Personal Reboot Time

What Types of Goals are you making?

As we continue to talk about goals for the month, the next topic that keeps popping into my brain is about the types of goals you make.  I told you last year I made a 100 goals that were: Personal, Work, Health & Finance.  The Personal section was a big blur of topics.  This worked really well, but I think the one thing missing were some mental reset goals.

A lot of people have a bucket for spirituality or religion or something like that.  To me, this can be dangerous because my propensity is to immediately start making SMART goals here.  Donate X amount of time, donate X amount to charity etc.  Those are all amazing goals, but that is not what I am talking about.

So I am going to suggest that you set aside Personal Reboot Time as your goal.  That’s it.  Set aside some time.  This is the only place where I recommend something so vague.  When setting up your goals, think about what would help you reset and recharge yourself and how often you might like to do this.  Maybe you want to do more yoga, or practice meditation, or go to church or take a slow walk by yourself.  Maybe you just want to sit outside and appreciate nature without having your smartphone next to you. 

The reason I like the goal of putting aside time only is that after a few months, maybe you want to move from meditation to a slow hike in nature.  Fine!  Do it!  No guilt because your goal was meditation.  That was not your goal,  your goal was to spend some time focusing on you & a reboot.

Everyone says you must take care of yourself first, but so rarely do people take or schedule the time to do it.  Make this year different.

When you are setting your goals, make time for Personal Reboot Time part of it.  Take the time to recharge.  It will be great for you, great for your family & great for your goals. You’ll have renewed energy to go after your goals if you take some time for yourself.  This is one of the goals I am most excited about for next year!

What is your Personal Reboot Time goal?  How will you carve out the time?  Share with us on Facebook or email me! 

Life in the Green Room

How to stay on track with your goals?

So we’ve talked for a few weeks about goals & setting yourself up for a great 2016.  To me, goal setting is the fun part.  Who doesn’t like to sit down & think about and write out all the things they want to happen in the future??  But then, comes the next part….. the work…  How do you keep yourself accountable and work toward your goals after the first week?

There are statistics everywhere you look that say that people abandon New Year’s resolutions with the month of January.  People make the same goals each year because they didn’t follow through the previous year.  This has happened to me before, it has probably happened to you too.

I wish I had the magic answer, but alas, I am still human, so I want to talk about what might be helpful.

My first recommendation is that while you are setting your goals, you should also set your plan for following up on them.  Accountability is always a key driver here.  There are a lot of different ways to keep yourself accountable, so think about what system may work for you.  Some ideas I have are:

• Every Monday review your goals as you start the week & make a plan to do a few small things to make progress towards your goal
• If you have a really big goal, map out a breakdown so you can track it.  Like if you want to plan a huge trip or lose 20 pounds, neither can be accomplished in one week, so break it down.  This will help you to start in the first place and will help you be able to track yourself in the second place
• Write your goals and post them somewhere you will see them!  On the computer screen, on the refrigerator, on the bathroom mirror so you see them when you are getting ready etc.
• Find a partner-in-crime (probably not your spouse - some research says they let you off the hook too easy) to do the activity with you. If you want to write – find a writing partner.   
• Follow someone else’s footsteps.  If you want to do something new, find someone who has done that & ask them a million questions.  If you want to find a new job, start talking to people who have found new jobs, or find ones who are in your dream job.
• Have a more official review every quarter.  If things have changed, reassess and alter the plan vs. throwing it away!  Life happens, so you can make adjustments!
• Pay someone!  If you have had an issue with something, find an expert and pay them to help you.  Putting your hard-earned cold-hard cash on the line is often a good way to incentivize you!
• Do something bold!  There is a high you get by doing something you were afraid of or thought was not possible, but do it and appreciate the feeling!

My second recommendation is to accept going in that you are not going to take a direct path to your goal.  You may map out a perfect linear plan to get from point A to point B.  There is a 99% chance it will not work that way.  So try to relax! (I know pot, meet kettle) but enjoy the journey and do not fall off the trail in the corner because there was a detour.

So as you sit down to think about your next year, a few things that will help you set up for an even better 2016.  Take as much time setting up your plan or system to track your goals as you do thinking about your goals.  The old adage of what gets measured gets done can be true in your own life too - let's use this to our advantage!

What are your tracking systems?  Share with us or email me here, so we can shamelessly test them for ourselves!

Looking forward to a great new year!!

Life in the Green Room

2015: Influencers of the Year!

I am jumping into a new tradition of identifying who has influenced me each year.  Since I’m starting in the middle of life, I have a ton of people who have been hugely influential to me up to this point that are getting left off.  Sorry!  I figured it was better to start somewhere! 

At the beginning of each year, it is like the start of a journey.  You really do not know who or what will be impactful in your life.  For 2015 I wanted to explore who was taking up my mind-share and explore who changed my behaviors and routines.  These are kind of unexpected, one I had not even heard of in 2014!  Without further delay, I’ll jump into the 4 people I selected that were very influential this year.

Influencer 1: Gretchen Ruben – author, happiness guru (my title for them, not theirs)

I had read a her book a few years ago called ‘The Happiness Project.’  The book dives into experiments and habits you can work on to make you happier by covering her 12 months of experiments.  I really loved this book, even though in my book club, someone commented, “I hate that rich bitch.”  Not me!  I love her ideas.  Anyway, I hadn’t been following her and this year she came back in a big way!  She now has a podcast called Happier with her sister.  I love it; I am now a faithful listener.  They discuss all kinds of things and have tips on happiness: Try –This-at-Homes, they have Demerits & Gold Stars.  Worth the listen!  Some of the snipets of what has been very influential for me this year are expressions like:

• ‘Choose the Bigger Life’ – whatever that means to you
• ‘If you can’t get out of it, get into it’ – I think everyone can think of a time when this has been appropriate advice.
• ‘Pile of gold coins’ – this is in her books about each individual action may not matter, BUT each individual action piles up to be your habits.  So skipping that cupcake day after day will really get you towards your weight loss goal.

Influencer 2: Tony Robbins (personal-development guru that now gives financial advice)

I read this monster book by Tony Robbins called ‘Money: Master the Game.’  I have read several financial books before (mostly Suze Orman or Dave Ramsey) but it had been awhile so I wanted to dive in again.  This book went deep into all types of things you can be doing to set yourself up financially for the future, now!  The book was great and had some new concepts in there that I had not really considered before.  We have been taking some of the steps already and I’d love to dive deep into it again sometime in 2016.  Some of my favorites were:

• Do not freeze & do nothing just b/c money seems overwhelming!!
• Resources all through – he provided lots of tools to help you dive into sections of the book.  He also is very clear about where he is partial owner.  He really created ways to solve or help with money challenges, but he getting some of the money if you follow his recommendations.
• Execution will trump knowledge every day of the week!
• Concepts of multiple revenue streams, being smart about your taxes etc.

If your goal is to get more in tune with your finances in 2016, this could be worth a read!

Influencer 3: Amy Porterfield (online marketing and Facebook guru, podcaster)

I had not even heard of Amy Porterfield last year at this time.  As I started exploring starting a blog, I stumbled upon her work and I really love it.  Her weekly podcast is loaded with actionable tips.  Plus I really like her style of communicating.  She has tons of high value add content every week.  I faithfully listen to her podcast as well.  She’s also super transparent with some of the things she shares.  She talked about what has worked and failed in her business.  To me, she feels very relatable because of this.  Things I love from her:

• Cheat sheets from her min-trainings/ podcasts
• Learning about others influencers in the space
• Introduction to Scrum – (project management concept)
• Mapping out the plan, and then staying focused!

Influencer 4: Jackson (best guy around!)

I’ll keep my mushy notes brief here, but Jackson has been a great influence on me in the past year.  I have a tendency to get stressed pretty quickly and he has taken on an extra role of calming me down.  I am guessing he did not originally know he was signing up for that job.  Some of my favorites are:

• Coaching me about having an appropriate reaction when I get upset over something dumb
• Willingness to work on communication
• Getting me to have tough conversations that I’d just as soon ignore

I’m so lucky to be entering 2016 knowing I’ll get to marry him!  He pushes me, teaches me, loves me, makes me better.  He wants to help me achieve my goals, before he even achieves his own.  I cannot say enough about the influence this has had on me in 2015.

So these are some of the key people who have influenced my thinking over the past year.  Who has impacted you this year?  And why?  Share with us!

What kind of influencers are you looking for in 2016?  I am excited to see who will influence my life in unexpected ways next year!  I like to see who emerges.  But maybe you should plan for it?  Seek out certain influencers in areas you are interested in.  Let me know!

Life in the Green Room

Deck the Halls with Goals for 2016!

It is the time of year now, where you start thinking about goals.  You start to reflect (or you will in a few weeks) on what you’ve accomplished & what you’d like to see happen in 2016.

I love goals, especially goal setting and goal planning.  It is one of my most nerdy things!

As I start to dive into how I will set my goals for next year, I plan to reflect on the goals of 2015.  I’ll be writing a few blogs on this topic and one of the future blogs will dive into setting up for success in 2016.

At the beginning of this year, Jackson & I set down to set out goals of the year together (Yes, we are really that nerdy).  We tracked them in OneNote in a shared notebook so we could both see them.  This made me feel incredibly vulnerable.  Prior to this, I kept my goals kind of a secret!  Something only for me.  I know there is tons of research about sharing your goals with friends and family and putting them on social media (so you have accountability right there!), but I have never felt comfortable with that.  This was a little hard for me, but really was so impactful.  If you want someone to support all of your goals (& vice versa) they really need to know what they are!  That sounds so simple, but sometimes it is overlooked.

So for 2015, I decided to make 100 goals.  Yes, 100!  I read an article by Scottthe Nametag guy and I decided to give it a try.  His point was that making 100 goals is huge and you have to go in thinking you will not make all of them, but dreaming about what is possible. 

If this is interesting to you, try it!  I came up with 80 goals in like 20 minutes!  The last 20 I really had to think about, but it was a fun exercise.

I broke my goals down into:

• Personal Goals: 61
• Finance Goals: 12
• Work Goals: 9
• Health: 18

Out of my 100 goals, I gave myself a success or completion on 57.  That is not too bad!  I had to "get there" about this a success b/c in my school/student driven mind, I needed to be at 85%+ to be a success.  I really did get a lot of great things done this year & I think I laid the foundation on a few things so 2016 can be set up for a success as well!

Personal Goals: Overall success rate: 38/61 (63%)

In this bucket I had everything from maintain better contact with family and friends to buy a house to go on dates with Jackson to read more books to donate to charities.  I really could have segmented this more, but it worked all lumped in.  So I knocked a lot out on this list and some of them were huge (like buying a house)! 

Finance Goals: 9/12 (75%)

This was a key goal for us to keep in front of us as we did get a home and are saving for a wedding.  I think we did well here with the strategies we laid out.  One of my favorite things I did this year for finance is reading the Tony Robbins book.  It is a monster!  And it had great insights.  I’d like to revisit this book (maybe after the wedding!) to implement a few of his strategies that I really liked! 

Work Goals: 6/9 (67%)

I had a few things here that were important to me and the primary one just came through in November.  I transferred over to a new group at work.  I was really looking forward to this so I could get something new to dig my teeth into.  This was definitely a big win for the year.

Health Goals: 6/18 (33%)

This was my weakest area of success this year.  To be honest, this one is a little frustrating to me.  I do not think it was for lack of focus!  I have been thinking about my health more this year.  I think during the year I did really well on certain things, but I was not able to string them all together.  I had a ton of goals that were year-long.  Like exercise 175+ days this year, drink 80 oz of water 5 days a week etc.  I honestly didn’t even track these things after the first few months.  So this is an area I am going to give a lot of thought to before I sent my goals for the next year.

Even if you didn’t set goals for 2015, you can still reflect on the year to think about how you want to set up 2016!  Email me here and I’ll send you a sheet to help you evaluate the year.

Happy 2015 Reflection!  

Life in the Green Room

Mental Block Busted!! ??

So as I wrap up my study on mental blocks for the last 6 weeks, I thought I’d try to put a pretty bow on everything I’ve been researching.  The cold facts are I have not really lost any weight.  However, the silver lining is I do feel like I am in a better head space.  I really am, I am not just saying that.  I think 6 weeks ago I was just in a constant state of stress and micromanaging my food seemed like one more thing that there was literally no room on my plate for.  I still have a lot of stress (my lesson on stress didn’t solve that) but I am trying to be ok with the fact that the list will always be there.  I will be conscious about prioritizing the list every day and just go with it. 

I don’t think anyone in my whole life has every accused me of being lazy (& who cares if they did!) so I am not sure where my obsession with the list and doing it all came from (maybe just natural type A tendencies).  No one can do it all.  So health has to be a top priority. 

So what has become very clear for me during these weeks:

• I cannot rely on willpower – that is a disaster.  I must set up systems or habits so I do not have to make decisions most of the time
• Continually work on my self-talk.  For health & confidence!
• It is not all or nothing!  If you slip up, get right back on the bandwagon (or horse or saddle or whatever your favorite expression is!)
• Start small or with whatever you can get really committed to!
• Focus on what you can add, not what you need to delete!
• Build out systems as much as possible to promote healthy living
• Plan for the week!
•  Appreciate Imperfect Progress
• Continually learn & apply things to my health!

So as I wrap up this 6 weeks, I want to comment that I have learned a lot (which is always important to me).  So my next focus will be on including the small changes every day.  Hopefully I’ll be ready for the massive action (to steal words from Tony Robbins) soon!  But I am ok now with the small incremental changes as I build up the foundation to my long term, life time health success!

Please share any mental blocks that you have overcome!

Life in the Green Room

Creating Another System! Systemizing Your Way to Success!

I have been obsessed with podcasts lately.  I have liked been listening to them for a few years, but the last 6 months or so I have just completely doubled down on my obsession.  This year I have read less real books than I can remember at any point in my adulthood.  (In a small defense we have had a ton of stuff going on!  We got engaged, we bought a house, we are trying to plan a wedding, I have been spending time on Life in the Green Room – I could go on, but most of you are even busier and make my list look silly!)  I was feeling really guilty about this for some time because I love reading and learning.  Then I realized I have supplemented my learning in a non-book way.  All of the podcasts (& they are all nerdy topics!) have been supplementing my learning!  I just need to reframe my education so books count as much as podcasts in my file o fax J  Ok – I’m now off my alternative learning model soap box!

There is a relevant podcast and topic in here I want to address!  One of my new favorite podcasts is ‘Happier’ with Gretchen Rubin & Elizabeth Craft.  It is fantastic.  I first learned about Gretchen Rubin a few years ago when I read (yes, a real book!) The Happiness Project with my book club.  She has made a career out of studying happiness and habits.  In her podcast right now they are discussing the 4 human tendencies.  (This is part of her new book Better than Before – I think).  It is all about understanding  your tendencies so you can set up a system (although she doesn’t call it a system) that will work for you.  Her point is not about trying to change yourself, but shifting your accountability model to match your tendency.  I took her survey and I am an ‘Obliger.’  In a nut shell, an obliger hold external dates and commitments the highest in priority and often lets internal commitments slip.  Her idea is to take things that are most important to you and find a way to have an external commitment.  (By the way, your spouse is most likely not an external commitment – too close to home! So you probably need to think of something else).  You can take the quiz on her site, if anyone is interested (I love it, but I know it is not everyone's cup of tea).

The podcast also covered another topic close to home (don’t worry – I’ll bring this all together soon).  It also talked about the sequencing of events.  Like once I meet the love of my life, then I’ll lose weight.  Or once I lose weight then I’ll be happy.  There are a million versions of this and they are all dangerous because I can confirm it doesn’t work like that.  I am 100% guilty of the first statement.  Once I have a significant other I’ll lose weight.  In fact, the opposite happened!  For some reason I thought the only reason I had unhealthy habits was because I was lonely, but the reality is they are habits!  They follow you, regardless of your state.  So it is best to start working on them now!

For my outer accountability on health, it is one of the reasons I am building Life in the Green Room.  I suspect I am not the only one who would like some external accountability for health!

For the last part of my Mental Block Challenge, I need to create one more system.  Last week I was hit over the head with the last system I need to create.  It is a system to eat better when Jackson is away.  Pre-Jackson my dinners would consist of whatever food items I had in the house.  And it was almost always one food item.  So I’d eat broccoli for dinner, or cereal, or chicken or popcorn or ice cream or whatever ONE food I happened to have.  Jackson does not tolerate this and since we’ve been living together we have really had more balanced meals (like protein & meat together!).  However, when Jackson travels I’m like a kid without their parents!  I revert back to old habits.  He has taken 2 work trips recently and both times I have had something ridiculous for dinner.  One night I had crackers and ice cream and on the second trip I think I had 2 Hawaiian rolls with cheese.  This is screaming for a system and some balance.

For my system, I will start easy; I am going to write on the white board what I will eat the whole week when he is gone, I'm also gonna post it to Life in the Green Room as my external accountability!  Even if I only stay at 80% of this, it’ll be a huge step in the right direction.  I know I took awhile to get to this system, but I wanted to share some of the context that helped me get here.

What Systems do you need to put in place?  Let me know!

Life in the Green Room

Implementing my ‘On the Road Again’ System: The Results are in!

So I was traveling last week and it was my first chance to implement one of my new systems.

Overall I would say it definitely helped!  I did not have an A+ eating week while I was traveling, but I also did not have a D.  I would say my average eating while on the road is about a D.  I normally feel no obligation to eat healthy and I eat whatever is put in front of me.  I have no idea how I got this way.  I have been traveling for work for the past 8 years and I pretty much have always chalked all of  my trips up to a lost cause.  This seems incredibly short sided!  (It is so easy to Monday Morning Quarterback).

Anyway, back to my trip.  I would give myself about a B.  I 100% made better choices than I would have without a system.  Here are some of the simple better choices I made!

• I ate an English muffin with peanut butter for breakfast each day instead of a muffin.  This one small this is so much healthier!  The calories may be equal (I have no idea) but for sure there is better nutrients in peanut butter than a giant blueberry muffin. 
• I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich for dinner and ate it open face so I only ate half the bun.  (We were at a bar that had almost no options that were not in the deep fryer so I felt really good about this)
• I had no sodas
• I ate a bag of pistachios I had brought vs. a bag of chips one day.  (Don’t tell anyone I took a bag of pistachios over the border)
• I didn’t finish my meal at dinner one night (attempted to stop eating when I was full!)
• I had tons of salad for lunch at the meetings

So I am pretty proud of these accomplishments!  I was not perfect; I still had a few snacks during the day.  One night in particular I ate a ton of bad foods for dinner.  This was driven from having not much lunch one day (they had salad (which I filled up on) & sandwiches, but they all had mayonnaise – which I hate – so by dinner I was starving!).  I should have eaten more pistachios or other snacks on this day, but…….. live & learn. 

I know for sure I would have had a much worse (my previously normal grade D performance) week of eating if I had not had a system in place!

I have another work trip in December so I will definitely be trying this again!  Maybe I’ll review and tweak before that session!  

Share any systems you have created that have been helpful for you!

Life in the Green Room