When we think of “before and after transformations,” our minds tend to lean towards the dramatic. But as you become more successful, often the shifts and tweaks that lead to the next level of transformation are more subtle, more internal. Yet still incredibly powerful.

You may be doing the same things, yet feel completely different doing them.

You may be faced with similar challenges, yet be able to face them with more confidence and a new set of skills.

You will still be hit with the unexpected, but you will be able to change course nimbly, without expending a great deal of energy.

Here’s what the “after” of working with me might look like:

MONDAY MORNING

You still have your children and husband and your to-do list and your dreams and your dirty dishes to be done.

But what you don’t have is that pit-of-the-stomach anxiety of being pulled in a million different directions at once.

You don’t have that aching guilt that whenever you are doing a Thing You Should Do you are totally neglecting all of the other, equally important Things.

You are not adrift in a sea of vagueness, wondering HOW you are going to get off this (cool yet no longer stimulating) plateau and up to the next (much awesome-er) level.

Not you.

Because you are dialed in to your passion, because you now know exactly what your next steps need to be, and because you are now committed to putting your own agenda first, YOU are able to ROCK your day.

If you want to. If you’d prefer to glide through it with quiet certainty, you can totally do that too.

When you are doing one thing there’s no nagging guilt about “neglecting” the other stuff because you now have a life that feels interconnected – with each activity and relationship feeding into what you are focused on achieving – so there is no “wasted time.” (Yep, even when you’re lying on your floor staring at the ceiling.)

When you are doing one thing, you comprehend how it is contributing to moving the whole of your career forward.

Playing with your children feeds your career focus.

Responding to this particular email feeds your career focus. As does deleting that one.

(Even doing the dishes feeds your career focus because it gives you some peace of mind that lets you then write that blog post without needing to ingest a bag of M&M’s to keep your butt in the chair.)

And you are sure of all this because you have already taken time to make room in your life for what you really want. You have released, purged, and dumped the mental (and physical) clutter of “shoulds” and delayed decisions and other people’s agendas that have been taking up way too much of your time, energy, and money.

You now know what you have, and have only what you need and love.

Decisions? Opportunities? Bring them on. Watch you make ‘em cuz you now have filters through which to process them. “How well does this feed my focus?” “How does this make me feel?” Boom goes the dynamite.

Weekly/monthly/yearly planning? Yessiree – your agenda is pre-chosen and put front and center in your schedule, or planning chart, or on the back of your hand (cuz it will sweat off in the palm).

Faith in yourself? Solid. You re-commit, on this and every Monday, to betting on yourself – with the full intention of winning that bet. (Dance break!)

That’s sounds good… but this is only Monday. The week is still fresh, the dew is still on the leaves. Anything could happen…

MID-WEEK

What if, right in the middle of your week an awesome opportunity of epic proportions is FedEx’d to your doorstep directly from The Universe and you are compelled to significantly shift career gears for the foreseeable future?

Not a problem. You can handle it.

You have been learning from someone who is an expert in helping people successfully and smoothly change course SO you have been cultivating the mental and emotional flexibility to make transitions nimbly – dare I say, enthusiastically? Okay, well, at least with the wherewithal to say hello to Change through the crack in your door (with the chain still on) yet not so slowly that it picks up its box-o-opportunity and departs because it thinks you’ve left town for good.

But.

What if a wee bit of shite hits a fan and all of a sudden family members are coming to visit TOMORROW with Papers to Sign and Things to Discuss?

And they want you to take them to an amusement park… you know, since they’re here. (Never mind that your server is down and the dog is sick.)

Not a problem. You can handle it.

You have been learning from someone who is an expert in helping folks who had totally abandoned planning because their schedules were blown to smithereens on a fairly regular basis, SO you have been cultivating the mental and emotional resiliency to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and deal with life’s hurricane of poop.

Plus, you have the passion (and the planning chart) that enables you to get back on track come Monday morning.  (Or AsSoonAsHumanlyPossible. After allowing yourself to freak out a little, of course. And then decompress from the freakout.)

But.

What if you just get stuck mid-week (or at any time)? Stuuuuck, stuck, stuck, stuck. Stuck.

Not a problem. You won’t stay stuck any longer than is absolutely necessary.

You now have the perspective that being “stuck” is a signal that it’s time to have a conversation or two.

And you now have the networking guidelines and the confidence to select and extend yourself to quality people – and you know exactly how to language your requests in ways that lower their defenses and inspire them to help you. Without you feeling icky, intrusive, aggressive, or needy.

And you now have one more person on your team who can help connect you to fabulous new resources and peeps!

SATURDAY NIGHT

Because you have gone through the week putting your agenda first, you have the satisfaction and clarity that yeah, pretty much what you wanted to get done this week got done, and what didn’t get done can shift into next week – no harm, no foul, no hemorrhaging energy worrying, regretting, cramming, stressing.

Ahhh, that feels goooood.

But this isn’t just a “feeling” you have.

This is not you randomly taking your emotional temperature and arbitrarily deciding “I think that was a good week” or “I should probably work harder next week.”

Nope.

These days, your sense of satisfaction comes from knowing you met the metrics (“I’m gonna do this thing for this many hours or this many times”) that you decided upon at the beginning of your week.

You hit your marks and thus efficiently and effectively moved your career forward one more week in the direction of your dream; ample money and progress were actually made.

So tonight – and NOT because you’ve “earned” the right to relax, but because you totally believe that caring for yourself, experiencing pleasure, and nurturing your relationships ARE part of what fuels your business prowess – tonight you will use what you learned to honestly rank your priorities…

…will it be bath then dinner then movie then snuggle… or snuggle, bath, movie, dinner… or snuggle in the bath then dinner in front of the telly…?

And these activities will be enjoyed thoroughly and consciously.

You won’t be using them merely as a mental escape while you attempt to recover from burnout.

Nope.

You’ve become great at keeping burnout at bay by establishing external sources of support, accountability, and inspiration that you can draw upon whenever you need them so you are no longer trying to self-generate what you need to keep your career and your spirit going.

Thus, when you have down time, you (more often than not) have the energy to embrace it rather than merely collapse into it.

Your Saturday nights are not spent playing catch-up and dreading your Monday mornings.

And your Mondays are spent doing what you know you were put here on Earth to do.

That is the texture of a life lived with focus, function, and flow. If this is something you’ve been yearning for, then it’s time for us to begin.

 

Best always,

I have a brief story for you*.  One that might help lighten your load.  Starring a smart, accomplished woman** and a major energy leak.
* A true one.
** No, not me, but I do like how that description felt to you like a good match – I’m flattered.

We were two friends squatting at a coffee shop on a sunny L.A. morning and she was telling me…

…that she had reached her breaking point.

Over the past several years, she had expended a lot of time and brainpower trying to get the administrators of the non-profit animal rescue organization that she worked for to implement her innovative suggestions regarding how the organization could function more efficiently, expand its reach, and appeal to a new donor base. She drew up plans, wrote proposals, held meetings.

Alas, she had finally come to realize: they. were. so. not. interested.

For whatever reasons, maintaining the status quo of “business as usual” was absolutely fine with them. It seemed that my friend’s bosses were completely satisfied if she simply did her job and nothing more.

It kind of broke her heart (AND baffled her to no end), but she was now willing to acknowledge that that was the reality of the situation.

After describing the most recent rejection of yet another one of her (genuinely brilliant) ideas, she literally sank into her chair and said:

“It feels weird to think that I don’t care anymore.”

Hearing that, my ears perked up – because her declaration was not quite accurate, and that inaccuracy was contributing to her feeling so upset.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You do still care about the organization, it just sounds like you are deciding to no longer invest in it – which seems like a very wise choice to me.”

CARING about something (or someone) is different than INVESTING in something (or someone).

If my friend didn’t care about the organization she would burn it to the ground*.
* Or leave them in a lurch. Or at least passive-aggressively steal some Post-It Notes.

But she truly cares about the work the non-profit is doing in the world. She cares deeply about the animals and humans the organization serves. She cares that the organization continues to exist. And she cares about having the income from this job.

For the past several years, however, she had made a personal choice to invest her time, energy and money in this non-profit by going above-and-beyond her job description. By trying to innovate. By trying to rally support and Get People To See the possibilities that she clearly envisions for the organization’s future.

By not heeding the first few “red flags” that indicated that this particular administration was not that jazzed about her suggestions, her continued investment created a large energy leak in her life.

The story she was mistakenly telling herself is a story many women tell themselves:

“Going “above and beyond” is what caring looks like. So, if I want to be seen as a caring person, I have to give 110%.”

No.

You can care yet choose not to invest. (You can also invest without genuinely caring*.)
* Someone trying to climb the ladder may invest a lot of time and effort in their job while viewing their current workplace as a mere stepping stone to bigger and better things. This type of person likely wouldn’t think twice of abandoning ship in the middle of a huge project if something better came along.

Are you investing (in people or places) in ways that are becoming (or have already become) substantial energy leaks?

If so, consider withdrawing all or part of that investment.

I know – that can sound easier said than done. If you have identified closely with being seen as someone who is “giving it their all” you might be concerned that some people will interpret your shift in investment to be a shift in caring.

And some people will*.
* Anyone who is telling the “caring = investing” story to themselves will. Anyone who doesn’t want to you rock the boat will. Anyone who is benefiting from you carrying the bulk of the workload will.

But this is about you giving yourself permission to plug an energy leak so that you can re-direct that energy to areas of your life and to activities that will make you feel vital and empowered, rather than resentful and drained.

Once my friend shifted her perspective she immediately felt a sense of lightness and relief because she no longer needed to keep trying to push her chosen boulder up that hill. She saw that withdrawing her investment (a.k.a. “energetically detaching”) from improving (a.k.a. “saving”) the non-profit would not diminish her ability to care for and be proud of the work the non-profit was doing in the world – and the ways her job position contributed to it.

By changing her story from “investing is proof that I care” to “I can care about a lot of people, places and things, yet selectively invest my resources of time, energy and money,” she freed herself to find areas of her life where her investments would be accepted, appreciated, and make a positive impact.

If withdrawing your investment from certain relationships or areas of your life is something you’d like to do, and you would like some guidance about what approach to take, we can certainly have that conversation.

Best always,

What if you decided to believe that your wants did not require justifications?

I’m going to share something with you that hit me like a ton of bricks* when I heard it yesterday.
* Had I not been in a recliner with a cat on my lap I’m certain I would have fallen right out of my chair.

These two sentences shot a clarifying (and semi-painful) arrow right to the heart of something I’ve been deeply reflecting on in my own life…

“The majority of really successful entrepreneurial women are as successful as they need to be. The majority of really successful entrepreneurial men are as successful as they want to be.”

This statement was spoken by Dan Sullivan, one of my favorite coaches who has spent the last 40 years transforming the lives and businesses of some of the world’s top entrepreneurs. Dan defines abundance as “the consistent feeling that you are creating a bigger and better future.” And he maintains that people do the things they do to create their futures because they want to.

Why?

Because they want to.

But why?

Because they want to.

Simple as that*.
* Stay with me…

He acknowledges that many people believe there has to be a defined reason why someone wants what they want, “But,” he says, “from the moment someone starts telling a story about why they want something, they become a fiction writer,” because they are merely attempting to justify why they want what they want.

Dan believes that wanting* is a inner creative act that you can’t psychoanalyze and which needs no rationalization.
* Like all concepts, the concept of “wanting” is neutral – in and of itself it is neither “good” nor “bad” (humans breathe, humans sleep, humans want). Like all concepts, it has a dark side (wanting applied to something destructive) and a light side (wanting applied to something positive).

When Dan gave a talk on this very topic at a business event, he said that afterward, about twenty entrepreneurs came up to him to tell him how liberating his talk was for them – and they were all female. Which didn’t surprise him.

He has noticed that women seem culturally programmed to unnecessarily justify their ambition, success, and desire to stand out as individuals – and to only attempt a level of success that fulfills their needs.

Good girls don’t ask for more than they need. Good girls don’t take more than their fair share. Good girls must explain (and be evaluated upon) why they want what they want (quite often so they can be talked out of wanting it).

Our (often subconscious) beliefs in these type of stories create huge energy leaks that the majority of our male counterparts don’t intrinsically have.

Establishing the equality we women are seeking will, in part, require each of us to plug our own energy leaks that are contributing to the imbalances in our lives, careers, and workplaces. It’s not our fault that these mental energy leaks were created in us, but it is vital to acknowledge that it is well within our power to plug them.

The act of identifying and plugging these leaks is how we begin to be the change we wish to see in the world.

If you’d like to hear more from Dan Sullivan, this is a great place to start.

I encourage you to experiment with allowing yourself to want what you want merely because you want it. And, if you’d like my help with identifying, examining, and plugging some of your mental energy leaks, we can certainly have a conversation about that.

Best always,

It’s a wonderful, wonderful day* when you engage your first “helper person” – whether they are a personal assistant, housekeeper, bookkeeper, gardener, etc. But then comes the tricky part: actually having to ask them to do specific things for you in often very specific ways**.
* May 6, 2009
** Cuz you want what you want how you want it.

I’m writing this because I’ve recently had four clients tell me the exact same thing…

…“I want to let my ‘helper person’ know that I need them to do something(s) differently, but I don’t want to hurt their feelings.”

Hearing this from those four people confirmed that: a) they are lovely and caring souls and b) they are doomed*.
* But not for long as I’m about to drop some sweet, sweet guidance all up in here!

As the employer, your relationship with someone you hire can feel difficult to navigate for many reasons… maybe you two are the same age, or they are significantly older than you are, or you two are friends, or they are in a lower economic situation than you are, or you’ve never been a “boss” before, or this is their first job, or, or, or.

Because of the above, this is often how things unfold:

You like them, you want them to like you, and you want them to like working for you, so, from the get-go, you try your best to be super cool and very nice. You describe the job (maybe even in detail) and then you encourage them do their thing.

As you start to see where some adjustments could be made, you become concerned that being too “bossy” might hurt their feelings, so you tentatively try dropping some (extra nice) hints.

Alas, a Petri dish filled to the brim with nice is often a breeding ground for resentments.

You start to resent that they aren’t reading your mind*. Also, you resent that now you’ll probably have to say something** because they aren’t automatically being as capable as you hoped they would be.
* How dare they not!
** Why are they torturing you?!

On their end, because they have started to feel a weird vibe of vague dissatisfaction emanating from you, they begin to disengage and become less communicative because they don’t want to piss you off and jeopardize their job.

Despite how nice you continue to be to each other, the relationship deteriorates to the point where they quit (or you fire them) and then you’re walking around the house in your socks all like: “But I was so nice!”

In any type of business relationship, communicating clear expectations – not merely being nice – is what actually prevents you from hurting other people’s feelings.

What’s one of the easiest ways to communicate clear expectations?

Checklists.

Checklists are not cold, they are clear.

Checklists provide clarity – to both you and the person you hire – regarding your expectations of them and the exact criteria that you will be using to evaluate their performance. Checklists provide a reference point from which you can make course corrections*. Checklists provide a respectful yet depersonalized way to communicate, saving you the energy of having to navigate around emotional landmines.
* I’ve found that using the phrase “course corrections” works very well. When I begin working with someone, I let them know that, from time to time, I will likely make “course corrections” with them and that this is not a sign that I am angry, it is just natural part of creating our rhythm together. I also let them know that if they see something that could be done more efficiently or effectively, they are welcome to suggest “course corrections” to me too.

A checklist in action:
Every month, my 117-point checklist* is printed out and left waiting for my cleaning person. I know that sounds insane, but consider that he has many other clients and visits me only once each month so how else is this wonderful professional supposed to remember all the particulars about what I do and don’t want done? With the checklist, we don’t need to have reminder conversations and if there are special things to be done (or skipped) during a particular visit I can just write them on the paper. (He loves it and now creates checklists for his other clients.)
* Curious? You can download it by clicking here.

A checklist in action:
I have witnessed numerous parents tell their child to “go clean your room” and then get angry when the kid does nothing more than shove all the stuff out of sight. If a parent posts a little checklist in their child’s room that defines exactly what will be looked at when they return (the elements of a “clean room”), the parent would not only reduce the emotional heat of the situation but also teach their child* how to use a valuable tool.
* Checklists work with spouses too. And nannies. And for packing, grocery shopping, and surgeries.

If you’d like my help to design and implement some strategies and systems that would enable you to experience living and working with less effort and more ease, we can certainly have that conversation.

Best always,

Your best is yet to come.

How you viscerally respond when you read that statement depends on the stories you’ve been telling yourself lately.

Have you been telling yourself that you’re too old?   That your window of opportunity is rapidly closing?  That you’ve already peaked?  That it’s too late?  That the odds are against you?  That you are trapped within your own life?  That you can’t learn any new tricks?

How you viscerally respond to that statement also depends on how you are currently defining that word – “best.”

What is the vision you have for what is possible for yourself?  Did that vision come from inside you, or has it been shaped by someone else’s orthodoxy, standards, traditions, or desires which you have accepted as your own?

If you are willing to change your stories and definitions, you can literally change your life. 

And that is true no matter how old you are.

But don’t take my word for it, meet a few of my idols – all of whom led early lives that provided little indication that they would make such significant shifts:

MS. FITZGERALD

British author Penelope Fitzgerald published her first book at age 59.

At age 63 she won the prestigious Booker Prize for her third book, Offshore (which I loved).  “In 20 years she published nine novels, three biographies and many essays and reviews.  She changed publishers four times when she began publishing and she never had an agent. By the end of her life she had been shortlisted for (the Booker prize) several more times, won a number of other British prizes… and became famous at 80 with the publication of The Blue Flower” which won the U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award. “Yet she always had a quiet reputation. She was a novelist with a passionate following of careful readers, not a big name.” She died in 2000 at age 83.

Sourced and quoted from Hermione Lee’s 2013 preface to Offshore.

MS. JOOSTEN

With no agent, no manager, no credits, no contacts, and no spouse, Kathryn Joosten packed up her truck and moved to Hollywood at the age of 56 (after dipping her toe into community theater at age 42). In 23 years, she amassed 118 film and television credits and won two Emmy Awards (for her role on Desperate Housewives). She received her third Emmy nomination posthumously after she died in 2012 at age 79.

Sourced from IMDB.

MS. CHILD

Then there’s Julia Child. She became a “foodie” and started cooking school at age 36. She published her first book at age 48. She starred in her first television show at age 50. “In 2000, at age 88, she received the French Legion Of Honor and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.” She died in 2004 at age 92.

This is an excellent audio book detailing her life’s journey.

Sourced and quoted from Debra Eve’s Later Bloomer blog.

MS. GARMUS

A copywriter and mother of two, Bonnie Garmus longed to be a published author. Decades of writing, networking, and pitching to literary agents and publishers, yielded nothing but 98 rejections. She kept plugging along. An infuriating incident at her workplace spawned the novel Lessons in Chemistry which “eventually led to a top agent and a lucrative book deal. It has sold more than two million copies, stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for over 61 weeks, and is being adapted into a TV show starring Academy Award winner Brie Larson.”

Bonnie saw her debut novel hit the shelves right before she turned 65.

Sourced and quoted from Alexandra Franzen’s newsletter.

MS. HAY

At age 50, Louise Hay wrote a small pamphlet that she titled Heal Your Body. Eight years later, she expanded her pamphlet into what would become her New York Times bestselling book, You Can Heal Your Life. However, because no one would publish the book, she founded (at age 58) her own publishing company, Hay House, which became “the largest and most influential self-empowerment publishing company in the world.” Louise remained the figurehead of her media empire until she died in 2017 at age 90.

Sourced and quoted from Wikipedia and HayHouse.com.

MS. MOSES

One of the all-time greats…

Anna Moses, better known as “Grandma Moses”, whose paintings hang in nine museums in the United States (as well as museums in Vienna and Paris), turned out her first picture when she was 76 years old. She took up painting because arthritis had crippled her hands so that she no longer could embroider. During her lifetime she painted more than 1,000 pieces, twenty-five of them after she had passed her 100th birthday. One of her works, Sugaring Off, was sold at an auction for $1.2 million.

“Her paintings were discovered in a drugstore window… by a prominent collector… and a New York gallery show led to world-wide fame in 1938″ when she was 78 years old. In 1946, sixteen million Grandma Moses Christmas cards sold. In 1953, when she was 93, Time magazine featured her on its cover. She died in 1961 at the age of 101. (In 1969 the USPS honored her by choosing to put her work on a stamp.)

Sourced from psychologytoday.com and The New York Times.

Best always,

This is letter one.

It is about knowing and coaching. And Alien. And clearing up a misconception.

Back when I was a newly married gal, close to exiting my twenties, this restless thought started pacing back and forth in my brain: I don’t want my 30’s to be a repeat of my 20’s.

I felt like I had made some solid steps setting up my post-collegiate life and accompanying acting career. I also felt I was ready to expand professionally. And I also felt like I didn’t know what was getting in my way of taking the actions I needed to take. I felt like I had come to the end of my own capabilities, hitting a wall that I didn’t know how to get around… I was just standing there banging my head against it. And I didn’t want to spend any of my 30’s stuck there.

I knew all of that.

But what I didn’t know was where or who to turn to (beyond my friends) for help. (Google had juuuuust come on the scene. We were all still living in little houses on the prairie.) The only kind of “help with your mind” that I knew of was therapy, but I intuited that that wasn’t exactly what I needed.

Then…

…I heard about a free seminar with a woman who called herself a “life coach.” My ears perked up at the sound of this new-to-me term, but my ego wouldn’t let me attend unless I convinced myself that “I’m just checking this thing out in case any of my organizing clients might need this kind of help.” I was being a bit too cool for school.

My “cool” lasted all of about 14 minutes into her talk. By the time she got to her metaphor about our thoughts being like the creature from the movie Alien, clamped onto our face and so close that we can’t conceive that we are separate from them (she said it better), I was like: “I love the movie Alien!” and “oh-my-god-this-thing-called-life-coaching-is-totally-what-I-need-right-now!!!”  

I followed the magnificent Lauri Johnson out of the building to declare that I was eager to get started and was happy to have our first session right here in the parking lot. That is not where we had our first session because Lauri was a civilized grown-up, but I worked with her for several months and have since had a session with her once a year (at least), usually right around my birthday. So far, she has witnessed the arc of my journey from age 29 to 49 and impacted my development in deep and lasting ways. I think my life would have unfolded much, much slower (and wonky-er) without her lovingly blunt guidance.

But my point is that I knew: At age 29, I knew I had the potential to expand even further… I knew there were some invisible-to-me obstacles in my path that I needed help to find and remove… and I knew this thing called “life coaching” was the medium and that Lauri was my messenger.

Which leads me to the misconception I mentioned earlier:

The misconception is that people hire a coach when they don’t know something, but that’s not usually true. Teachers (and Google) are who you turn to when you don’t know something. Teachers pour new knowledge into you – and the good ones teach you how to learn.

Coaches can certainly teach you things too, but their true expertise is pulling your own knowledge out of you – and the good ones help you get better at doing that for yourself.

Coaches are who you turn to when you know there’s more inside you that wants to be brought out into the world… or when you know you aren’t yet reaching for what’s available to you on the “top shelf”… or when you know you are repeating thoughts and/or behaviors that are likely blocking your progress.

Coaching sessions are where you are stretched beyond your own beliefs. Sessions provide a space where you can take all of the ideas, options, concerns, and questions that are swirling around in your mind… dump them out on a table… and have a trusted person with experience and expertise help you rearrange the pieces until they transform from a puzzle into a plan.

The hundreds of clients that I’ve worked with have all been smart, talented, capable people who knew they were close to breakthroughs that felt juuuust out of their reach. And, just as I did with Lauri, my clients invest in my services when they reach the point where the tension created by knowing that they are ready to shift in some way but not being able to do it by themselves becomes too uncomfortable to bear.

As a coach, I hold this Howard Thurman quote close to my heart…

“There is something in every one of you that waits, listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself… and if you cannot hear it, you will, all of your life, spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”

As a coach, I live to help you tune into your song and free yourself from those strings.

Wishing you the very best,

Letter two is about the scariest, narrowest bridge I ever had to cross.

My husband has, for many years now, taken extreme delight in randomly invading my space and declaring that he has found “our next Couple’s Adventure!!” He then proceeds to show me a video of humans engaged in some egregiously dangerous outdoor “activity” that they are not only partaking in by their own free will, but also likely paying for the privilege to do so.

Highlights have included: idiots sleeping in nylon tents suspended miles in the air off the side of a cliff… idiots riding bikes along twelve-inch-wide crests of snowy mountain ridges… idiots bungee jumping over deep canyons. Ex-set-er-ah.

I am not outdoors-y. (My sister gave me a card on my 35th birthday that has an illustration of a woman reclining in her cozy bed with the caption “I love not camping” and I framed it.) In addition, one of my personal policies is that, while I accept the fact that Death will come for me, I am not doing anything to willingly meet It half way.

Thus, when I mention crossing a “scary, narrow bridge” I am definitely speaking metaphorically.

I can sense a few readers just abandoned this letter, disappointed… but I assure you that the bridge I am talking about was absolutely narrow and scary. And I know a few of you have come upon (and even crossed) one just like it, too.

I’ve named it The Bridge to Your Next.

There you are, living your life, and one day you start to get a sensation, a notion that something lies ahead. And then, one day, when you’re out for a mental stroll, you come upon this bridge. Or it could be that you are just there, living your life, and suddenly a lightening bolt of inspiration hits and the next thing you know you turn a corner and, voilà, there’s the bridge.

It’s one of those long rope bridges made with wooden slats that are spaced just far enough apart so that you have an excellent view into the deep, dark crevasse over which the bridge is strung. (If you’re having trouble picturing it, ask my hubbie, I’m sure he has a video he can show you.)

And, although the bridge is not inviting, it is an invitation; it’s the route – a project or experience – that leads to a more expanded version of your life, to the Next version of you.

Did I mention it is also narrow? Indeed. There are no other options of getting across that chasm. This is not a multiple choice situation.

That said, you don’t have to cross the bridge. Ever. You can totally choose to stay on the solid ground that you are already on and live a genuinely wonderful and full life. I mean that. The bridge is just an option. And, if you do choose to pass it by, I believe you will be presented with other bridges in the future… invitation after invitation to your Next.

But here’s the most important thing to understand: if you choose to pass your first bridge by because you are hoping that next one will look less scary, it won’t.

The bridges will never be less scary. They are all of the same ilk: risky-looking. You know in your bones that you’re going to feel wobbly, uncertain, and uncomfortable while crossing – and maybe a little nauseous from time to time (especially when you hit the middle and feel it start to sway). It’s the kind of bridge where you really want to watch someone go across it first… but, alas, it exists for you and you alone.

My first bridge was the writing of my audio book (the full story of which I tell here). No one was asking me (or paying me) to write it. I didn’t know if anyone was ever going to read it. All I knew – what kept my butt in the seat writing and what motivated me to invest five figures in the project – was that I knew would live one life if I did not write and publish it and I would live a different, more expanded life if I did write and publish it.

And it felt scary and risky to put that much time, effort, money, heart, sweat, and energy into, like, just an idea that I had – basically an expensive, time-consuming expression of myself.

So I stared at the bridge for awhile.

I stayed put and I stared until my feelings about the situation started to shift.

Continuing to live on my current side of the bridge began to feel just a little bit scarier and a little bit riskier than trying to cross it did. My curiosity about my Next Me eventually (slightly) eclipsed my fear of perishing on the bridge, and that’s when I took my first step.

The most valuable reward that anyone who crosses one of these bridges gets is the knowledge that they are crossable. The next Bridge to Your Next will still raise the hairs on the back of your neck and completely freak you out, but you will now know that it is crossable – and worth crossing.

Wishing you the very best,

This letter is about lists. And perspective shifts and how I got my dream car.

My dream car was a Prius…

…eco-friendly
…low emissions
…fuel efficient.

Great qualities, all of them, yet all secondary to why I wanted this particular car.

(Come on people, when someone says “dream car” they are talking about their ego, and I am no exception.)

My ego wanted a Prius because I considered that particular car an inscrutable status symbol. Am I, like Larry David and Cameron Diaz, wildly successful enough to drive any car I want but I’m choosing a Prius to help save the planet? Maybe. And, for my ego, that “maybe” was the brass ring.

I live in L.A., so I totally understand there are plenty of people driving Mercedes SUVs who can barely afford the payments because they want others to think they have more money than they actually do. My desire, however, wasn’t to fake a level of wealth I didn’t have… my desire was to have people simply not know  – to eliminate my car as a clue to the level of my status and, by doing so, dodge any judgements.

That slightly embarrassing glimpse into my psyche is actually beside the point. To get to my point, though, I need you to know that for many years I was driving around the city in my hail-and-hearty 10-year-old Toyota Camry with my ego pining for a Prius. BUT, I couldn’t see how I was going to get a Prius because a) I didn’t want to buy one because I didn’t want to have to replace its $6,000 battery at some point, and b) I didn’t want to lease because buying a car had always been presented to me as the more fiscally prudent way to go.

A double bind…

…until December 12, 2014.

That day was the peak of a mighty winter storm in L.A. – so mighty you can even Google it. It has it’s own Wikipedia page! (Fun fact: a little tornado touched down in L.A. that day, the first one to strike the city in a decade.) It wasn’t just “raining” – oh, no, no – all day long the heavens were pummeling the ground with angry fists of water.

Because I work from home, my husband and I share one car. When I need to go somewhere, I drive him to work (one town over) and pick him up. On December 12, 2014, I had an early-morning doctors appointment in Pasadena (for something that was pretty important so I didn’t want to postpone it), so we drove to Burbank in a downpour and then I drove to Pasadena in an even heavier downpour.

But I made it! And I got a parking spot right in front of the building! And the thing the doctor was looking at turned out to be nothing! THIS WAS BECOMING A WONDERFUL DAY!

Until, on my way home, I crossed an intersection and our Camry hydroplaned into the curb-side lane that, due to the grading of the intersection, had turned into a pond and suddenly my car became a leaky boat that was not-so-slowly filling with water.

(Hi, my name is Kristine Oller and I lost my car in a flood. In Los Angeles. You should definitely hire me to coach you.)

The equilibrium of the outside water and inside water was achieved juuuuust as it reached the top of my seat cushion, upon which I was crouched in a squat for quite. some. time. I was never in any mortal danger because my dad had given me one of those “break the car window” hammer thingys a few Christmases ago so I knew I could, if necessary, exit the car and wade to “shore” (which was looking like a route I might seriously have to take as I watched my hero of a tow guy balance on my hood while making his third attempt to attach my car to his truck).

Eventually, I was dropped off at my doorstep with a few soggy belongings, a session with a coaching client in a few hours, and the looming pleasure of having to, ya know, casually mention to my hubbie that we no longer had a car.

Before going on with my day, I made three decisions to help steady myself:

1)
I made a list.
I realized I could either send my mind off to collect proof that this was one of my Worst Days Ever, or I could send my mind off to collect proof that this was a Day Of Good Fortune. I challenged myself to the latter and began to make a list of all the FACTS I could think of that supported the story that this day had genuinely unfolded with an amazing amount of grace. I told myself I couldn’t stop until I reached 25 pieces of proof. I made it to 39 (a photo of my list is included at the end of this letter). The list blew my mind and helped me with #2 and #3.

2)
I made a decision.
I decided that, beyond my husband and my sister, I was not going to repeat this story to anyone. I wasn’t ashamed, I wasn’t traumatized, but I suspected that the emotional and energetic “charge” of the event would dissipate much faster if I didn’t keep retelling the story and answering questions about it. I wanted to experiment and see what it would be like to let a Dramatic And Juicy Story like this one pass quietly through my life. I think it was a few years before I ever brought it up to anyone. Not sharing the story allowed me to file it in my memory exactly as I wanted to: as a surprising-yet-lucky day.

3)
I made a plan.
While this calamity was not my fault, it did happen on my watch. Thus, when I presented the car’s co-owner with the news, I also wanted to present him with a plan. We needed a car pronto. We didn’t have a lot of time to search for a good used car or decide on the next ten-year-car that we wanted to buy. We also didn’t have a lot of cash available for a down payment. I felt like, at this moment, our priority was simply to buy ourselves some time – which is why my sister suggested we lease.

Well.

 I mean… if we were going to go down the reportedly “financially foolish” road of leasing…

…we might as well lease a Prius, right?

So that, ladies and gentlemen, was how I “manifested” – LOL – my dream car. (Fun fact: due to a posted price error on the dealer’s website that wasn’t discovered until well into my negotiations, I got us the deal of the century – a two-year lease at a mistake-of-a-price!)

But the point is not that my little ego grew three sizes that day, the point is the perspective shift.

The point is that we do have the ability to actively choose the perspective through which we view the events of our life – I experienced the full power of that concept for realzies that day.

And it’s not about adopting a quick, forced, or skewed “everything’s fine” attitude. It’s about choosing which pieces of proof you are going to keep your attention focused on, and, when your attention strays (which it will), choosing to keep bringing your attention back to that proof again and again until your entire perspective on the matter has genuinely shifted.

Also, staying focused on the perspective that makes you feel better and more empowered is a lot easier to do when you are not expending extra energy telling your story to ev-er-ree-one and fielding a jumble of questions, concerns, and Monday morning quarterbacking that keeps you off-kilter.

Below is my original “why this was a Day Of Good Fortune” list from December 12, 2014.

Wishing you the very best,