4 things to remember when your Inner Mean Girl starts bullying you

“Why are you wasting your time doing that?”
“You don’t really think people are going to care about what you have to say, do you?”
“You’re hopeless.”
“Oh.My.Gawd.”

These are just a few of the things my inner mean girl has been shouting in my ear this week.

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Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve really made progress in my business. I’ve felt on fire and like I had a real purpose and a real plan. And I was going after it.

But then I let my guard down for a minute. In that minute, my inner mean girl started yapping. And… like with kids and puppies: give her an inch and she’ll take a mile.

Cue the eye rolling and face palms…

So there I was on Tuesday, minding my own business when my Inner Mean Girl started whispering doubts like: “Maybe this isn’t the right direction.”

She was talking about my business, and I actually took a minute to consider what she was saying. Which was my first mistake.
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3 things I learned about life from a flying trapeze lesson.

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This Saturday my husband, Dan, and I took a trapeze lesson. It was 1.5 hours of physical and mental challenge. And a whole lot of fun.

It was also educational. I learned a lot about myself, what I’m capable of, and about the unnecessary (and often unreasonable) limits I place on myself (I’m guessing you might do this too). So today I’m sharing some of what I learned.

3 Things I learned about Life from a Trapeze Lesson:

  1. You have to climb one rung at a time.

    When you’re at the bottom of the 30-foot ladder looking up, it feels impossible that you’ll make it all the way to the top. Whether your 30-foot ladder is actually a ladder or it’s a book you haven’t started writing yet or a new business you want to start or the decluttering project you keep putting off, when you are looking at the whole thing from really close up, it’s going to look impossible.

    The only thing to do really is to take a deep breath and climb. One rung at a time. (And keeping your eyes on only the next 1-2 rungs of the ladder, nothing more).

  2. Sometimes the only way forward is to jump.

    When I made it to the top of that 30-foot ladder and climbed onto the platform, I was relieved to be safe again. That is, until I realized that I was now standing on a tiny platform 30-feet in the air and my best hope for getting back to the ground was to jump.

    There comes a time in life (or business or with a project) when things get scary. Looking forward you see that the only thing to do is the scariest option available (give a speech, sign a contract, start hustling,… whatever). And you’ll look behind you and wonder if maybe you wouldn’t be happier to climb back down the ladder. Or just stay there on the platform forever.

    But if you want to LIVE, if you want success, if you really want that dream to come true, you have to jump. It’s called facing your fears, and living courageously. The best things in life often come with scary parts, but getting through those things are a big part of what makes it worth it in the end.

    Take a deep breath, clear your mind, and surrender to the great unknown.

  3. It’s not as hard as you think it is.

    When Dan and I arrived for our lesson, I was worried that I would not be able to do it. I had had one trapeze lesson before seven years ago, but that was when I was 30 pounds lighter and rock climbing several times a week.

    And so in my mind, I didn’t think I’d be strong enough physically to actually get my legs onto the bar as they instructed us to do (especially when I could barely do it with the assistance of the instructor when we were practicing on the ground).

    But the thing is, when you’re swinging through the air, physics take over. And my body took over. I didn’t have time to think about what I could and couldn’t do. When the instructions were yelled at me, I just did it. And while I won’t say that it was easy, I will say that it was easier than I thought it would be.

    So when you are talking yourself out of something because you think it’s too hard or you can’t do it, take the first step. You may be surprised to find it’s not as hard as you think it is.

Bonus: Courage is an action.
For me, every step of the process on Saturday took courage, from climbing the ladder to jumping off of the platform to letting go of the trapeze bar to fall onto the net. There were so many moments when all I could do was take a deep breath and then respond to what was being asked of me.

A lot of things in life are like that too. Courage isn’t a shield that protects you from fear, and it’s not something you put on before you start.

Courage is something you do, it’s the action you take. (Click here to tweet that).

And life, like crazy trapeze lessons, takes courage.

don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides

One day when I was twenty-six, I was huddled up in Sarah’s cubicle at work. Sarah was a good work-friend of mine of similar age and outlook on life. She and I were commiserating over how hard our lives were compared to others’. Sharing whispered laments of how no one understood how hard it was for us. How everyone else had it easy… and how we had to struggle to make it.

[side note: looking back, I realize just how silly we must’ve sounded… two young, well-paid professionals living in a major city and lacking nothing except maybe a little more love.]

We were overheard by Missy, who was a few years older and definitely wiser than we were in that moment. Missy poked her head into the cubicle, and looked at us not unkindly and said: “Girls, don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides.

Screech… spit-take… whaaat did she just say?

your insides

Talk about life changing. That one phrase has helped me through lonely post-divorce dating droughts, disappointments due to being passed over for promotions, and a multitude of challenges as an entrepreneur/writer/stepmom/person.

I’ve shared that quote with more people than I can count, from friends to clients, and many tell me years later that they still think about it and how it changed their view of life.

(By the way, I found out years later that this saying is used in Alcoholics Anonymous… in case you’re curious where it came from.)

This one phrase is the ultimate counter to compare-and-despair syndrome. It is a great balance to your friends’ happy highlight-reel lives on Facebook. It reminds you that you’re not comparing apples to apples.

Of course you are going to feel inadequate or hopeless when comparing your deepest, darkest insides to someone else’s highly-curated public persona.

Of course you feel like no one understands you. Those unpolished inner thoughts are not the things we put onto Facebook or talk about in public.

Of course you feel like everyone else’s life is so much better when you compare their happiest & hippest moments shared on Instagram to your unfiltered day-to-day.

The point is, you don’t know how much someone has struggled (or still struggles) to be where they are today. You don’t know if behind that smile is a broken heart. You don’t know if your pain is any deeper than anyone else’s.

And that is okay.

So… stop comparing your insides to other people’s outsides. And…

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” ~ Philo

P.S. this is #12 of the 40 things I would tell my 20-year-old self.


how to build confidence

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. ~ Henry David Thoreau
Photo Credit: Son of Groucho via flickr

“I really need to work on my confidence.”

This is one of the most common things I hear from new clients. Confidence feels unobtainable to so many of us. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The things that most often stand between us and confidence are: distorted beliefs about your own self-worth, a fear of becoming arrogant or full of yourself if you actually were to start believing in yourself, some extra-shouty gremlins, and compare&despair syndrome in which everyone else comes out ahead of you.

First and foremost, I want to dispel the notion that confidence means having no fear. Nor does it mean being cocky, having everything together all the time, or being perfect in every way.

And as for the compare&despair syndrome…

Don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides.

Just don’t. You don’t know what those people that “have it all together” are feeling inside. They could be scared poopless. Or they could be fighting back their own gremlins. Don’t assume they’ve got some special magic you don’t have.
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confession: i don’t know what I’m doing

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Photo Credit: aftab via Flickr.

I’ve spent the last couple of months getting myself & my business together.

I worked on my Right-Brain Business Plan.
I cleared out my Inbox.
I cleaned up my office.
I created my own getting stuff done system (to organize my ToDo list & actually get stuff done).
I set business goals, priorities, and milestones.
I figured out my High Value Activities and Core Business Activities.
I created spreadsheets to track money, metrics, and other fun stuff like that.
I have read, listened to, and watched lots of experts talk about getting your business off the ground.

And then I put myself on an information diet so that I could take some action.

I’ve got everything pointing in the right direction and all my ducks in a row.

And yet I still feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.

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happy birthday to me & a gift for you

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Dan & I kicked off our birthday week (his is on Valentine’s Day) on Saturday with a fabulous dinner at one of our favorite restaurants and Bill Cosby Live (such an amazing & funny man! He’s still got it at 75).

I’m not going to tell you how old I am today because I don’t want to think about numbers on my birthday (though if you go to my charity:water page, you’ll see the real number), but let’s just say I’m old enough to remember some stuff (like this and this).

Oh and…
8thgrade-goodidea

Anyway… so I have a birthday present FOR YOU

Yep. I’m giving you a gift on my birthday. Aren’t I awesome?

Remember all that stuff I said about gremlins? (You can watch it here if you need a refresher). Well, I’ve created a FREE mini-course that will help you housebreak your gremlin.

stopdoubting

It is quick, easy, and fun. All delivered to your inbox in bite-sized pieces over 5 days.

I put some really good stuff in there to get your from “maybe-I-dunno” to saying “Oh yeah!” (like Koolaid Man). I hope you like it. Did I mention it’s FREE?

Ready? Sign up Now

Updated [September 3, 2013] — I’m no longer offering this free mini course, but I do have a downloadable e-book that helps you take your Dream and put it into Action. You can get it for free just click here to sign up!


chicken fried terror

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As I mentioned in my new year’s post, I’m changing the direction of this blog. Expanding beyond food and writing about things that are important to me now (things like: hey! I’ve become a certified a life coach and a stepmom and have a whole new relationship to food and health… and you know what? I’ve got some interesting things to say about it!).

And none of this is really new. I’ve been thinking about making these changes for 2 years (just ask my husband, he’s sick of hearing about it). And yet, even after I “outed” myself with that announcement on January 1st, it still took me until today (January 9th, that’s over a week!) to write even one word.

WHY?!

“Write blog post” has been at the top of my ToDo list every day this week, and at the end of the day when I did not write it, I highlighted it in orange. After a couple of days of highlighting my failure and feeling bad about it, I looked deeper.
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