Find your Flow
How do you move through change in your life?
Author: Amanda Bailey
Welcome
I would love to explore life with you and discover together the connections that matter. To let ourselves loose on the current of life; drifting, falling, and rising toward a kind of overflowing life that flows into our soul and flows out into the lives of our loved ones and those with whom our paths cross.
Procrastination: Stay put! Don’t move forward!
Bet you thought that staying put and not moving forward was the essence of procrastination? Yes, and no! Delaying a task by turning away and habitually engaging in something else is more like it. You are trying to replace the negative emotion that you are experiencing when confronted with that unpleasant or difficult or challenging task with a more positive emotion. Staying put can be the first important step to quit procrastinating that particular task. If you procrastinate something, chances are you almost always procrastinate that same something. So run through the ingrained scenario in your head. Is there an actual physical space or two in which you usually procrastinate this thing? For example, you want to eat healthier foods. You have been to the grocery store and have stocked up on your favorites. You are in your car coming home and you think, “Tomorrow I will start eating healthy, but tonight I will stop for fast food.” Your place to stay put is in your car, headed towards home. If you make it home, you will probably …
The Art of Work by Jeff Goins: This is Me Taking a Breath!
The Art of Work by Jeff Goins: This is an interesting book I just received free, from a great author! I have been stressed from work and trying to get a handle on it … maybe this book will help. It’s a new way to look at your “calling.” 😃 Easy reading, but so thought and action provoking, I hope you might enjoy reading it with me. Go to artofworkbook.com for your free copy! I have gotten used to project work, where the work gets done and I feel like I can breathe before the next project. But now work seems so ongoing and never stopping for a breath!!!! And it feels like I am doing this alone in my attic garret. This is a great way to work and gives me flexibility and reach and significance which wouldn’t be possible with only face to face encounters … but I do miss personal touch and visual cues and sharing a meal! Do you feel the same way? I’d love to hear about your attic garret …
Make Procrastination Work for You: Evaluate!
Making procrastination work for you doesn’t mean gutting it out with more discipline: use it as a prod to evaluate. If there is a task you don’t like and have been procrastinating, first make sure you evaluate whether it is something that actually needs to be done, “What is the worst thing that can happen if I don’t do this thing?” Sometimes it was just something you thought you needed to do or something you thought you wanted to do, but not essential to you moving forward. If that is the case, “can” it (use the trash can delete button!) or move it to a “maybe something I’d like to do in the future” kind of list. If it is something that does actually need to be done soonish, evaluate your plan to complete your goal and see if there is a different way to reach it, a way that fits your strengths or personality or timeline better and will ensure that you do it. If you just don’t feel like working on something when you have …
Transformational Coaching
I have a lot of projects I would like to get completed this week! And, because of Labor Day, it’s a short week! So, I was reminded that I really needed to self-coach. Apply what I do with others to myself! I was writing an email to a new client about my commitment to transformational coaching as opposed to transactional coaching and it hit me that I was getting ready to plan my week in a transactional way. Duh! Transactional coaching: Not always bad, coaching on a practical topic where getting it done is very easy to measure. Transformational coaching: Coaching on a practical or a personal topic where getting it done may not always be easy to measure. It involves self-discovery, learning to think differently and connect emotionally or spiritually to refine the task according to your personal vision and then to complete the task. When you are confronted with the same or a similar topic in the future, then you should be able to handle it with ease! How does the process differ in my …
Social Reality
Face it! (Or should that be Facebook it). Yesterday’s highly criticized virtual reality has become today’s social reality. Yesterday’s faking it online is becoming today’s making it real code of authenticity online. Now more healthy people are using social media as a legitimate means to keep in touch, get in touch and touch new friends! Fakers are more easily spotted and hopefully drowned out by this influx of people committed to the new social reality. What kind of experience have you had with fakers, friends and “faces”, either as a social media user or presenter? Please hold me accountable to be authentic on this blog and on other Social Media sites I use to “keep in touch, get in touch and touch new friends.”
Reframing a Tough Day
Reframing a tough day can change your perspective, your attitude and your forward motion. As Steven Furtick from Elevation Church in Charlotte says, “You can nurse it, curse it or rehearse it … but God can help you reverse it!” When you realize you are nursing or feeding a bad attitude, or cursing someone who got in your way, or rehearsing a negative comment, just stop for a second! Look at the big picture, look for a spiritual principle or review the way you really want to live. A badly framed picture will always look askew or somehow just not right! If you could measure it, you might find that it is only off a tiny amount. A different perspective can reverse the impact for the rest of the day. So what was off just a little bit in your tough day? I realized that my frustration with the new gatekeeper at my condo was affecting the perspective of my whole day! By consciously choosing to see my actions through his eyes, I saw my perspective reversed and I …
God the Sunday Life Coach
This Sunday I was listening to my pastor share the sermon and realized that I wasn’t just listening to him, but at the same time I was hearing God ask me pertinent questions! As a life coach, I am usually the one doing all the asking, listening to my client and being led by God during a session to craft compelling questions that will pull out an important and connecting awareness. Try it for yourself next Sunday or the next time you hear an inspiring talk. Don’t just listen, take notes and file it away! Connect with Him, your inner voice and what important things are going on in your life that you need answers for, or courage to complete or an expanded vision to move forward with … listen for the pertinent questions. And answer as best you can in the moment. Your Sunday Life Coach will lead you forward! I would love to hear what your Sunday Life Coach asked you this week! He asked me to elaborate on why I believe that …
The Great Gatsby: The Dying Fall Part Two
So wow! What an interesting movie! The cinematography was a bit cartoonish and unreal (I saw the 3D version, maybe that emphasized it), but the director certainly got the desperate celebration and excess down. The relationship between Gatsby and Daisy was poignant and tender. Carey Mulligan and Leonardo DiCaprio did an excellent job of that. Daisy’s letdown was mysterious and dark, but not too much, just shadowing Zelda’s future mental state. The depiction of the book was very true, which is always a recommend for me. I hate when they change the ending, or the characters. Some of my favorite quotes from the movie (directly from the book): “All the bright precious things fade so fast … and they don’t come back.” Daisy. “Can’t repeat the past? … Why of course you can!” Jay Gatsby. “He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning …
FLUX & FLOW 