…and it wants to steal your lunch money.

It tells you crap like; “this is the way things are” and “I’m in charge here”.

At the risk of sounding like a subway ad, here are some possible circumstances to consider:

Don’t have the money to start your own dream business? Underhoused and overdebted? Friends keep walking all over you? Completely depleted of energy because of all you HAVE TO do in a day? Haven’t been able to bridge your relationship with your Dad?

Consider just one of these. How does it make you feel? Trapped? Small? Weak? Stupid? Powerless? That’s just how the circumstance likes it – it wants to make you feel you don’t have a choice in this matter and the sooner you concede is the sooner you DON’T get that knuckle sandwich.

That boxed in feeling you get when considering the situation is…get this…just ONE PERSPECTIVE on the situation.

There are others. Oh yes, there are others. And you can choose which one you would like to don to look at the circumstance. Don’t worry, I’m not actually suggesting that there ISN’T a problem to be considered. Just that there are multiple ways of looking at it and the sooner you recognize that the one you’re seeing right now isn’t the ONLY way, the sooner you get out of that tight cramped and scary place of helplessness and start exploring what else there is for you.

Oh, I know ALL too well why the current perspective is so compelling. You don’t necessarily WANT to see things from this helpless place, but can’t help it, right? You’ve been living it for so long, gathering reams of evidence that point to this “just being the way it is”, that it FEELS true, immutable and unshakable. Case closed. In fact, you’re pretty much doing the bully’s PR for him.

My suggestion? Deal with the circumstance just as you would a bully:

• Stand up to it and declare in your loudest voice: I DO NOT ACCEPT THAT I AM POWERLESS HERE!
• Take its power away by choosing another perspective. There are others for you to choose…many, many others. Plan action from there.

Can’t see them for yourself? Talk to a coach. THAT’S what we do… help you to see what might be possible from right here, right now and move you into action. (Email me for a sample session or for a referral to one of my fabulous colleagues).

Yesterday, the babe came home from school buzzing from a hands-on woodworking workshop. “Buzzing” in part because she created something wonderful with her own two hands (see exhibit A) and also because she succeeded in keeping her thumbs unsmashed.

Exhibit A - the Bunny Project

She told us that the workshop leader told them to “look at the nail, look at the nail, look at the nail”. This was important, she explained (perhaps a touch more dramatically patient than the explanation called for) because if you look at your thumb when you’re hammering, then your brain takes a picture of that and thinks that’s what you’re supposed to hammer. Not the nail. So by looking at the nail, that is what your brain takes a picture of and knows to hammer that. Got it? (She did too…see exhibit B…pretty fine nail work, huh?)

Exhibit B - Fancy nailwork (and no bloody thumbs)

Hearing intention-manifestation being articulated by a 6-year old was pretty “cute” and all…and precisely what I needed after a day of feeling overwhelmed.

I decided to take this notion out for a run with me this morning. I focused on the horizon (literally) rather than the ground and shaved minutes off my run time. In that run, I also opted to get really clear about a couple of issues that were swirling around in my mind. Got home from the run, wrote them down, then squeezed the bejesus out of my little girl and kissed her unsmashed thumbs.

So…where’s your focus? Are you looking at the nail or at your thumb?

I have a love-hate relationship with feedback. I often hate to receive it AND I love that it is a super powerful tool.

I suspect that some of this tension stems from not ever knowing exactly how I’m going to BE with receiving it. There seems to be a direct relationship with how close something is to my heart and how frightening feedback can be for me. To whit: how do I feel when I receive feedback on my accounting? Meh. Pretty low on the “threat level” colour spectrum…let’s say green. When I receive feedback on how we’re raising our daughter…hoo boy. Off the charts, ready to pounce, RED. How I’m running my business? Let’s say lower than how we’re doing with daughter but still high. Orange, if you will.

At my very, VERY worst, I become petulant, defensive and a bit sullen. My ego is bruised and I get sulky. I make excuses and suspect my chin juts out. Worst of all, I shut down and stop receiving what is being offered to me.

And that’s the sin. Feedback is by definition FEEDING you. Nurturing you. So that you can grow, expand and maybe even improve. It is a gift to be cherished, appreciated, admired and held. One that you ASKED for.

The trick, I am finding, is in recognizing that feedback isn’t a law to be adhered to. YOU GET TO CHOOSE WHAT YOU WANT TO INCORPORATE. Unless the person offering you feedback is a complete ass, they likely have your best interest in mind…and YET…are presenting with their own experience, knowledge and perspective. Their own fears, concerns and saboteurs may be showing up. What they are sharing with you is an amalgam of what THEY PERCEIVE to be the truth. And it may or may not be true for you. You are in choice. As ever.

A recent Daily Om validated this…when I needed it most.

Our own sense of the truth is the most important piece when taking in information from external sources.

You get to be the ULTIMATE AUTHORITY. That is some resonant stuff, right there, boy. I like that a lot.

When I am at my best with receiving feedback, I notice the twinges of defensiveness. I pause and listen for what’s underneath the resistance…is it ego? Is it what I’ve known I’ve had to do for a long time and haven’t had the courage to face? Then, I breathe. And listen some more. Then pause. Then thank the person for doing the hard, truth-telling thing. I then reflect on their gift and incorporate what I CHOOSE. (Added bonus: if I’ve really played my cards right, that person who has just given of themselves becomes an ally; a resource to continue to provide their wisdom as I refine, improve and expand).

I saw this in action last week. I was invited to sit on a panel and hear a group of young entrepreneurs present their business plans. My role was simply to provide feedback from a potential client’s perspective.

What struck me was not only to wide array of talent and skill in front of me, but the elegance and poise in which they heeded our feedback. Regardless of how their financials were prodded, their marketing plans poked and their distribution channels were scrutinized, there was no defensiveness, no “yeah buts” and only appreciation for the immersed learning. They GOT it.

Thank you, for being a reminder of grace and gratitude to:

Krystal – Her artistic sensibility comes through not just in her stunning ceramic work but also her photography, drawings and blog.

Tanya - The courageous, truth-telling poet who lives and hugs just like my mama taught me to: heart-to-heart. No other way counts.

Aileen – A designer whose work is affordable, accessible and as lovely as she is (I’ve referred her several times in the past week already).

Sarah – A hand knit artwear and jewellery designer whose whimsical and stunning work is getting around (sidebar: I intend to sport her wares in my first TV interview…stay tuned).

Stephanie – A jewellery designer who creates hand-made lampwork glass beads herself. Her work is weighty and substantial.

Julie – A super-polished business woman with the heart and soul of an artist, she co-owns an aerial-dance cirque company (how cool is THAT?).

Esther – A self-taught painter who you NEED to discover before her work is ten-fold the current price. And even then it will be well worth it.

Final thank you of this post goes to Lisa, for giving me some feedback on how I receive feedback. Received, integrated and well, WELL appreciated.

XO
TG

A couple of years ago, my favourite yogi Eoin asked the question “what was a gift you were given by your parents”. My answer then was the same as today: from my mother Brenda, I was given the gift of appreciation (she of the “don’t postpone joy” maxim). And from my father, Richard, I was given the gift of generosity. It is impossible for him to make soup without bringing us some. Loaves of bread too. What he has, he shares. I think this philosophy is lovely and makes the world go ‘round. My world, in any case.

In recent years, I have been accused of being “generous to a fault”. It’s a funny turn of phrase, don’t you think? A compli-sult, really.  I’ve stewed thought about it plenty and I really struggle with getting my head around it.

Call me simple (actually, please don’t)…I see generosity as good. A core value of mine to be cherished and fostered, much like its kindness cousins compassion and empathy. So how/when does an abundance of what is good become a fault?

So I asked the twittosphere (a place of unbridled generosity, so I’ve found) this question:

Do you think it’s possible to be “generous to a fault”?

Responses varied from perspectives on the types of people in your life (and if they were “users” or not) to whether or not to “generous to a fault” means giving what you don’t have, or out of compulsion – not true generosity.

Hmmmm. Well, that certainly sparked some voices in my head.

I had painfully set aside a day to get caught up on my bookkeeping. Which was a grievous underestimation of how MANY days I should have set aside, but I digress.

What I noticed in the process was HOW MUCH MONEY I’ve been spending on my business. The mundane stuff: paper, toner, staples, blah de blah; the investment stuff: training courses, certification, hardware; the cerebral stuff: books, e-books, programs and then all the rest. And all the rest is the killer…piles and piles and PILES of receipts for dinners, lunches and coffee dates. All related to my business and all adding up to some impressive numbers (or depressive…depends on your perspective).

So the voices started hollering: “SEE? You ARE generous to a fault, fool! You can’t afford to be the big spender! Who do you think you are? What are you doing paying for everything? What does it give YOU?”

Do any of those charming voices sound familiar? And those loud sabotaging buggers, they really CAN make you feel small, right? Like the COMPLETE opposite of the intention of generosity.

Which is the point. Saboteurs (’cause that’s what they are) WANT you to feel small. That’s how they like you. Small and safe and in the mid-range.

And that, I have discovered, is really not for me.

I have HUGE respect for people who give of themselves with abandon (professionally and personally). It’s hard to do…you run the risk of being called compulsive. Your intentions are questioned. You also run the risk of giving it all away. Yikes!

I am loving the trends I’m seeing on-line. Generosity is finding its way into the business space. Top bloggers talk of giving your best content away. Delicious.

I have this kooky belief that if we all found our edge, stopped being so concerned about being so bloody moderate all the time that something magical would happen.

I have MUCH MUCH farther to go in my own journey of generosity. And I’m not talking about picking up the lunch tabs. I have wisdom, talent and gifts that quite frankly, I’ve been keeping bottled up. Hoarding them. So my new intention is to go to my own edge of my capacity to give. It may well be considered a fault, but we can just go ahead and add it to the pile, now can’t we?

What if you always gave the best of yourself? What would that look like?

Smell Spring in the air? I believe that’s the spring zephyr…or steaks being BBQ’d somewhere in the neighbourhood. In any case, doesn’t it make you want to give your body a good shake out of its hibernation and breathe DEEPLY? Try it with me. In and out. Niiiiiiice.

Today marks the “livification” of The Great Canadian Yoga Stretch’s website. I’ve been dropping hints about it and you can finally go see what this campaign is about.

The Twitter version: “In support of CNIB, inspiring Canadians to stretch their perceived limits through the practice of yoga”. Well, I don’t think that does too swell a job of explaining how fan-flippin’-tastic this campaign is going to be, but while I am the Volunteer Chair, I’m not the copy writer (probably just as well…there would be über-professional non-words like “fan-flippin’-tastic”).
Here’s what I am truly excited about:

• The real mission of the campaign – it’s a national fundraising campaign during the month of May that invites all Canadians to declare their yoga stretch goal and raise $$ for CNIB’s programs at the same time. Could be a 30-day challenge for you OR finishing a 90-minute flow class by the end of the month. Your call.
• The inclusive nature of the campaign…it’s for all Canadians:  all levels of yogic abilities – from couch potatoes to seasoned yogis; all levels of vision -  from sighted to partially sighted to blind; all regions – from St John’s to Vancouver peeps will be joining in on the fun.
• Getting to work with my husband (he’s VP Fundraising, CNIB). Turns out, we DO work well together (this is good).
• Like all good work, it ends in good play: celebration events across the country on May 30^th will be well worth the sweat.
• THAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT GOALS!!!! If you’ve been here before, then you likely know that I so adore talking about goals and how to make them smart. Goal setting is some of the work I do most often with my own clients and helping them to stretch themselves is the meat of it. So, getting to move away from that metaphor and into real physical stretching is kind of cool.
• My own stretch goal thrills me (it’s a SMART goal, after all!) – elegantly going into a full, unassisted head stand. Note the qualifier “elegantly”. I am an intermediate practitioner at best and so this is NOT something I am comfortable doing. Which must mean it’s right for me.

While the landing page is live, we’re not quite ready to invite you to register (technically, this is a “soft” launch…let’s face it, we’ve got to eeeeeeeeaaaaaaaase on into this whole waking-up from winter thing). The site will be fully awake on April 6^th…by then maybe you’ll have had the chance to consider your own stretch goal.

Until then, you can join us on Twitter and Facebook.

Namaste.

Pretty odd title for a Coach who spends her days challenging her clients to think bigger, go  deeper,  and push farther in their pursuits, huh?

Bear with me.

This past Saturday, I tuned in to CBC’s Definitely Not the Opera. I always enjoy it and rarely have the radio on (living an iPod existence has seemingly eradicated the need for a stereo) so driving around doing errands afforded me this rare pleasure. I was pretty disappointed when I heard this week’s program title: “In Praise of Good Enough”. In fact, I had an almost visceral reaction when I heard that.  I mean, really: “good enough”? How lame. How pedestrian. How beige. Definitely Not the Opera was Definitely Not for Tanya this week.

But I persevered. Am glad I did.

It forced me to look at my own relationship with “good enough”. And why “good enough” has never been good enough for me. AND what the cost of that can be.

Let’s take this blog, for instance. I am no writer, yet I adore writing to my blog. It is for my pleasure (as I have discovered that I enjoy writing) and hopefully for others’ pleasure too. So why have I not written a post in over two weeks?

I have read somewhere and made a rule for myself along the way that each and every blog post MUST be truly profound, OR hilarious, OR transformative. And as such, this line of thinking has become a very compelling reason to NOT write when life is busier than usual. I mean really…how convenient is this?: “there’s no point in writing today…I have nothing to say that anyone will care about”.  So I don’t sit down and write, denying myself that pleasure AND feeling guilty about letting myself down in one fell swoop. Clever, huh?

This is a pretty common plight: our relationship with perfectionism is the very thing that can stop us from launching. And quite simply, stopping short is what keeps us stopped short.

In Linchpin, Seth Godin points out that he has written over a hundred books, most of which didn’t sell very well. And that Picasso produced over a thousand paintings, but most of us can only remember three of them. (Please do read the book for 236 pages of head-nodding goodness). He points out that the work is in creating and being fearless enough to launch. Whatever the outcome.

So today, I invite you to settle. Serve a dish that isn’t spectacular. Turn in a report that isn’t completely buttoned down. Assume your readers will forgive a less-than-transformative blog post and hit “publish”. Just this once, go for “good enough” with me.

And who knows? It may end up being the next Linchpin, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, or The Sound of Settling (wildly popular song by Death Cab for Cutie – ironically, the writer didn’t think it good enough to share with his bandmates and held on to it for a long time).

If this post helped even one person evaluate their own relationship with perfectionism and helped them to move forward, then that’s good enough for me. In fact, that’s fantastic.

Last night, my husband and I did what we were “supposed to do” to celebrate Valentine’s Day. We went out for a lovely meal at a lovely restaurant and didn’t talk about our daughter. Not even once.

As lovely (and outrageously overpriced) as it all was, we couldn’t wait to get home to slip into something more comfortable and get busy. No, not THAT kind of comfortable nor busy. I mean getting into our Lululemons and having at a blank canvas we’ve been meaning to tackle. Apparently, it’s what we do.

Inspired more by the restaurant’s abundant artwork than its food, we cracked open a bottle of MacLaren Vale and went to work, with no real plan in mind for what the finished piece would look like. After all, canvasses are pretty cheap and we knew we’d have fun regardless of the outcome. (Am really working on this non-attachment stuff).  I did my thing on one side and Greg did his on the other…and then we met sort of in the middle. An hour later, we were done.  We thought.

We stood back and felt pretty pleased with how it had come together. Here’s what we did.

Untitled 1

Then a funny thing happened.  I stood back to admire it as G held it against the wall, and then he rotated it 90 degrees. Huh. Different.

Untitled 2

Another 90 degrees.

Untitled 3

And another.

Untitled 4

Greg likes version number 2…something about it raining down happy goodness on the earth. Not bad.

I like version number 3. The upward motion feels aspirational. And somehow, 4 seems more pensive and sombre.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not really suggesting that this is art worthy of great discussion. We don’t purport to be artists (we didn’t even have palettes so we used a plastic cutting board and an unused cat litter pan to blend colours). But we like it and it looks good on the wall and that’s the end of that.

What I’m writing about here is perspective. One painting. Several iterations. Many different emotions. All good.

We strung the wire on the back so it can be hung any which way we like on any given day.

My Valentine’s Day gift to you, dear reader, is the reminder that you too are always at choice. You get to choose your perspective. It can be as easy as turning the canvas around if you so desire.

I hope that today you choose to have fun, play, laugh and love.

XO
T

My business partner Lisa and I have a lot of fun collaborating. It’s why we do things like Coach Buffet and why most of our collaborations can be considered successful. So when we stopped having fun in the planning of version 2.0 of Coach Buffet and started getting grumpy about the whole process, we took stock, took note and took action. We recognized that we’d been working far too hard and laughing far too little. So Lisa hopped on a train from Montreal and we got busy with the business of inspiration.

The plan was as follows: do something fun and memorable on Saturday and integrate the learnings for a strategic planning session on Sunday. Sounds like a rip-roaring good time, don’t it? Yet, we trusted that it was exactly what was needed. The trick was to figure out what the “fun” could be on Saturday. We were on a budget and not feeling that a spa-fternoon would provide the inspiration that we were sorely lacking.

Given our love of food and cooking, we landed on a concept that was kind of like Iron Chef on speed. We were each to spend $50 on ingredients bought separately and come together to create a meal that night…giving no indication to the other party about what was being purchased throughout the day. My husband bought wine. Lots of it, just in case.

Our intention: non-attachment to the outcome. Easy, right? I could say we both trusted that it would be delicious, but that’s being attached to the outcome being delicious. It was perplexing as hell and made for some pretty complicated conversations all day.

In fact, it was hard enough to not be attached to my OWN shopping. I had a running internal dialogue like: “this speck bacon will be wonderful in a creamy sauce over pasta”. I knew all would go to pot (pun intended) once we mixed Lisa’s  ingredients with mine. So I had to shop based on inspiration alone and by selecting the ingredients that called to me….with no attachment to what they’d end up being a part of.

Hours later, we returned to my home, poured a glass of wine, surveyed our collective purchases, ooh’d and aah’d, and then started to make logical decisions. Four organized piles of delicious ingredients later represented four future dishes. We toasted our cleverness and donned our aprons, ready to cook. One problem. In our earnest to “get it right” and wrap this all up in a neat and tidy way, we had compromised the integrity of the exercise. The four to-be dishes were pretty much split down the middle…two dishes from Lisa’s pile of ingredients and two dishes from my pile. We were both creating our own dishes without REALLY integrating each others ingredients. We were playing the game with a tiny range of motion (as Seth Godin describes in Linchpin).  Damn.

Back to the drawing board. No more sensible dishes like mussels with wild mushrooms in a provençal sauce. No more sausage and mushroom tapas. Much to my husband’s chagrin, we deconstructed the piles and reassembled. This was much harder. And much, MUCH gigglier.

The culinary hits:

Try this at home

• Dates stuffed with double smoked bacon, morbier (one seriously stinky cheese) and cashews
• Frisée salad with blood oranges, tomatillos, mango stilton and curry vinaigrette
• Papaya, lemongrass, chutney, limes and  mussels
• Chutney citrus salad with oat cakes

The culinary misses:

Do NOT try this at home

• Farmer’s sausage in red wine and pink peppercorn chocolate sauce
• Dried big ear mushroom slaw with chilies (made worse by Lisa getting chili juice in her eye)

It was a truly enjoyable meal. What didn’t work didn’t matter. How about that?

As pre-arranged, we spent the next day applying the shopping/cooking experience to some future collaborations. We started to develop a new lexicon with phrasing like: “don’t be afraid of the chocolate sausage” and “don’t you start trying to make masterpieces with only your  ingredients”.  (Am glad for my husband’s sake that he chose to make himself scarce…we can be pretty insufferable, turns out). I’m also glad that Lisa and I took the opportunity to turn a phone chat that I’d booked with Dyana Valentine into a Project Intensive. She really helped us to synthesize what we were concocting. That is one gifted woman right there.

The lesson:

Truth be told, I am still digesting just how important this weekend was for me. But so far, here’s what I KNOW I’ve learned:

• Non-attachment is hard. And not being attached to outcomes can provide so much more expansiveness that the mind boggles at the possibilities.
• Collaboration only really works when you and your partner lean in to each other equally. Lean in too far and you push them away. Lean in too little and they topple you. Lean in equally and you can have a whole lotta fun.
• Playing in the middle range is weak. AND it’s work to not dwell there (it occurred to us both that our dishes really could have been far more experimental than they were…there is still farther for us to go).
• Don’t laugh at anyone for getting chili in their eyes…it’ll come back to bite you in the ass (or in the eye, as it happened to me).

Can’t wait to share with you what we are really cooking up (once it’s fully baked, that is).

PS – As a further challenge, Lisa and I have agreed to stay away from each other’s blogs for the next week so we don’t cross-contaminate our findings. Take a peak over at her site to see what she’s saying about the experiment. And if she accuses me of peaking in her shopping bag over lunch, don’t believe her. I really didn’t (though I really was tempted for a millisecond!)

* The title is a misnomer b/c I really don’t know what the “surprise” is. That the experience was hard and easy at the same time? Tasty and not? Still noodling that one around…

I write a lot about values and how integral they are for me in my life (have you noticed?).  If I feel weak, am in a funk or annoyed, I know right away that a value is being trampled on. When I am feeling like I can fly, it’s because I’m honouring my values. Pretty beautiful in its simplicity.

Making life-changing decisions without being armed with an awareness of your core values is about as much fun and constructive as going bra shopping with NO idea of your measurements. Uncomfortable, de-motivating and potentially debilitating (you just may throw your back out…or worse).

Values make us our unique selves. Like building blocks, they are fundamental to our essence. Take out a couple and the whole structure comes a-tumbling down. Without our values, we’d just be reasonably drawn facsimiles of ourselves. They define who we are at our core. Or at least, “core values” do.

Here’s what they are NOT. Values (noun) are not the thing that you might value (verb) like time to yourself, chateau-neuf-du-pape or accolades. Here’s the litmus test. Would you be yourself without those things? Most likely, yes.

I promised you in the last post that I’d share some values clarification tools from my coach’s toolbelt to help you go spelunking for your own. I didn’t create these…they were a gift from CTI (one of my core values happens to be acknowledgment…it means I can’t take credit that’s not mine).

One of the most important thing to remember as you start to compile your own handy dandy reference guide of values: they are neither right nor wrong. They just are.

Peak Experience

This one’s an exercise. Find a comfy spot, grab a pad and pen and find a way to get relaxed. Think back to a time when you were in flow. Your most “you”. Alive. Vital. You thought to yourself: “Time could stand still…I have never felt more myself than I do in this precise moment. I am invincible in my own skin and I feel FINE”.

(Don’t judge what comes up…it’s all good.)

Go ahead and do it. We’ll wait for you.

Once you have that moment in your mind, start to write. Notice who’s there, what the sights and sounds are and what feelings come up for you. Jot down as much detail as you’re able to.

Can you cull the values that show up in that story? What identifiers help to lock in how you were feeling?

My peak experience surprised the hell out of me. As I started to do the exercise a while back, I went into the process assuming I’d relive my joyous wedding day, or the exhilarating birth of my daughter. Nope.

(Remember…no judge-y)

Deep breath. Here goes:

It was 1990 and I was 17, on-stage in my packed high school auditorium and doing a (poor) riff on Bill and Ted in a student council campaign speech (written by my dear friend Nicole). I can’t quite recall if I was impersonating Bill or Ted (like it matters) but I do recall an inordinate number of “Party On Dudes” peppering the promissory language of an aspiring politician (albeit Social Convener)*. I felt exhilarated, alive and on fire. I couldn’t see the audience (blinded by the spotlight…holy metaphor, Batman) but I do recall the impression that they were on their feet. I rocked that mother out and won the election.

Exhale.

So, it’s not a huge surprise that performance, risk-taking, play, creativity and community are pretty fundamental values for me.

You may decide to bring someone else in on this cool and illuminating parlor trick. Ask your partner or best friend about a time when they’ve seen you in your flow (we do this in my Board of Your Life sessions …what shows up never ceases to dazzle me). I’ve been told that leadership, helping/healing and generosity are evident to the observer when I’m in my element.

Must Haves

While it is possible, it’s not likely that one single moment in time will capture ALL of your values in one peak experience. Hence, the “must haves”.

If the aforementioned time to yourself, chateau-neuf-du-pape and accolades are indeed essential to your sense of self, they may well point to the following core values: freedom, quality and recognition come to mind. But heck, these are YOUR values to validate.

Beyond the values already expressed, I need the following to be present for me to feel fulfilled: appreciation, partnership/collaboration, intimacy, trust and authenticity.

Suppressed Values

When you’re pissed off, frustrated or even just unsettled, often times this gives us some insight into a value being squashed. If someone being late for a meeting makes you insane in the brain, respect may be a pretty big deal to you.

I cannot tolerate injustice. When I witness it, I am beside myself. As such, justice is a core value…and not one to be trifled with.

Invisible Values

This one is a bit harder to identify…and not just because they’re invisible, smarty-pants. These are the values so very much ingrained in you that you’re barely aware that they’re there. They may show up in how you dress (are you super polished?) or in how you honour (or don’t) your commitments.

Obsessive Expression

What are you always insisting upon? If everything must always be neat and tidy, tidy and neat, perfection may be your thing (me, not so much). I’m always harping on transparency…being it and expecting it in others. How about you?

Future Self Visualization

I’ll not really touch on this here doozy of a values clarification tool. Not because I don’t think it to be powerful. On the contrary. My personal bias is that this works best when done with a Sherpa like a coach to guide the process. You can google it (“future self visualization” search yields 800,000+ results) if you like.

Now you have some of your core values all written down in one compelling list. It will expand and contract over time.  Check in with it often. Stick it on your wall. Maybe even dedicate a vision board to it.

One final thing. Please do an honest assessment of how present and alive those values are in your life right now. Rate that “aliveness” on a scale of 0 to 10 (zero being flat-line dead and 10 being, well, a 10). Now consider what would be going on for you in your life for all of your values were being honoured at a 10? What would you be doing? How would that feel? What needs to/wants to shift?

Mind blowing stuff, huh?

And now the surprise bonus. Guess what? Remember that choice that you want to make that’s been on your mind and keeping you awake? You now know what the right decision is for you. Go on and be your glorious self. We love you for it…and so will you.

* BTW, I did deliver on MOST of my campaign promises: dance-a-thon, MuchMusic video dance party (I SAID it was 1990, ok?). Integrity…also a core value.

I’ve been thinking a lot about funk lately. And not the good George Clinton kind. I mean funk of the ass-dragging, Eeyore-moping, ho-hum variety. Because I’ve been in one this week…which is not, I repeat NOT my natural habitat.

On the rare occasion that this happens, my first step is to check in with what I’m DOING. Upon closer inspection, I’m doing everything I’m “supposed” to be doing. Everything I “should” be doing to lead up to some pretty big goals. Which is good. In hearing the air quotes in my own thought process, I figured it was time to pay attention to them and reevaluate some goals to see if they were SMART or not (that is, resonant and thrilling) and yup, they are. HELL YES, in fact. So, that’s not it.

Step two: checking in with what’s going on when I’ve been feeling really good. And lousy.

This week’s good:

• coaching clients through tricky spots
• contributing to design decisions for the campaign creative of a charitable event I’m chairing (more on this later)
• being fully present during family time

This week’s lousy:

• doing things that don’t feel like me in order to keep up with the Jones’s (oooh, those lousy Jones’s with their brilliant insights, fabulous style, crazy success…you can fill in any number of unrealistic attributes here)
• collaborating on a project that doesn’t have a really clear end result
• going through the motions of checking things off of my to-do…and worse, lacking focus to check off much
• being fairly judgmental about a situation in my personal life
• not having very much fun or many belly laughs

Not surprisingly, what’s felt good has meant that I’ve been honouring some fundamental core values: helping/healing, creativity, collaboration and connection.

What’s been lousy about my week is that I’ve been not only tripping over some other core values, but metaphorically starving them of affection and attention. My values of leadership, authenticity, clarity, recognition, play, empathy and risk taking are getting mighty pissed off and rewarding me with, you guessed it…a funk. And again, not the good kind.

It’s plain to see, laid out on paper like that. Being a coach and having a coach means that I am well aware of what my values are, and what needs tending to. I may not get my life to turn on a dime, but I can shift nimbly and start tending to some attention-starved values straight away….as in, THIS VERY MOMENT.  Luckily, they are as forgiving as my jade plant…once they get the right amount of loving, they’ll plump right back up and reward me in an infinite number of ways. They always do.

I’d like to same for you. Stay tuned for the next post…it will be chock-a-block full with tools to help you uncover your values….with or without a coach.