believe it is a huge opportunity for women to finally listen to the voice of their own soul and to create the life they consciously choose.  If you are tired of all the work you have done and continue to do, the struggle, the juggling, the stress, and have started to wonder about your own mortality and what your life is all about, you might consider spiritual life coaching.  Spiritual life coaching is a an open-ended process where you, the client decide what you want and with clarity and conscious choice move through obstacles that have held you back.  If you'd like to hear more and are ready to take the next step, contact me for a 30 minute phone consultation. 

The Perils of Multitasking

Nervous and apologetic , she was almost trembling as she spoke while scanning the room with her eyes.  I don’t think she was aware of how obvious it was.  She fumbled into her purse looking frantically for her keys while continuing with the conversation and scanning the room.  She stood up ready for us to leave and I was a bit worried that she might trip over something.  In fact, as distracted as she seemed, she warned me about the waiter who was coming my way.  I left her feeling exhausted and glad to be by myself wondering how she really felt.

This is the portrait of an extreme multi-tasker.  Her nervousness was probably part of her personality, but the distraction and lack of focus, yet total focus on everything else are what extreme multi-taskers are all about. They tend to over-commit and won’t say no to anyone.  They stay up into all hours of the night to get the job done.  They are a boss’s delight.  They keep their family’s appointments and make sure everyone’s needs are met.  They tend to neglect their own needs and desires.  With time, they forget they have any.

An extreme multi-tasker is on a path of self-destruction.  The destruction takes the form of a health crisis, failure of her marriage, or an accident.  Some use this time-out to regroup and change their ways, some don’t know how, so even though, their intentions are to change, they fall back into their old ways.  And some don’t know that anything needs to change at all, so they carry on as usual.
 
Extreme multi-taskers live life as if they have to cook Thanksgiving dinner for 20 all by themselves 24/7 every day.   Even the  calm multi-taskers become victims of stress, distraction and even alienation from others.  After all, who wants to be around someone who is always looking around for something else to do or take care of, and ignore the person they happen to be with.

Multitasking has become such a norm that if you do not admit that you are doing it, you are looked upon as lazy, incompetent, slow, or stupid.  The truth is no one is really multitasking.  If you zoom into what is actually happening, you will see that any one person can only do one thing at a time.  You may have many pots on the stove’s burners but at any one time, your attention is only on one pot.
 
I am all for the spirit of multitasking.  That means, I am all for preparing Thanksgiving dinner for 20 by myself, but I am not fooled into thinking that I can have all 4 burners going at once with the turkey in one oven and a pie in the other while making a salad and serving drinks.  That is not happening and cannot happen without something burning, getting over cooked, under cooked, or missing an ingredient!  You’ve heard of the texting while driving phenomenon, that’s a perfect example of why multitasking doesn’t work. 

So, why do we multitask?  We are expected to, we think we can, there’s a lot to do, others do it and so can we, etc.
 
Questions to Ponder:

1)    When and why do you multitask?  Does it work for you?  Has it ever not worked?
2)    Do you feel like you are giving a task or a project sufficient attention when you are multitasking?  Do you ever worry about the things you may have over looked?
3)    Do you wish you didn’t have to multitask?  If you didn’t have to, what would your life or work be like?

If you are stressed out by all the demands of your life and feel like you cannot multitask any more without crashing out, you may want to talk to a spiritual life coach.  Spiritual life coaching is a process where you, the client is in the driver’s seat at all times, determining where you’d like to go focusing on the goal you share with your spiritual life coach, CHANGE.  If you’d like to talk this over with me, please contact me.

Top Ten Reasons Why People Stay Busy

I recently had a conversation with someone who had left the corporate world but had decided to get back in.  She was asking me if I had missed “it”.  When I inquired further, I began to understand the “it” she was referring to.  The addictive “it” was the busyness and passed down sense of purpose and identity that is the gift of going to work for a big corporation. 

She said she had missed not being busy, having a place to go every day, having her day planned out already, etc.  I had to agree that I missed some of “it” too.  And yet, I don’t think I could go back to living like that.

During our conversation she explained that as stressful as it was, it was easier in so many other ways.  And I started to see the parallels between what she was saying and busyness in general.  I admit not everyone feels that way about going to work, but ask anyone who hasn’t had to do it for a while, after the pay check, the part they miss the most is the “it” I have described below.
 
Here is the “it” as I see it.  I have summarized it as my top ten reasons why people stay busy.

1.    They feel important when they have things to do
2.    They are addicted to being busy
3.    It is accepted and encouraged that being busy is a good thing (cultural norm)
4.    It helps them feel like they are doing something and are needed
5.    It doesn’t give them time to think about what really matters
6.    It keeps them from getting bored
7.    It provides an excuse for everything they are not doing
8.    It makes the day go by faster
9.    It helps keep insanity, drama, and stress alive and in control
10.    It numbs the pain of whatever might have caused some pain in their life

I could go on and on, but I am blessed not to be busy in that way anymore.

Questions to ponder:

1)     Do you like being busy?  If so, what is the best thing about it?
2)    Can you remember a time when you were completely satisfied and fulfilled and were not busy?  What were you doing?
3)    What kind of busy do you like and enjoy?

Maybe you don’t have any idea what you need and are torn by the idea that being busy might not have served you well, even though you thought it was the way to be.  If you’d like to explore spiritual life coaching and how it might help you re-assess where you are and how you’d like to live, do not hesitate to contact me.