It’s about the time of year when we start making big plans for what we’re going to accomplish for the rest of the year. Those big plans often reference only what we want to do, but there’s a critical element that needs to be considered just as much – namely, what you need to do less of.

Time, energy, and attention are finite and it’s quite hard to try to find more of them, yet we forget this when we’re planning to do more. A common result of forgetting this fact is that we plan to do the same amount that we weren’t able to finish in the past while adding the new stuff we want to do to the list. The honest question that goes unasked is what changed that makes us able to finish this increased workload now when we formerly unable to finish the lighter workload.

One Goes Out, Another Comes In

If you’re really serious about being more effective now and in the future, you’ll need to find the activities that need to be dropped or phased out and switching them with the ones you want to do.

About 8 years ago, Angela decided that she had so many shoes. (Read carefully – she decided it; a wise married man knows what to bring up and what to selectively ignore.) After we jointly culled the shoes that needed to go, we created a rule: any time she wanted to bring a new pair of shoes in the house, one pair of shoes had to leave the house. The process stuck.

Setting limits like this on tangible things is much easier to do than the intangible overages we carry, but the principle is much the same. Each activity that we plan to do in a given day, week, or month takes up a certain amount of finite space, and there comes a point in which we need to let go of those activities we brought on that are no generating the value that we thought the would.

Ready to Do Some Pruning?

Before you get to the pruning process, I’d like you to begin by thinking of some of the value-added activities that you want to do or do more of. Take a second to write them down. It’s important to remember what you stand the gain – the reason you’re doing less of this other stuff is so that you can do more of something more meaningful and valuable to you.

Now, here are some activities to review to see if you can either eliminate them or pare them down to a level that meets your needs without going into excess:

• Meetings, teleclasses, and commitments
• Job responsibilities that were for your old position or role rather than your new one
• Activities that were valid for getting you here but won’t take you there.
• Email
• Social Media (including YouTube and blogs)
• TV
• Video Games
• Shopping

For now, just pick the one that is the biggest drain on your time, energy, and attention and focus on paring it down. Remember to replace it with one of the activities you listed above rather than just filling it back up with stuff that doesn’t matter as much to you.

However you got here is okay and you can’t change it anyway. You can change where you’re going – focus on that instead.

Photo Credit: treehouse1977

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Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Ken Robert.

For almost two decades, whenever I felt uncomfortable, I’d reach for a cigarette. I was addicted to the nicotine, but I was just as hooked on the smoke’s ability to swiftly suffocate my stray, unwanted feelings.

Part of me simply didn’t want to deal.

What’s wrong, Ken? Feeling blue? Let me grab a pack.

She said WHAT? You must be angry. Here, let me light that for you.

Sorrow, fury, anxiety, fear? No problem. Take two drags and call me in the next half hour.

Repeatedly numbing yourself, however, eventually takes its toll.

Feelings, including the unwanted ones, arise for a reason. They’re messengers bearing information. If you can learn how to live with them, they can teach you how to live.

But I always feared and tried to kill them, so I seldom got the message. I lost touch with my dreams. My vision grew dim. I detached and slowly drifted away from the things that brought me joy. I was numb, dumb, and increasingly bummed.

I was so adept at suffocating my emotions that I really felt quite dead inside.

Reaching For Something Different

There must have been some small part of me that wanted to live, that wanted to feel, because one day I decided to reach for an ink pen instead of a cigarette.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was starting a fight that day, a battle between me and me.

Yes, writing and drawing woke up something new in me, but it also woke the old part, the one that wanted to sleep forever undisturbed, and that part was kind of pissed.

For every piece the new part created, the old one smoked another handful of mentholated cancer sticks as if to say, “Oh yeah? Take that!”

Some days the new part would go into hiding. On others it would forge its way through the smoke and make its way to the page.

The Battle For Change Is A Long One

The battle for change, I’ve since learned, takes longer than you may imagine. It’s been more than two years since I first picked up an ink pen and just six weeks since I last picked up a cigarette, but I know I’ll never do so again. That part of me, at last, surrendered. The new part finally won.

I still have to be careful. When one battle ends, another one begins. Now I have to face my feelings without a smoke screen, and sometimes it’s tempting to look for something else to go numb with.

So if you’re using one hand to pat yourself on the back for never having reached for a cigarette, I recommend keeping an eye on the other hand. There are lots of things you can reach for and dim your inner light with.

Maybe you never have this problem, but that would make you rare, so stay alert and watch for times when you’re tempted to fade to black.

Instead of reaching for something to go numb with (a chocolate bar? a remote control? an extra glass of wine?), try reaching for something you can use to express and process what’s going on inside you. Trust me, there’s gold in what you feel.

About the Author: Ken Robert is a mildly creative guy devoted to helping others lead lives of quiet inspiration. You can find him at his blog, MildlyCreative.com.

Photo Credit: discosour

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In this vlog, I raise a counter-intuitive problem: there are cases in which knowing your craft well changes people’s perspectives about what you’re doing. What’s also interesting is that our evaluations change depending on which craft is under consideration.

In case you’re curious, I know people switch conclusions because of the way they’ve done them in conversations. This isn’t idle speculation.

So, here are three cases I’d like you to consider:

1. Does it matter if I know exactly how to craft useful, relevant, and interesting content?
2. Does it matter if I know exactly how to create content that leverages the power of social media?
3. Does it matter if I know exactly how to create offers and sales pages that get you to buy stuff from me?

If your answers change, think about why they change. What are the important differences between each case that changes your evaluations? (Before you answer about the third, please watch the short video.)

Really, this isn’t about me as much is it as about the crafts in question and our assumptions about people’s motives.

If you like these types of discussions and cases, check out When Helping Someone Else Else You.

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Here are September’s free planners.

It’s dawning on me how much I love September precisely because we’re all getting back into the swing of things. It’s a great month to reassess your goals for the rest of the year. You’ve got four full months yet – what major milestones would you like to have in your rearview at the beginning of 2011?

Tired of waiting on me to update these planners? You can get the whole year’s worth right now by grabbing the Premium Planners. They’re currently discounted 50%. If you’d rather wait, that’s cool – these free planners will be available around the beginning of the month every month.

Monthly Action Planner

Basic idea: Projecting effectiveness further into the future requires a more holistic view of your objectives.
Use when: You’re doing your month planning and review – this planner can be used with either the Productivity Planners or the Freelancer Workweek.
For more information: The Monthly Action Planner

Download: Monthly Action Planner - September 2010 (472)

Productivity Heatmap:

Basic idea: We are more productive at some times rather than others.
Use when: You’re trying to figure out when you’re the most productive.
For more information: How Heatmapping Your Productivity Can Make You More Productive

Download: Blank Daily Productivity Heatmap (17790)

The Action Planner Series:

Basic Idea: Once you know when you work best, why not plan your weeks and days around that information? Do more work in less time by leveraging your natural rhythms.
Use when: You’re planning your day or week.
For more information: Read the Productivity Planners User Guide (6014)

Downloads:
Daily Action Planner - August 2010 (136)
Weekly Action Planner - September 2010 (233)

The Productivity Jumpstarter

Basic Idea: Sometimes we’re running around being busy but aren’t really being productive. This aid helps you stop running in circles and start making meaningful progress on your goals.
Use when: You have no idea what you should be doing and are tired of running in circles.

Download: Productivity Jumpstarter (v.2) (11221)

The Blog Post Planner and Calendar

Basic Idea: Brainstorming and planning your posts ahead of time may help you have a more streamlined, consistent, and insightful blog. Your mileage may vary, but it’s worth a shot!
Use when: You’re thinking about what you’re going to write.
For more information: The Blog Post Planner and Calendar – skip down to “How to Use These Planners” if you don’t need to be sold on why to use them.

Downloads:
Blog Post Planner - September 2010 (94)
Blog Post Calendar - September 2010 (84)
Blog Post Planner-Calendar Set (September 2010) (117)

The Freelancer Workweek

Basic Idea: Some of us work better to task than to time, and we need a planner that addresses how we work rather than making us fit how we work into it. This is a great one for freelancers and entrepreneurs.
Use when: You’re tired of time-based planners and want to get clarity on what needs to be done.
For more information: The Freelancer Workweek – skip down to “How to Use This Planner” if you don’t care about the design methodology.

Download: Freelancer Workweek- September 2010 (139)

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Mark’s personal video challenge got me thinking about why I’ve been scared to get into the habit of video blogging, so I decided to share it with you – in an impromptu video. I haven’t done any meta-blogging, -writing, or -sharing this week, so there you go.

Another thing I failed to mention in the video is the grammar mistakes that I make while video blogging. I’m apparently comfortable enough to do it off the cuff, but uncomfortable enough that I misspeak every other sentence.

One last thing: video blogging also brings up the “no one cares” in me before I share the videos. Especially when they’re meta-vlogs.

So, watch the video if you’d like to know why I’m scared to get rolling with video. Or came back when I have something more rigorous, clean, edited, and written to share. :p

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I sent out a newsletter last week that has been especially resonant for some people. I thought I’d share it here in case it’s something you need to read, too. (If you’d like to join the newsletter, you can do so by signing up by using the form at the top of the sidebar.)

***

When things get a bit overwhelming, busy, or a hair too crazy, it’s easy to spend a lot of time, energy, and attention worrying about the situation rather then doing something about it. What inevitably happens, though, is that as soon as we get around to addressing the situation, we either fix the problem, it fixes itself, or we recognize that it was never really a problem in the first place.

And here’s the irony: we often spend more time, energy, and attention on worrying about the situation than we do on addressing the situation because we don’t recognize that actively avoiding it is still actively working on it.

What I’d like you to do is to take one thing you’ve been worrying or thinking about and see what you need to work through it.

Is it that you need…

• clarity around what to do?
• to connect with the reason why it’s important?
• more specific bits of information to make a decision about it?
• some focused time to work through it?
• the permission to let it go?

Rather than running around the ship worrying about what will happen, grab the helm and get it through the storm.

p.s. It’s okay to run around the ship for a bit, just as it’s okay to let it coast. The point is to know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

Photo credit: MackieKLew

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One thing that often trips people up when they start thinking about what they want is that they often don’t think about the difference between something being instrumentally valuable and it being intrinsically valuable. Yes, this is a distinction that a philosopher would make, but it can make a huge difference in how we choose our path to happiness.

When something is intrinsically valuable, it is valuable independently of anything else. When something is instrumentally valuable, it is only valuable because it gets you something else. Take the difference between true happiness and money; the latter is only valuable because it gets you other things, whereas true happiness is valuable on its own.

One way to distinguish between the two is to notice when there’s a because or in order to relationship in the things you want. Whenever you spot this type of relationships in ideas, the thing you want because it gets you something else is the thing that is instrumentally valuable, and it’s pretty normal to have a nested chain of instrumentally valuable goals before you get to an intrinsic one.

For example, let’s say you want a promotion at work. The reason you want to be promoted is so that you’ll have more influence and money, and more influence and money give you more freedom and possibilities, and more freedom and possibilities make you happier. Like most philosophers, I believe that happiness – the flourishing kind, not the ephemeral kind – is the intrinsic value we all want.

So, What’s The Point?

So many of us set up a nested chain of wants and desires, and clinging to those chains prevent us from seeing that there may be an easier way to get what we want. If we understand that our true goal is to be happy, we might be more open to opportunities that get us straight to happy.

What often happens, though, is that the further removed the instrumental goal is from the intrinsic goal, the harder it is for it to have the real benefit we seek. Taking the promotion example, the unintended outcomes of taking that promotion is increased responsibility and possibly more time required to excel at the role. These outcomes can actually be counter-productive to getting the end goal of happiness, and an easier option may have been to volunteer at a homeless shelter one Saturday per month.

Yes, this is counter-intuitive, but those huge chains are the reason why so many people end up with convertibles and cosmetic enhancements. The chains we think would make us happy can quickly become the ones that bind us to realities we don’t want.

Of course, one of the challenges with this is that we spend so much time thinking about what other people think we should do, want, and be that we fail to take seriously the idea that our happiness counts. People expect you to take that promotion, launch that product, take that big step, or whatever seems to be the thing you should do, and they don’t understand it when you choose a simpler option that makes you happier.

The fact that they don’t understand your choices doesn’t make them any less of your choice, though. If you choose to play the social expectations game, remember that even if you win, it’s unlikely that you’ll be happy. Social rewards rarely track our inner desires.

Think about some of the things you want or desire. Why do you want or desire those things? Is there a way you can get straight to happy than working through all those nested chains?

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I was on a call for the Havi’s Kitchen Table yesterday and someone mentioned that systems gave them the hives. I gave a longer discussion about this yesterday, but I’ve been thinking about it for a bit and wanted to share it with you, too.

The basic idea is that people tend to hate systems because the systems they’ve encountered in the past didn’t work for them or they’re displacing their fears, discomfort, and such onto systems because of what systems might mean for them. The latter is especially true for weirdos.

There are probably other reasons, but these are the two that I run into quite often. Enjoy, and I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Cath Duncan from Agile Living and The Bottom-line Bookclub

Every project is also a change on some level. The phenomenon of change within individuals and bigger systems has been studied widely and it’s been found that change isn’t as chaotic and random as it often feels. There appears to be pattern of psychological experiences and corresponding challenges that we go through when we’re negotiating change. Martha Beck has summarized this into a very accessible model of change that corresponds with the project-management cycle.

Here’s what it looks like, what the challenges of each phase are, and how you can leverage each phase of change to be more creative and productive in your creative work:

Stage 1: Death And Rebirth

The Death And Rebirth phase is the phase where something has happened to trigger the realization that you have to change something. It may have been an instant realization that you’re going to need to change in order to adapt, because of a specific event like a change in the market, or it may have been a gradual realization that change is needed. Either way, you know that life can no longer go on as before.

This recognition tips you into a world of uncertainty, anxiety, self-doubt and confusion because you don’t know how you’ll solve the problem or what you want to create yet. Depending on the scale of the change that you’re going to be navigating and the degree to which you yourself are going to be required to change, you might find yourself needing to grieve the life and way of being that you’re leaving behind before you can begin to conceptualize a new way of being.

This stage is usually not recognized as part of a project management cycle, but it’s a prominent part of any high-change, agile business, because we return to this phase every time that we hit an obstacle and realize that the plan we had for our project isn’t working. It’s also a natural part of clearing your priorities to make space for new projects and it’s in this state of confusion and frustration that many of our most creative ideas first germinate.

How To Be More Creative And Productive In The Death And Rebirth Phase

• Unfortunately, because this phase feels bad, and because we’ve been taught that it’s not okay to be uncertain, we tend to try to avoid it. This only closes down our creativity and gets us more stuck. Learn what anxiety feels like in your body and become aware of the mental stories and fears you tend to habitually return to in this stage. This will help you to notice when you’re feeding your anxiety and you can learn to stop and relax into those moments so that you become more comfortable with anxiety, uncertainty and confusion.
• You can get more comfortable with this phase and open yourself up to more creative stimulation by giving yourself more novel experiences where you can practice feeling confused and uncertain. With practice, you’ll soon take these emotions in your stride.
• Use the self-doubt and general uncertainty you’re experiencing to question the assumptions you’ve been making about the way you’ve been trying to solve the problem you’re working on. As you question your assumptions you’ll find new perspectives and unexpected new ways forward.
• Create space in your work-life so that you can tolerate the seemingly unproductive nature of this phase. If you’ve over-scheduled your day, you’re going to be urgently trying to make decisions and move your projects on and there will be no space for the uncertainty, contemplation and resulting creativity that the Death And Rebirth phase offers.
• Realize that you can take action and begin developing a vision for what you want to create even before your anxiety, confusion and self-doubt have cleared. Don’t get stuck on trying to eliminate anxiety, confusion and self-doubt before you move forward.

Stage 2: Dreaming & Scheming

The Dreaming And Scheming phase is the phase where you begin to conceptualize what you want to create. You start off with a few vague ideas, dotted here and there. At first, the dots don’t seem to connect, but as you research and explore more, you start to notice themes and you begin to pull them together into a more detailed, consistent vision. Finally, having clarified your vision, you’re able to break it down into a step-by-step plan to make it happen.

How To Be More Creative And Productive In The Dreaming And Scheming Phase

• Have a structure for collecting your ideas and guiding your thinking and planning. Charlie’s planners are a great way to break your big project vision down into little steps.
• Be willing to explore and play. If you’re trying to rush through this stage, you’re going to shut down your creativity and end up thinking smaller and creating a plan to create something mediocre.
• Rather than trying to figure it all out on paper or in your head, get out into the real world and test out your rough ideas. This will let you gauge the response and level of interest from other people, feel for yourself where what resonates with you, and get feedback that will enable you to refine your idea.
• Give yourself a diverse range of novel experiences – this will expose you to more opportunity to figure out what resonates with you and to come up with ideas for your project. Cross-pollination with other industries often sparks innovation.
• Realize that you’ll probably still experience some anxiety and lack of clarity at this stage. True confidence is only really created when you’re taking action and gaining real-world experience, and there are things that you can learn by taking your project out into the real world that you can’t figure out otherwise. So be willing to take action even before you have all of the future steps laid out.

Stage 3: The Hero’s Saga

The Hero’s Saga Phase is named after the stereotypical hero’s tale, where the hero sets forth on his or her journey and no sooner has s/he left their door, when a monster of some sort gets in the way. The hero fights and slays the monster, sets off again and soon bumps into another monster. This pattern repeats itself and the hero persists on his/ her journey, dealing with each monster and setback as it arises, until s/he finally gets to the prize at the end of the journey.

The Hero’s Saga starts when you begin taking your ideas out into the real world, and you’re focused on implementing the plan that you carefully drew up in the Dreaming And Scheming Phase.

How To Be More Creative And Productive In The Hero’s Saga

• Schedule to review your plans and progress regularly (weekly and monthly) so that you can adjust frequently to prevent big investments in the wrong direction. Every month or so, pop back and remind yourself of the big picture that you’re trying to accomplish.
• Link up with other solopreneurs and creatives and set up a supportive community and mastermind group that you can turn to for support, accountability, and advice when you’re tired, distracted, frustrated, stuck or feeling like giving up.
• Work hard, but schedule time to play hard too. Restore your physical, mental and emotional energy by exercising regularly, sleeping well, staying connected with your friends and family and regularly taking time to do leisure activities that you enjoy.
• Celebrate all of your accomplishments – big and small.
• Record all your new, unrelated ideas in your idea garden – ready for you to harvest them when this project is complete.
• Consider outsourcing the procedural tasks that you don’t enjoy.

Stage 4: The Promised Land

The Promised Land is that enviable and often illusive place where your project or change journey is complete and you get to celebrate and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

How To Be More Creative And Productive In The Promised Land

• As with the Death And Rebirth Phase, our sense of urgency often drives us to rush past the Promised Land Phase as we jump into another project. Take some time to consciously celebrate your completions and achievements before you move on to the next thing.
• Look for ways to share your successes and the lessons you learned along the way with others – it’s a great way to build your network and your brand.
• Stay ahead of the curve and don’t get complacent. If your project has launched and needs ongoing maintenance, schedule to review progress regularly (monthly) so that you can keep tweaking and improving on your delivery.
• As soon as you can, let go of the project by closing it or training someone else to maintain it, so that you have space for new creative projects.

Which Phase Do You Enjoy Most?

Did some of the phases sound unappealing to you? That’s normal – most of us prefer one stage of change over the others:

• If you enjoy the Death And Rebirth Phase most, you’re probably great at coming up with new ideas and love re-inventing the wheel. You’re good at questioning what other people are doing, but you might find it harder to think big and create your own vision or to take action to implement your ideas.
• If you enjoy the Dreaming And Scheming Phase most, you’ll love generating big visions and exploring new project ideas. You probably have vision-boards and planning sheets up the ying-yang, but you might find it harder to nurture your ideas into the real world and get them shipped.
• If you enjoy the Hero’s Saga Phase most, then you’ll enjoy being given a vision and project plan to implement and manage. You’re probably great with details, resource management and getting stuff done, but you may struggle when it comes to innovating new ways of doing things and generating creative solutions.
• If you enjoy the Promised Land most, then you’re probably great at tying up loose ends, and tweaking and maintaining projects in the long-term, but you might not be very good at questioning the status quo, handling major changes on a project, innovating or big-picture strategizing.

Ideally, you should look to leverage your strengths, stick to doing what you love and find team members who can cover the parts of the change/ project management cycle that you don’t enjoy. But, as Charlie talked about in The Unconventional Guide to Freelancing, freelancers and entrepreneurs are often wearing many hats and having to be the full board of directors for their business.

What If You Don’t Have the Cashflow To Outsource Yet?

If you haven’t got the cashflow to outsource the parts of the project change cycle that you don’t enjoy, then here are some tips for managing your project successfully through all the stages of change:

• Awareness goes a long way. We like to linger in the change phases that we enjoy most. If you know which phases of change you enjoy most, you’ll be more likely to catch yourself if you’re unconsciously avoiding progressing your project into the next phase.
• Plan for the whole change cycle. Schedule time to think big, creative thinking picture and time to plan the Hero’s Saga details, so that you’ll do both. Schedule time to restore yourself and to celebrate along the way.
• Get a coach who will help you with awareness and growing in greater flexibility to manage all of the stages of change.
• Form a mastermind with a good mix of folks – or just informally use your network of friends to coach each other through the stages that you don’t love.
• Look for opportunities to do joint ventures with people who are great at the parts of the change cycle that you’re not so great at.

About Cath: Cath Duncan is a qualified and experienced Social Worker, Neuro-linguistic Psychology Master Practitioner and Life Coach who helps entrepreneurs and professionals to get more of the 4 M’s in their work; Motivation, Mastery, Meaning and Money. Follow Cath on Twitter.

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Editors Note: This is a guest post by Tara Sophia Mohr of Wise Living.

A lot happened to you yesterday, I know.

There were the estimated 3000 advertisements you were exposed to.

There were all the tweets and emails.

There was all that you saw while staring out the car window or standing at the bus station.

There were the news stories – unsettling and upsetting – that you took in.

There were the interactions with others, some harmonious, some fractious.

There was the odd thing so and so said, the harsh words spoken.

There were the little disappointments and the surprises and the thrills.

It’s a lot. And that’s on an average day.

All of that enters the ecosystem of you every day: thousands of images, impressions, experiences.

How Do You Process Your Life?

So here’s the question: how do you process all of that, and when?

When do you heal the disappointments? When do you make sense of the baffling stuff and recover from the stresses? When do you take in the triumphs?

When do you turn inward to discover what needs purging or cleansing or sorting out in the ecosystem of you? When do you mine for the treasures and take out the trash?

When we go, go, go, when we define productivity as doing and seek to maximize it, we miss out on one of the most important ways we can enhance our effectiveness, wellbeing, and creativity – by processing what is happening within us.

To Be Generous, Open, Productive…We Need Processing Time

I need reflective processing time desperately, I’ve learned. Not because I’ll stop functioning without it. On the contrary, I look more “normal” to others when I don’t have it. That’s when I turn into a busy, over-achieving, self-distracting gal, driving aggressively, obsessively checking email, looking for shoes and bling and things outside myself for comfort. That’s when I rush through my life, missing the most precious moments of it. That’s when I start operating out of touch with what’s actually going on inside of me.

In other words, by the standards of our culture, totally normal.

But to be the woman I want to be – emotionally generous, not cranky or erratic or jaded; to be spacious and open and deep, to have a presence that feels to myself and others to be grounded and alert and graceful; to be someone who brings more sanity into this world instead of contributing to the craziness, then I need downtime. To deal with colleagues and professional partners in a rational and calm way, to manage the challenges of my work effectively, to show up creative and focused everyday, I need to process what comes into the ecosystem of me.

Processing Is Changing Emotions from One State to Another

It’s interesting: to process something literally means to change it from one state to another; think processing plant. Processing our lives is about changing toxic residue from our life experiences into something we can work with, something that’s not harmful to harbor within. It’s about turning resentment into peace, disappointment into understanding, wounds into healing, and confusion into clarity.

Learning how to do that well is the work of a lifetime, but we get huge payoffs in effectiveness, creativity and wellbeing from processing – no matter where we are on that learning curve.

Here’s What Processing Looks Like in Practical Terms

1. Time & Place: Find quiet downtime for processing, fifteen or so minutes a day. Find a protected space — bathtub, bedroom, local trail, coffee shop –-that works for you for your processing time.
2. Method: Journaling or creating art (drawing, painting, sculpture, music) about your life experiences are great methods for processing. Contemplation– just meditating on what’s present in you, observing your emotions and thoughts (rather than identifying with them), and responding to those thoughts and emotions with compassion, is another way. Sharing with a supportive listener (whose role is not to advise but to listen) such as a friend, spouse, coach, or therapist, also works beautifully. There may be other strategies that work for you. Experiment and see what works.
3. Diving In: In your processing time and through a method that works for you, explore what’s happening in you. Reflect on what’s occurred. Notice how you are feeling. Scan your body and heart to see what’s there. Sit with the new information or experiences you’ve had. Here are some questions you can use to prompt and focus that work:

What hurts or disappointments are lodged in the eco-system of me and need healing, so that I don’t become defensive, wounded, or jaded? Name them, and then use your tool of choice (journaling, sharing, contemplating, making art, etc.) to let them get fully expressed. Give yourself what you need to recover from them.

What anger needs to be expressed and released, so that I can move forward free of toxic and energy-consuming resentments? Figure out what the anger is really about. Get to the hurt at the bottom of the anger it. What do you need arudn the hurt and how can you get it?

What realities do I need to absorb or accept in order to move forward effectively? Sometimes, we just don’t have time in the day to take in the realities of what’s really happening in a work situation or a relationship. Processing time is a time to accept and make peace with what is – so that we can make wise decisions and choices in light of reality, rather than in response to self-deception or wishful thinking.

What good news needs to be savored and celebrated, so that I can mark milestones and nourish myself? As a coach, I often see how hard it is for people to savor and celebrate their victories. Doing so can feel vulnerable. Many of us were taught that it’s unimportant or even frivolous, self-aggrandizing. But when we don’t take in and process our wins, we develop a skewed self-concept and miss out on the opportunity to reflect on what created our successes – and that’s very important information. We also miss out on a lot of joy.

With the Right Time, Space and Tools, Processing Happens Naturally

I’ve been amazed to see that when we simply give our emotions space in one of these ways, when we feel them and and explore them and give ourselves what we need, negative emotions evolve naturally. They clear. The icky stuff dissolves. The toxic material transforms.

In our doing-based culture, that’s counterintuitive. What good could that do, we wonder. Why go through the discomfort of delving into difficult emotions? Shouldn’t I get out there and do something about them instead?

But simple processing: noticing, naming, expressing and inquiring into what’s present within us changes what’s there. Processing changes what we are made of — literally. We each have the power to determine what resides in us, and that determines what we can give back to the world.

Photo Credit: BudgetPlaces

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