True Story: Chocolate chip addiction

I’m back!

I can’t deny it…

Life definitely got the better of me a few months ago and I needed to take a break to regroup and get back on track. Has that ever happened to you?

I’m sure there were signs along the way that I just didn’t pay attention to (duh…of course there were) but being a very determined and high capacity person I either consciously or subconsciously chose to ignore those signs. I got stuck in the trap of thinking “this is just how it is right now”…which, by the way, is such a lie. You always have the ability to influence your own life – it’s just easy to forget that sometimes.

The one thing that I simply can’t ignore is my health. I mean really, if you don’t have that, what do you have?  You could have all the money or time in the world but if you aren’t healthy and feeling good you can’t enjoy either of those things.

I made a quick little video (well…it’s actually 5 min) but it tells you honestly and candidly about what’s been going on for me these past few  months and what I did to get myself back – you can check it out below

I’m back!

And of course, comments are great! I’d love to hear if you’ve ever gone through something like this and what you did to get yourself back.

It’s “High Tide!” Time

New Year, New Word, New Image

I know at the beginning of January a lot of us are trying to pick our “word of the year” and I did pick one but being a visual person I also wanted to have an “image of the year” and this one’s it. It also helps that I love what is written beside it.

“Every one of us is called upon, probably many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job…And onward full tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly resolute, driven in spite of everything to make good on a new shore. To be hopeful, to embrace on possibility after another–that is surely the basic instinct…Crying out: Hgh tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is.” — Barbara Kingsolver, from High Tide in Tuscon

The beginning of a new year is the chance to give  yourself and your life a clean slate. No matter what has happened (or hasn’t happened) you get the chance to start over. For me, I trust that all of my “successes” and “failures” are a part of a bigger design to instill in me the knowledge and wisdom I need to have to go forward.

I didn’t actually choose a “word of the year” for 2010 but looking back I’d say my word was “experiment”. I learned a ton about:

• What worked and didn’t work in my business because I tried and played with all sorts of different things – some hits and others were misses
• What was manageable and unmanageable in my family life as we experimented with different schedules and commitments while keeping our priorities & values in check
• The kinds of relationships I want in my life – both with family and friends- and letting go of the relationships that simply didn’t work

And the result is that I have so much more clarity about who I am, what’s important to me, where I’m going and what I need in my life.  It’s such an incredible gift! And let me tell you, there were many things that were hard about last year and many things I’d rather have not “experimented” with because it simply would have been easier to do nothing, to ignore, to sweep under the carpet.

Fortunately, that’s just not the way I roll.

Hindsight & Perspective Are Two Sweet Things

I’m curious by nature and a “doer” and I know that for me to live my best life it means rolling up my sleeves and doing some grunt work and now, sitting here on the other side of 2010, I can truly say I’m so glad I did.

In fact, on New Year’s Eve my husband and I put our kids to bed and then we each wrote out 50 things we wanted to celebrate about 2010. That’s right – 50. And then we shared our lists with each other.

Surprisingly (or not) many of the things I was celebrating on Dec 31 were experiences that I’d considered “failures” at the time. Hindsight and perspective are two sweet things. We finished our new years ritual by writing out 50 more things that we want to be celebrating come Dec 31, 2011. (This is a very cool thing to do by the way and it’s not too late!)

I know this is going to be one amazing year because I’m holding that image above in my head and my heart and I’m crying out “High Tide!” to my life.

I’d love to hear how you celebrated New Year’s and how you’re moving into this amazing new year – just drop down into the comments below.

Happy New Year to all of you!

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Commitment & Confidence Go Hand In Hand

I’ve got a little story to share.

As most of you know I signed up for Ironman Canada 2011. I did the race five years ago and was just really feeling like I needed to have my own goal again, something just for me.

A month ago it seemed like a really great idea and I was super excited about it.

Then October happened and it was probably the busiest month I’ve had ever. And for a million reasons (all of them legit) I blew off all of my workouts last week. Every single one of them. So I vowed that I’d re-examine my schedule and get things figured out for this week.

Then Monday rolled around and once again I felt like I had a “to-do” list a mile long and the only thing that could be shoved off of it was my workout.
Then it was Tuesday and at 8:45pm last night I still hadn’t done my workout AND I didn’t want to. It would have been really, really easy to justify not doing it again.

But I didn’t.

I made a commitment to myself and by not showing up I was starting to lose my confidence that I could really do this. So, I downloaded some mp3′s and headed to the gym for a 50 minute run on the treadmill.

As I walked home at 10:00pm I felt so proud that I overcame what felt like a lot of resistance and got my butt off my chair.

A magical thing happened too – I got my confidence back. Instead of thinking “Holy crap, I don’t think I can do this. It’s going to be too hard, I’m going to be too tired.”
I was thinking “Oh yeah – you can do it, it’s going to feel challenging sometimes but you can so do this!”

And here’s my learning — it’s really easy to slip, get stuck or break promises to yourself but what matters most is what you do AFTER that happens. Do you continue making excuses and letting yourself down or do you change?

It’s really easy to do nothing and to stay comfortable and to justify what you’re not doing. But let me share with you that it does NOT make you feel any better. In fact, breaking a promise or commitment to yourself makes you feel worse.

The way you follow through on things that are important to you matters!

So, if there’s anything that you’ve let slide in your life that you know is important to you, what’s one thing you could do today to get back on track?

Drop down into the comments section below and share what that step is going to be – and if you need a little encouragement or a little nudge let me know how I can help.

The Way Matters

The following post is an excerpt from my newsletter that I sent out yesterday! I got a very gentle nudge from Jeanne Demers, founder of The Ruby Books which is a site you definitely want to check out, to create it as a blog post. Thanks, Jeanne, for the encouragement!

What is “The Way Matters”?

Our world moves at a fast pace. Everything is about convenience, immediate gratification, short cuts and the quickest way to the top (or wherever you’re trying to get).

At least it’s felt that way to me and it’s made me wonder — what’s the cost? As we get lost in the busyness of our life and caught up with the things that seem so important in the moment but really, in the big picture, don’t matter – what are we losing?

For a while now I’ve had this deeply held belief that The Way Matters:

• The way you live your life matters

• The way you eat matters

• The way you look after your health and your body matters

• The way you love your partner matters

• The way you engage in life matters

• The way you honor your values matters

• The way you build a career for your self matters

• The way you laugh, love and play matters

• The way you hurt, ache and deeply experience life matters

And what I’m noticing is that people are dismissing, minimizing and telling them self that a lot of these things don’t matter.

I’m here to say it does.

It’s so easy to plan to live your life in the future when “this happens..” or “that happens…” and the only thing I know for sure is that you’ve got today. So, make today matter.

Maybe it’s time to slow down…?

The Way Matters is about slowing down your life and your thoughts enough so that you don’t forget who you are or what really matters to you. And from this place – this place of true connection to your values, you build your life.

It’s about recognizing the choices you make will have an impact on you and on your life — maybe not today or tomorrow but there are always implications from the choices you make.

You have to make decisions every day like:

• Do you exercise or go for lunch?

• Do you order in or make dinner?

• Do you give a hug and a kiss when you see your partner or just grunt and continue on?

• Do you do the hard thing or avoid it?

• Do you express your feelings or ignore them?

• Do you choose to make things better or stick with the status quo?

• Do you throw it out or recycle it?

And it’s SO easy to get disconnected from what truly matters in order to get the most gratification from the moment.

Hell yeah, skip your workout and go for lunch and then make your life easier by ordering in and I know you have a lot to do and your partner will be there tomorrow so just grunt and finish up that task and forget about talking with the friend who hurt your feelings, it’s easier to just not bring it up and of course, throw it out, you can start recycling tomorrow.

I’m kinda kidding and kinda not. I know I’ve lived a day week like this and it sucked but imagine living day after day, month after month, year after year like this – totally disconnected from what matters most to you.

Ultimately, “The Way Matters” is a way for me to bring my best work to the world.

I’ve been going around and around trying to figure out what I stand for and how to bring all of the different pieces that I’m passionate about together and this is it.

I’d love to hear any thoughts, comments or feedback you might have for me regarding the whole concept of “The Way Matters”.

Sometimes You Just Need to Say “YES!”

Butterflies

I’m sitting here writing this with butterflies swirling around in my stomach. I’ve just said “YES” to something I don’t know how I’m going to do it…AND I’m so excited!

For a while now I’ve had a nagging feeling that I’ve needed to step up my game, do more, have a goal and yet part of me has resisted it.

I was telling myself that I needed time/space to just “be” and grow my business and be a mom and do all of this stuff which I love and yet I just wasn’t feeling like “me” – do you ever feel that way?

All weekend I was kinda moody, distracted, and had wandering thoughts. You see it was Ironman Canada weekend and I had originally planned on being in Penticton to cheer on the people I know doing it but life had other plans for me (sick kids, cold, back to work for my husband and so on). So I didn’t go.

I’ve been talking with a few of my friends and colleagues about my desire to do Ironman Canada again.  That’s me in the picture above. It was taken as I crossed the finish line of IMC in 2005.  Since then I’ve gotten married, had two kids, moved three times, completed a massive home renovation, and started my own business. It feels like that moment was a life time ago.

Anyways, I’ve been talking about signing up for Ironman again but honestly I just didn’t know how I could do it – it requires SO much training (for anyone who doesn’t know an Ironman consists of a 4km swim, 180km bike ride and 42.2km run) and with two little kids, a business to nurture, a home to look after and not a lot of help (no family/nanny/driver/chef etc.) I sometimes feel tapped as it is.

So it was interesting at how annoyed I felt about not being there – somewhere in the back of my mind I think I knew I wanted to sign up and by not going it meant that I’d be putting off this goal for another year.

And then I got an email from a client who said she’d just registered online which usually is never an option as IMC sells out the day after race day and you typically have to be there in person to register. So I quickly went and checked to see if registrations were still being accepted. They were. My heart beat quickened, my excitement grew and I’m sure my eyes dilated as I talked to Mat about what it would mean for our family if I made this commitment to myself. And then I registered.

I am officially signed up to compete in Ironman Canada 2011!!!!!

I’m nervous, scared, excited, and feel totally alive right now.  And here’s what I know – sometimes you have to say “YES” to the things in life that light you up even when they seem impossible to do.  So often we say things like:
“No” or
“Later” or
“Next year” or

“Maybe” or

“Not now” or

“I’m not ready yet” or

“I’ll think about it” or…you get the idea.

And when this happens, when we chose to play it safe or keep small we squelch something amazing that we could experience. When we decide to not make a commitment to something we miss out on fully experiencing our life. And sometimes when we feel pulled we’ll try to be logical and rational and figure out the “how’s”:

• “How am I going to do this?”

• “How am I going to fit this in?”

• “How will I find the time”

And when our brain is desperately trying to process the answers but they’re not coming up quick enough we’ll immediately jump to the “What ifs…”

• What if I can’t do this?

• What if I fail?

• What if I can’t find child care?

• What if I quit?

• What if I get injured?

• What if I look stupid?

As you can imagine these two streams of thought are enough to stop you from doing anything. No brain can fight this and that saboteur voice in your head knows this and that’s how he/she gets you to stay small and play it safe.

So forget about the “how’s” and “what ifs” and start paying attention to your feelings – if you’ve been thinking about doing something for a while and you’ve been letting your thoughts stop you simply commit. It’s the first step.  After that, everything falls into place.

If you do decide to go for something that you’ve been longing to do – let me know! I’d love to hear what it is – just drop down into the comments section below.

Here’s to saying “yes” even when you feel like saying “no”!

What Happens When You Hit the Wall?

What happens when you hit the wall?

Have you ever felt like you’ve “hit the wall”?

“Hit the wall” is actually a running or cycling term and it refers to not having enough glycogen in your muscles or liver to continue doing the work that you’re doing. It sucks to hit the wall. I’ve definitely experienced that few times.

The most memorable time was doing a marathon in Vancouver a few years ago. I’d done a few races leading up to that particular marathon and I’d “raced” them and my legs didn’t feel as fresh as I wanted them to.

My travel day to Vancouver also didn’t go as planned – I missed the ferry from Victoria and was stuck eating some pretty crappy food while I waited for the next ferry. I was hoping that all of this just wouldn’t matter, that I was “fit” enough to push through that discomfort and reach my time goal.

I seeded myself appropriately in the start line and started my race exactly as planned running at my marathon pace. It was a pretty crowded course and I was actually feeling pretty good for the first 18km. Around 26 km I was beginning to feel a little crappy, my muscles were aching and my tummy was feeling upset and a little nauseous which made me not want to eat or drink anything as I felt like puking. But I kept going.

At 36 km I hit the wall.

I felt dizzy. My legs were screaming. My quads and hamstrings were cramping. I had a headache. I did not know how I was going to go on. Combine that physical pain with emotional/mental shit storm I was unleashing on myself by thinking crappy thoughts like:

• I suck, I don’t know why I even bothered to sign up for this stupid race
• Who did I think I was to want to run it in 3:30
• I’m clearly NOT a runner so why am I doing this

So, I had two choices, listen to the nasty thoughts inside my head and stop and quit OR stop, take a walk break, stretch, drink some water, eat something, adjust my goal, and keep trying.  Because I’m stubborn and pretty determined at finishing the things I start I chose option two.

The last 6.2km did not feel good but I did it with a time of 3:42 which for me wasn’t too shabby after all.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve “hit the wall” in my business…and in my relationship…and in my parenting…. Sometimes it feels like the demands around me so exceed my capacity to deliver.  And what I’ve noticed is this feeling of “hitting the wall” happens most when I haven’t taken care of myself – I’ve been pushing too hard on all fronts for too long and that simply isn’t sustainable.

So, I do the exact same thing – I drink some water, I eat something I take a break, I readjust my goals, I nurture myself so I can continue, and I come back. I try again. I learn from my mistakes and trust that I know more this time around than I did before.

Tell me, have you ever felt like you’ve hit the wall in work, life or love? How did you recover. Drop down in the comments box below and fill me in!

Time or Energy- What’s More Important?

Our days are 24hrs long and no matter how much we might wish we could press the pause button or somehow magically add a few more hours to our day, it’s just never going to happen. So we aim to become very efficient with our time.

We create to-do lists a mile long – we use our iPhones, blackberries, pop up reminders, syncing of calendars, post it notes, and scribble on the back of our hand to remind us of everything we need to do. For a lot of us, it feels like demand exceeds capacity.

It does for me anyways. I have two young kids and a husband, run a business, keep a home, manage friendships, exercise, cook real food, look after the lawn, plan play-dates, book vacations, look after the finances, and on and on it goes. I’m the first to wish that there were a few more hours in the day. And then I think about that and imagine on the days that I feel like crap, the days that I’m tired and grumpy and definitely not my best self, having to get through an extra three or four hours would actually just suck.

What I do want is to have enough energy to be fully present in whatever task I’m doing in the moment so I can do whatever I’m doing well. I want to feel good during my day. I want to feel alive and engaged. AND, I know what I need to do to feel this way and I’m going to share it with you too.

I need to be personally responsible for managing my E.N.E.R.G.Y.

• E = Exercise
• N = Nutrition
• E = Emotions
• R = Relationships
• G = Goals
• Y = You

I’m in the process of creating an awesome model to represent this concept but in the mean time just take this in. All of these components are absolutely necessary to live a fully and energized life. If you ignore any one of these things you may not notice the effect right away – but  the short term decisions that we make in the moment to provide us with some sort of convenience often have long term consequences.

So in the next few days I’m going to be diving into each one of these components and explaining why it’s so important, typical things that derail us, and practical solutions for making space/time in your day to focus on you.

Why? Simply put – because you matter!

Even with all of the other stuff on your plate, you matter. And when you’re not looking after you…well, none of the other stuff does well, or as well as it could if you were at your best. And I want to help you truly feel at your best.

So – check back often this week to see new blog & video posts. And, if you’re interested in hearing me talk more about this then mark your calendar because on Tuesday May 25 @10am MST I’m going to be on Lara Galloway’s The WoMEN: What Women Entrepreneurs Need Teleseminar Series. Lara is awesome and her show is awesome too!

Gotta comment or a question – drop down to the comments section below and write away! I’d love to hear from you.

Jen