I am on my way to Kazakhstan. I am excited about being able to report to you from there.

In the meantime, I think adding a bit of history in addition to geography might be just as interesting.

I want to share an experience from my last trip to Denmark. I had the chance to visit one of the most beautiful modern art museums in the world, the Louisiana. The building looks like an old plantation house sitting on beautiful grounds with fabulous sculptures like the attached picture. It is situated down the coast from Copenhagen facing the North Sea.

They had an exhibit on avant-garde female artists, designers and architects of the 1920s through the 1940s in Europe. Their courage to challenge both traditional art forms and life styles for women paralleled the women’s movement. Theirs were names I never heard of…Dora Maar (influenced by her lover, Picasso), Germaine Dulac (experimental film-maker and progressive writer on the social impact of films), Sonia Delaunay (a true “colorist” in both art and fashion design), Florence Henri (amazing photographer of women clothed and nude), Hannah Hoch (a driving force in the Dada movement), and Sophie Taueber-Arp (a courageous art activist).

Please look at the links I provided. They paint short stories or provide samples of the amazing work each of these women dedicated their lives to. They were committed to expressing themselves in a world that rarely listened to women. They exemplified the power, grace and potential of women. They believed in finding and sharing their authenticity and passion. I think you will be inspired getting to know these amazing women.

In the United States, we often think the women’s movement started here. Not true. Activism, and laws on equal rights, started in Western Europe and the UK before we raised the flag. We still lag behind Europe and other parts of the world in the numbers of women leaders both in business and government. Maybe it’s time we get curious about women in the world today and in the past.

I hope to stir your interest by sharing what I learn.

Please comment on the site if you have stories and insights to share, too.

“I was just with him on his little college tour the first year he went out,” she says. “And James one night just said, ‘You’re going to perform ‘Up on the Roof’ tonight.’ It was just a wonderful transition for me, from being really scared to realizing that the audience was with me, and it’s because James had set me up for that.”

I am always amazed when I hear truly brilliant artists and thought leaders talk about their fear of sharing their gifts. I am duly impressed by the generosity of the person who pushed these people onto the stage.

James was not a superstar yet. He was trying to find his way as well. Yet he had the vision, wisdom and compassion to share his stage with Carole.

I spend a lot of time asking people what holds them back and what they need to play big. This time, I’m going to ask you, “Who could use a push from you?”

I read an article recently that suggested we quit worrying about having a life purpose and instead, go find someone else to help. Who knows, you might find passion and purpose as a result.

What struck me were the questions and the distinctions the author used to help clarify the purpose of your purpose.

If you are looking to define your life’s purpose, think back on the last time you felt fully alive and excited by what you were doing, then answer these questions:

1. Were you creating something that would affect many people’s lives or had you completed something that made you feel the incredible depth of your knowledge, skill or art?
2. Were you able to glimpse and share something important about the future giving people hope or direction or were you able to fix something or improve something now that wasn’t working?
3. Did you get your sense of joy from helping someone else or were you most proud of your own achievement?
4. Did you give people hope or laughter or were you letting nature or life nourish your soul?

If you answered “both” for any one question, choose the option that truly made you feel good all over, honestly.

You might find your purpose by answering one of the questions or you might find your purpose in a hybrid of answers to two or three questions.

Adding archetypes to the mix, you would either determine your dominant archetypes, the patterns of energy you most identify with, and then further define your purpose. Or you can define your purpose and determine if you are giving voice to the archetypes you most align with.

Use your answers to the above questions to help you choose the focus of your purpose below. The suggested archetypes for each purpose statement might fit for you or not depending on how you express the archetype. For example, a Jester may be the one who lightens up the room and helps people be optimistic about the future (Focus One). For others, being a Jester might help others heal after a difficult time (Focus Three). Teachers might help others realize their potential (Focus Three) or they are moved to make things better because they aren’t working well now (Focus Four).

1. Focused on creating or making something happen for the greater good.

Pioneer       Queen/King       Revolutionary       Visionary       Magician

Lover       Idealist       Collaborator       Jester

2. Focused on creating or making something happen for self-expression or self-discovery.

Wanderer       Hero/Heroine        Adventurer       Seeker       Superstar

Ruler       Detective       Artist       Gambler

3. Focused on assisting others to realize their potential or help them make a difference.

Storyteller       Caregiver       Inspirer       Healer       Mentor

Connector       Companion       Nurturer       Mother/Father

4. Focused on changing what is not working now.

Warrior       Rebel       Advocate       Fixer       Entertainer

Thinker       Martyr       Teacher       Scholar

For me, I most enjoy helping people realize a new future than focus on fixing what went wrong. I love to do this through inspiration and storytelling and I travel the world, never happy sitting still. My Purpose is Focus #1 with my dominant archetypes being the Revolutionary, Lover and Pioneer. I am also a Wanderer, Warrior, Superstar and Storyteller. When I use these secondary patterns of energy to fulfill my purpose, I am most happy.

What about you? Can you define what gives you a sense of purpose? Are you giving voice to your dominant archetypes? If not, can you give them more air time in your life? Do you have old patterns that need to sit back to let you focus more of your energy on your purpose?

Please share this post and what you discover by commenting online.

Yesterday during a workshop for women, I mentioned how the limitations my mother faced in her life had a sad but powerful effect on mine. After the workshop, Svetlana said her experience was the same.

Her mother also had to sacrifice her dreams so that the boys in the family could go to school. She could not participate in sports like the boys. She was expected to marry young. Pursuing a career was a silly idea.

My mother’s life was similar. No college for her. No sports. No career. When the family moved to Arizona and her mother died in a car accident, the inheritance went to her brother with a note saying my mother could marry a man to take care of her.

As a result, Svetlana and I grew up with mothers who were angry and emotionally disconnected.

On the other hand, we both had fathers who lived life fully. They sang songs, told stories and loved to make us laugh.

As adults, Svetlana and I had similar dreams and difficulties. We both wanted to create the lives our mothers never achieved. It may have taken longer for Svetlana, but she is now a very successful entrepreneur and was the first coach in Russia to achieve her Master Certified Coach designation.

And we both had difficulties with relationships. Not wanting to be treated as less important than a man, it took us years to discover what true partnership meant.

As women, we are different, yet the same. Finally, we are allowed, even encouraged to speak our desires and define our paths. Yet most of us struggle knowing who we really are as our highest self and what our true potential is. We are not sure how to define power, much less step into it. With few role models to follow, we fret over every life decision wondering what we might regret later on.

The best suggestion I can give is that we must stick together. I am sad when I hear of women sabotaging women at work, of how we judge each others choices, and of envy coming between friends.

What can you do today to support another woman to realize her dreams? What can you do today to remind a woman of the wonderful gifts she gives when she shares her ideas? What can you do today to mentor a younger woman or thank an older woman for what you can now achieve?

We have different yet similar journeys. We all struggle. We all triumph. We are all trying to do our best with what we have.

We are stronger when we stand for each other, together.

There are many exercises available on how to 1) vision possible futures, 2) identify strengths and passion, and 3) determine what to do first on your journey. I have blogged on these topics and Google can suggest many sites with techniques you can try.

An off-beat idea is to study your regrets. We tend to want to forget our regrets. I’ve read lots of quotes telling me not to have regrets (which is humanly impossible) or that regrets are just lessons (maybe, but they are still regrets).

The more you experience life, the more you look back on decisions you made with the sense that if you only knew then what you know now, you would have chosen differently. There is great wisdom in hindsight.

Yet hindsight can give you great foresight if you study your regrets.

What are you sorry for that you did or did not do? The answer to this question can give you great insight on what could be missing in your life.

Of course, there is no purpose in beating yourself up, again, for the decisions you made in the past. You had a reason you believed in. What you can do is use the loss you still feel to help you focus on what you want to create this year and beyond.

Consider these questions:

1. What do I miss or wish I would have done? Can I factor these losses into my plans for this year?
2. Do I still feel guilty for not doing something I think I should have? Is there a way I can complete this situation this year so I can move on whole-heartedly?
3. What is still stopping me now from doing what I really want to do or getting what I want? What can I do to remove these obstacles?
4. Have I set the right standards for my own success? Maybe I’m not celebrating what I have today regardless of what I thought it should look like. And if I want more for myself, can I clearly paint that picture looking forward instead of backwards?

If you call up and clearly identify what you regret, you can use this information to help you focus on the future. Your regrets can help you make major life decisions.

What insights do your regrets give you?

During the last hours of the flight, I had the options of staring at the flight map or writing a blog post.

As I slowly pulled my computer out of my bag, my Scientific American Mind magazine fell out. I had finished reading the issue but thought I would flip through it for inspiration. Then I found the article called Half Asleep.

The article described the research showing that even though you may be good at keeping yourself awake to cross one more thing off your to-do list, parts of the brain flips over into a sleep-like state when you are tired.

Do you ever feel like a part of your brain is dozing off even though you keep tapping your keyboard? It’s likely your neurons are only partially firing.

So why bother writing when you are sleepy? You will only have to edit or redo it when you fully rested.

I put everything back in my computer bag, selected my Sleep Playlist on my iPod, and closed my eyes with no guilt. I wrote this post in the lounge on my layover after my nap, a cup of tea and a chair massage in the express spa in the terminal.

Happy Holidays!! I dare you to turn off the email on your phones and shut down your computers for a few days. And I wish you many wonderful naps.

Second, I’ve been reflecting on how best I can serve you with this blog. I thought refining my focus would help me find the inspiration to write while giving you useful ideas and perspective.

I decided to base this blog on what shows up as “The Theme of the Week” when I’m teaching or coaching. There always seems to be one major theme that shows up for all my coaching clients on specific days. It is often carried over into my teaching.

The theme of this week was Making Major Life Decisions. This is a common theme for my clients since I attract Wanderers.

You make decisions all day long, many of them unconscious based on your past experiences, such as what to do first when you first wake up and what steps you take to drive your car out of the driveway. Other decisions require some deliberation, such as what clothing to wear or what street to turn onto.

Your major life and work decisions are more time-consuming, brain-confusing and scary enough to make a normally-confident woman feel as if she has gone mad.

The problem is that you want to make “the right decision.” Most likely, there is no possible way for you to know at this moment what will happen to you in the future regardless of what choice you make.

The only data you have is what you know to be true and how you feel about each choice RIGHT NOW. Everything else is speculation that may or may not come true.

Most of the decisions my clients bring to me relate to job or career choices. Most often, their current situation is tolerable if not good. Otherwise the choice would be easy. Therefore, the new option they are facing has some benefits today and paints a cool possibility for the future.

It’s the future possibility that messes with your mind. There is no way of knowing if this will be the chance of a lifetime or a big mistake.

Regardless, your decision-making is a crap shoot. There are pros and cons for each decision. Therefore, contrary to what a lot of coaches would do, I ask my clients to go to the dark side instead of focusing on the best possibilities.

First, let me say that it is likely that no decision will be wrong. You struggle most with decisions that offer two or more good options. Your angst with leaving a bad option is another issue altogether.

Therefore, when you can’t make a choice among good options, know that whatever you choose will turn out alright. You may have regrets for what you didn’t choose but that’s life. The more we age, the more regrets we can count up even when the decision we made was the best at the time. So my first question is:

1. Which choice will leave you with more regrets?

If the answer isn’t clear, I ask:

2. Looking at each choice, how difficult will it be to move on if it doesn’t work out? There is always another step beyond your current choice. Consider your choice as a part of the path instead of the destination.

3. If you had no choice and had to leave what you are doing today, would you be grateful for the new opportunity or just relieved to have the choice made for you? New opportunities are not necessarily gifts or omens sent by the universe. They show up when you do good work. You are not being ungrateful if you turn down an opportunity. You will get more offers in the future.

4. Which choice could leave you feeling more lonely, really? Although you may be offered a fabulous new challenge, you want to make sure your support system is intact regardless. It is easier to deal with disappointments when you have family, friends and a coach to reach out to. However, remember that you can deal with loneliness most anywhere so don’t use this as an excuse to relax your fear. Be realistic with this answer; it’s important.

No decision will be perfect. Most decisions seem to work out in the end. You aren’t crazy. You are blessed to have options for your life. So make your choice and hang on for the ride. You could be facing a similar decision next year.

I am a person who thinks I control my time and I have to manage it well. It is times like this I realize that controlling time is an illusion.

I only have control of what I do with time, right?

I am in Copenhagen. My functional notion of time is based on the US, where time doesn’t change until next week. Europe switched over last night while I slept.

The person who lost out because of this change was my partner, Karl, who waited in Arizona as a slept another hour in Denmark before I was up for our morning/night check in Skype call. Sorry Karl.

I benefited because even though I set the alarm for the amount of sleep time I believe my body needs–and I have this notion I won’t sleep any longer–my digital clock made the change and my biological clock happily overrode my brain. I easily slept for another hour.

In fact, after I finally got up and talked to Karl, I realized I had nothing pressing to do until the afternoon. So I went back to sleep. Glorious!

Once again, I am reminded that time just is. I decide if I don’t have enough time to get everything done. I also decide to forget about time and go with what feels wonderfully right in the moment.

In the long run, the most important things always get done.

If for some reason some of my tasks don’t get done, then I need to look further as to why I am making myself do things I don’t like to do or what made me drop those things to the bottom of the to-do list. Can I plan my life to decrease what I don’t like and focus more on what brings me joy, a sense of purpose, and a feeling that time doesn’t matter?

If I am procrastinating on doing something, what is keeping me from choosing this work? Is it the nature of the work or the people I have to connect with that makes my brain flee to other, possibly time-wasting tasks?

I am making decisions all the time about time. How can I be more aware of these decisions?

Can I take some “should do” items off the list?

Do I have a vision of what I want to create for myself in 3-5 years? If so, do my tasks help me to reach this vision? If I don’t, is it time to create a vision or update an old one that doesn’t serve who I am today?

What I realized while I lie in my bed this morning: Quit trying to manage time.

The better I manage my life, making sure I am healthy, happy and feel fulfilled by my work, the less time is a problem.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. Do you have time to write a comment?

He didn’t live to fit into the system. He lived to create what he thought was possible.

Quoting Stewart Brand, editor of the Whole Earth catalog, Jobs told the Stanford graduating class to “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” How can you live by these wise words especially in times of economic problems and dark omens of the future?

For me, the most significant word is not hungry or foolish, but “stay.”

No person has accomplished great things without a passion for their work and strong beliefs that what they are doing is right and good for many.

And even with passion and conviction, there has to be endurance. I recently heard education expert Sir Ken Robinson say, “We live in a veil of beliefs and values.” If your life’s work is about lifting the veil so others can see the beauty of what else is possible, then you need to know how to persist even when it feels futile.

The Dalai Lama said, “To be born at all is a miracle. What will you do with your life?”

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

If money weren’t an issue, what change would you like to make? What movement would you like to create or add your voice to? What were you once passionate about but gave up hope?

Is there any reason that you would like to say, “Oh yeah, I’ll show you!” Great things have come out of the desire to prove others are wrong about us and our ideas.

Could it be that you haven’t stepped out or you gave up because what you tried didn’t seem to work?

Maybe it’s time to try again. Start small. Prove what you know is right with little experiments so you have inspiring data instead of just an idea.

Find people to work with that support your point of view. Stay away from people who tell you to play it safe.

Steve Jobs left a legacy that I believe is critical for women to live into. We must stay hungry and foolish to create a world where everyone can live up to their greatest potential. Will you join me in realizing this vision?

That is why I haven’t written in a while. And I probably will be barely above silent throughout the rest of the year until this monster project I am working on is complete.

That being said, I read a Harvard Business Review Tip of the Day last week that I had to share with you. It is called, Beware of the 3 Double-Edged Traits of High-Achievers. For those of you who are like me — you love what you accomplish but can get lost in the process — here are three potholes to watch out for on your journey (the quotes came from the tip posted on Sept. 19th):

• Disconnected. You don’t have to do everything yourself. Ask for help. Share what you are working on with others. “Collaborate or you’ll feel alone.”
• Craving positive feedback. Because you love the applause for your good work, you may obsess over criticism, even when it’s included with positive feedback. “Don’t let one constructive piece of input overshadow everything you hear.”
• Discontented. No matter how much you accomplish you have a nagging feeling that you could have done more. You may even over-edit your work just to make sure. “Set realistic goals and take satisfaction in achieving them.”

This tip was adapted from Managing Yourself: The Paradox of Excellence by Thomas J. DeLong and Sara DeLong.

You can sign up here to get the HBR Management Tip of the Day. I get both the Tip and the Daily Stat. In my crazy, busy day of trying to excel at everything I promised to do, I still find the few minutes I need to read these gems.