Just a quick post today to let you know that Sunday Night Success may disappear for a bit this week.
I am switching the registration of the domain name and switching my hosting services. I have mixed stories: some telling me this is an easy switch with nothing to worry about, other people telling horrible tales of broken links and general chaos. I am hoping the SNS switch will follow the plot line of the former and not the latter stories.
Sticking to what I do well.
Generally when toying around with technology I inevitably make a mistake and mess things up. I actually, for the most part, enjoy learning new tech-tricks and figuring things out for myself. However, more often than not, I miss one little step, or click on one wrong option, and it all goes wrong. Then I spend countless hours trying to troubleshoot my mistake and getting stressed out. I always fix the problem, eventually.
No eventually this time
The plan is to skip the stressed out problem solving step this time and have someone else do it for me. I am going to investigate the world of virtual assistants and see what it will cost me to have an expert help me with the switch. My business is now making money, not a lot, but it is making money, and I think my time can be used better with other business building tasks.
I am intrigued by using a virtual assistant as one of my support environments and this seems like a perfect opportunity to test the waters.
Wish me luck!
Have you ever used a virtual assistant before? Do you have any recommendations for an awesome Wordpress virtual assistant?
I was sitting in the doctor’s office a couple of weeks ago waiting for my appointment and reading a crumpled magazine from the waiting room collection.
Later, I was sitting in the dentist’s office, waiting again, tapping my fingers on my knee with nothing to do.
I was driving to pick up some groceries, 15 minutes each way, and listening to the horrible local radio station.
Every day I walk ten minutes each way, in silence, to the local high school to teach my math classes.
Empty minutes
What do all of these different events have in common?
In a world were time management is a constant struggle, and you are trying to fit more into the same amount of time, these are empty minutes. Valuable minutes that pass with nothing valuable being accomplished. Valuable minutes that will have to be added to another part of your day so you can get everything done.
Please don’t misunderstand. Downtime, relaxing, and just being in the moment are all important. But, there seems to be a lot of minutes in my day that I could be multitasking and getting something else done.
Filling the empty minutes
I have started to fill up some of these empty minutes by making sure I have something to do whenever I am faced with these small chunks of free time. My main tool for filling my empty minutes: my iPod touch.
Doctor’s and dentist’s office? I have a document application so I can read eBooks or white papers, as well as using the note application to write my blog posts and newsletters, or just capture stray ideas.
Driving and walking in silence? I have a huge list of coaching, business, and marketing books on my reading list. I have started downloading audiobooks and listening to them during this down time.
Fewer empty minutes, more family minutes
By filling all of these empty minutes I have been able to spend more time with my wife and son. I have managed to “read” two of the books on my list while walking and driving, and written entire articles while waiting. All of this time translates directly into time I can put into other priorities.
Small amounts of empty minutes add up. How different would your time management challenges be if you started filling up your empty minutes?
So much of today’s self help and personal-improvement writing centers around the idea of work- life balance. I have written about it here on Sunday Night Success, and I work on this with many of my clients.
In the past few weeks while working with one of my clients, and just last week in my own life, an interesting challenge to this idea of work-life balance has presented itself:
Is it worth it to live your life out of balance for a planned period of time, so that your life becomes more in balance later?
Counting commitments
To give you an idea of where this post comes from, my current commitments include my private practice clients, my corporate clients in the US, and the work I do helping a coach in Vancouver. I also teach on call, usually one day a week. Did I mention I am working on a book idea?
Things have been great lately. I enjoy all of the work I am doing, I am spending some great time with my family, and having a lot of fun. However, the family finances are still in a bit of flux. I am all right with this, my wife is feeling a little insecure and would love to build up some savings.
Too much on your plate, but that’s OK
Last week I was presented with the possibility of taking on a half-time job teaching math at the high school down the street in my community.
This was not part of the plan.
Taking on a half-time teaching job while working on all of my other projects will definitely tip my work-life balance in the direction of work, something I am not a big fan of doing.
Here is the thing, the teaching job is for four months, it ends in June. The combined income from my work as a coach and my work as a half-time teacher would put my family in the best financial position it has been in the past three years. We would be able to put some savings in the bank. We would be able to buy a dishwasher (an important environment for both my wife and I with a 2 year old son). We would have some protection so that I could focus more on all my other projects without worrying about finances.
Worth it?
Can too much be a good thing, at least for awhile?
This is a tough one to answer when you are living in the situation. My first response is: yes, totally worth it. As long as you set a time limit for yourself and don’t get caught out of balance for an extended period of time, then living out of balance can be a good thing.
Living out of balance can challenge you. Living out of balance can help evolve you. Living out of balance can help you clarify what you really want out of life. Living out of balance can make the return to balance sustainable.
My second response is: nice rationalization buddy, way to convince yourself.
Living out of balance can stress your relationships. Living out of balance can stress you out. Living out of balance can exhaust you. Living out of balance can trap you so you never return to balance.
Living out of balance. Viable strategy or rationalization? What is your answer to the question:
Is it worth it to live your life out of balance for a planned period of time, so that your life becomes more in balance later?
Interested in joining me to hash out some ideas for a book? Subscribe to my personal geography newsletter and join the creative process.
I have picked up work with two different coaching organizations providing coaching and writing services.
I have maintained a small number of clients in my private coaching practice.
I am now supplying the majority of my family’s income through my new adventure as a coach.
I have grown and continue to grow the reader base of Sunday Night Success.
Everything has been going better than “according to plan”.
Funny how that is such a precarious place to be.
Positive results and silly thoughts
With all of these positive results I made a decision a couple of weeks ago that I would put building my private practice on hold and focus on my contract work. At the time it made perfect sense: the contract work is paying my bills and a little bit more, it is most important, full steam ahead.
Which was followed by an even sillier thought: I can start building my private practice again if the contract work slows down or comes to an end.
All the cogs in the machine
Most of you have already seen the complete gap in my thinking process, funny how it took me a few weeks, and some prodding from my SNS group and my own coach, to catch on.
Why stop helping people just because things are going well?
Why wait for something to go wrong before building up another income stream for my business and my family?
The contract work is great, but it is only a piece of the overall vision for success. I am having a lot of fun with the work and learning a lot. The opportunities just keep opening up and it is fabulous. However, that does not mean I don’t need the other piece of the vision, my private practice, spinning inside the machine.
If I am having great success with one aspect of the plan, why not work on having even more success by continuing to work on all the parts?
Gratitude for my support network
The thanks for this realization goes to those relationships that provide me with the support that has helped me with my recent success. Without their questions and gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) prodding I would be moving forward but leaving some important pieces behind.
Now it is time to refocus and get back on track.
What is one area of your own life that you may be feeling too comfortable with? How would things look different if you shook things up and put some energy back into this area?
If you take a look in the upper right corner of the SNS homepage you will see a brand new sign up form for the Sunday Night Success newsletter. Like the new “Weekly Environment” posts on Tuesdays this newsletter is another experiment to see what happens.
At the moment the sign up form breaks one of the most common internet newsletter rules: I am not offering anything free with the newsletter….yet. At the moment it was most important that I get the sign up form live on the blog. I have what I think is an important and valuable freebie that will come with the newsletter I just haven’t quite figured out the technicalities of setting up the distribution of that freebie.
Freebie or not I hope you will sign up for the SNS newsletter and join me on this new experimental journey. Then, when the freebie is actually available you will be twice as happy!
What to expect from the newsletter
The newsletter is set up to provide a brand new environment for my, and hopefully your creative environment. I am working on writing a book that brings together some of my new ideas about success that I have learned over the past year through my own self-improvement work and my work with coaching clients.
These ideas are raw at the moment, and need to be developed. You can check out the very start of one of the ideas in my post on personal geography. My hope is that you will work with me, by sharing your comments and ideas about the newsletter, and help me write the book one idea at a time.
What other benefits?
Even if you are not interesting in helping develop and clarify the ideas everything I write in the newsletter is helpful in how you operate in your daily life. These are the ideas that I use with my clients and in my own life to be successful. Not all of these ideas will end up on the SNS blog so the newsletter gives you a unique look at some really interesting ways to help yourself move forward and be successful with whatever you are working on right now.
Or, you read a few issues and decide I am a lunatic and it is all pointless. Really, no harm done, and you would get the chance to peek inside the head of a madman.
Will you be selling stuff?
The answer is yes, but only at the very bottom of the newsletter after all of the non-selling information has been provided. If reading offers in a newsletter bothers you, it won’t be a huge problem, you can just stop reading before you get to the bottom. If I ever decide to change this policy (and this is an experiment, it may evolve) I will give warning so you can jump ship.
My number one purpose is to develop my ideas and provide value to you with my thoughts and writing. I would also love to have some of you join me in coaching relationships so we can start moving your ideas out of your head and into reality. For those of you who decide to take me up on the offers I look forward to working with you.
So, I hope you will enter your information below. It should be an interesting time that we spend together.
Welcome to a new idea here at Sunday Night Success: the weekly TED video.
Ted “is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading” that puts on conferences where thought leaders give talks about “the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world.” Attendance at TED conferences requires an application, not only to speak, but to sit in the audience.
One day I will sit in that audience and listen to these thought leaders live, but until that day (not to mention the day when I give my own TED talk) I have TED.com to fill my mind with amazing ideas and inspiration. I start every weekday with a TED video for inspiration, it is a source of creative energy for me. I would love to share this inspiration and energy with the readers of SNS.
Starting today, and every Friday, you can visit SNS to watch my weekly favourite TED video and see what helps me tick.
Have you ever wondered why you find something that works really well, and then quit doing it?
Maybe you start going to the gym three times a week after work, and then decide that switching to the weekend might be better and stop going.
Or, you switch to drinking one cup of coffee a day, feel 100% better, then one day decide that you can have two, which leads to three, then four.
Maybe you set time aside each day to write, start getting a ton of writing done, then switch to a different system, and it all falls apart.
Something was working really well in your life and you decided to change it.
For me it was meditation.
Sufi Remembrance
At the start of August I took Mark Silver’s “Remembrance Challenge” to give meditation a try. The Remembrance is a Sufi tradition involving getting in touch with the Divine. You can find an excellent description by signing up for the challenge at Heart of Business.
I had never meditated previously, and to be honest, I was of the mind that meditation was a load of “hippy garbage” that had no value to offer my life.
Well, I was wrong. Big time wrong. Carrying out the Remembrance made a HUGE difference in my life: I was more in control of my emotions, I felt less stressed, I was having some amazing ideas, and I was making some really great decisions about my business.
The Remembrance worked.
Switch to Shahmbala Mindfulness
My eyes were opened to the world of meditation and I wanted to experiment more. I decided to give the Shambhala tradition of meditation a try. I bought some books, read the books, and signed up for a weekend retreat.
In the end I was unable to attend the weekend retreat, but the books were very interesting and I started to practice meditating the “Shahmbala way.”
I didn’t like it. It just didn’t work for me.
So, I did the only logical thing I could: I stopped meditating.
Quitting what works
All right, so that doesn’t make a lot of sense. I had a very successful support environment in my life with the Remembrance. I experimented with Shambhala meditation, which didn’t work. So I stopped using a meditation environment all together.
Not my brightest moment I admit.
Months have gone by since I practiced the Remembrance. I have been feeling more stressed. I have felt blocked in moving forward with my business. I have been less patient with my family. Every benefit I was feeling from practicing the Remembrance was gone, and yet I still pushed forward, never making the link between stopping the Remembrance and the way I was feeling.
This past week I started using the Remembrance again.
It felt fabulous. I am now working my way up, once again, to a daily practice and it is already doing wonders for how I am feeling and how I am thinking. I am thankful that I have found this environment again.
Why do we quit?
I think maybe, once we create a helpful environment for ourselves, and begin a supportive habit we get overconfident. We attribute the success we are having to something inside of us, instead of something in the environment we created for ourselves.
You think it is willpower that makes you go to the gym, not something as simple as selecting the right time to go.
You think your self-control is strong enough to not have three cups of coffee, so two seems safe.
You believe you now have the ability and skill to write whenever you want, and don’t realize it was the structure of how you were writing that helped you be successful.
Willpower and effort are great, but they are not enough. It is the environments you set up to support yourself that lead to your success. So, next time you are having some success in your life, don’t just give yourself a pat on the back, acknowledge everything that surrounds you and has supported you in being successful.
Think of a time when you were successful and try to identify some of the people, things, and structures that helped you be successful. How could you incorporate these success environments into a project you are currently working on?
Check out Jocelyn’s post on vision boards for another great way to build up your success environment.
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. – Carl Jung
I made a vision board last week.
When a friend suggested it I had the same gut response I have when the dentist calls to remind me it’s time for a cleaning: Ugh. I spent far too much energy avoiding the Laws of Anything associated with The Secret craze of 2007 to bother with that…I believe I called it…. hoodoo voodoo, t.y.v.m. Goals are like hand knit socks. You won’t get the final product unless you break out the skills.
Yada yada yada she twisted my arm. Until this exercise my only real goal or mark of success was 40 billable hours per week, yet it took me about .03 milliseconds to know exactly what should go onto such a board.
First, a scene from the movie Sliding Doors (which is the visual picture I have in my head of life as a successful contractor).
I wanted to represent yoga, somehow. I searched high and low for a picture of a happy team, representing the team I want to build to run my business. I added the words “leader” “motivation” “enthusiastic” to remind me of the qualities my business will represent.
At the last second I added a picture of my friend’s drawer of hand-knit socks (It was sort of a joke to myself. I love hand-knit socks but have rarely succeeded in knitting a PAIR of two).
This is what my vision board looks like:
Do they work? My friend who twisted my arm into this exercise swears they do, and the first year of her business all the concepts represented on her board were achieved or exceeded.
The concept behind vision boards is best explained in a 2007 Newsweek article “Decoding the Secret”
“Even a serious academic like Harvard psychologist Carol Kauffman is willing to credit the idea that you can change your life by consciously directing your thoughts in a positive direction. “Basically, it’s chaos theory,” she says. “I don’t think you can actually attract things to you. But if you’re profoundly open to opportunity, then when ambiguous events occur, you notice them. I think what positive thinking does is raise your consciousness to possibilities so they can snag your attention. We’re starting to see some empirical studies on that now.”
Here’s what I know, living one week with my vision board:
I love it. It’s nice to look at. I feel like it’s an extension of me, a snapshot of my future. It’s made me excited to reach my goals. Last week was my best & most productive week yet. Also, I quite independently (or so I thought) on Monday I had a bright idea: I cast on a new sock started knitting a new pair of socks in a pattern I’ve felt intimidated by for some time. (this one)
A more spiritual approach to making your vision happen check out Alberto Villolo.
When trying to find balance you may find yourself constantly working to change your habits, your schedule, or your beliefs. Sometimes these changes may be 100% necessary.
The upside: you make a self-improvement and you and your family benefit. The downside: you expend a great deal of energy changing.
What if you stopped wasting your energy on changing something that you see as a weakness or block in your life and try using it to your advantage?
An example
When my wife and I were working on figuring out a new schedule with our son Fionn and how we were going to survive with the lack of sleep we came up with what seemed like a good plan:
I worked during the days, so I got to sleep in the mornings while she and Fionn hung out. She was home all day with Fionn, so she got to relax at night while Fionn and I hung out.
Seemed perfectly logical.
We had it backwards
The problem with our plan was: Ashlea can barely even cope with the idea of morning, while I am one of those annoying morning people. After work and by Fionn’s bedtime I am usually tired and not at my best.
Our plan seemed reasonable, but we were expending energy to work through our limitations instead of accepting them.
4am cleared it all up
In the spring Fionn went through a ten-day stretch where he woke up at 4:30am every day and was energized and ready to play. Ashlea couldn’t do it; 6am is questionable, but 4:30am? For Ashlea’s operating system that was a no go.
So, I started getting up in the mornings. It wasn’t easy, 4:30am is tough even for a morning person, but I was far more capable of doing it than my wife. After a few days it just became part of my daily ritual and I got to spend some great time with my son before going to work. At the same time Ashlea started to take care of the bedtime activities, which occurred at a far better time of the day for her.
We each accepted our weakness for being effective at a particular time of the day, and changed our plan to work within these weaknesses instead of spending energy changing them.
What is a weakness you have that, if you stopped fighting it, and just accepted it, it would help make your life easier?
Correction. Writing anything that is not the story I am working on for National Novel Writing Month has been a challenge; a huge challenge.
To succeed at NaNoWriMo you need to write 1667 words every day of the month of November. I guess after writing that many words for the novel each day (some days less, some days much more) my brain has run out of words to write anything else.
My other writing tasks, which are all attached to important goals I set for 2009, have fallen by the wayside so that I can focus on completing this personal writing challenge.
Do I regret pushing back important goals that I planned and set months ago in order to complete 50000 words for NaNoWriMo?
Sometimes you need to make changes
I don’t regret my decision for a second.
Yes I have pushed some of my other goals aside for the last month. Yes, some of these goals may not be completed until early 2010. I don’t consider missing any of these goals as a failure, because I see my accomplishment in winning at NaNoWriMo as a stupendously, incredible, huge success:
- Writing a novel is on my 100 goals list, and now I get to check it off.
- Writing a novel is giving me incredible insights, ideas, and skills that I can use with my clients that are undertaking similar creative challenges.
- Writing a novel is pushing me beyond my current limits and evolving me into a different and more exciting person.
A video to help explain
When the opportunity to experience NaNoWriMo appeared I had to make a decision: stick to my current plan, or make a quick decision and change everything. In the world of football this is called “calling an audible”.
Check out Scott Epp’s blog and watch his video post which explains what an audible is and how we can incorporate the idea of “calling and audible” into our lives.
