When Laura asked me to write a guest post for Lolalina while she’s busy tending to the little things – like having babies (Congrats Laura! Yay!) – I found so much inspiration in her tagline: Find Your Sweet Life. The life coach in me woke up & started thinking about my sweet life: the amazeballs marriage I’m in, the career that’s my passion, my top notch friends & beautiful home & uber-supportive family. I knew it took a helluva lotta work to get here, but when I really sit down and think about it, there were some really concrete steps I took to get here. Here are the Top 5, in no particular order:
TOP 5 WAYS I FOUND MY SWEET LIFE
5. I learned how to say “no.” I’m not sure if it was Oldest Child Syndrome or the fact that I’m a woman or a combination of the two or just, well, me, but I lived to please people. I would do it at the sacrifice of everything else – sweep personal plans to the side, whether it was just a night of Me Time (aka sitting in the bath with a book & a glass of wine for an hour or so) or a few hours of doing something related to a project or goal I wanted to achieve. Someone wanted to hang out then? OK. Someone I didn’t even particularly like, & brought a lot of negativity into my life? OK. Sure. God forbid I make anyone unhappy. Except myself. That seemed to be OK.
Once I had a full-time job and was taking my life coaching classes in my “free time” (making my real free time at a premium), I realized that I needed to learn how to say “no” in a way that I was comfortable with. If this sounds like you, I implore you to do the same. Write down different ways to say “no” that don’t offer much explanation (amazingly, a lot of people just won’t ask why you’re saying “no”) but sit well with you. I was always afraid of appearing to be mean, but there are so many ways to say “no” that aren’t at all! Once you have a good response, practice it alone, it front of a mirror. And if you get flustered with the real deal, then just offer a, “Let me get back to you.” Don’t cave in! You can do it! It’s really just about being your own best friend. Aw.
4. Purge the negative people from your address book. It doesn’t have to be dramatic, and it might be someone you feel “close” to / have known forever, but someone who poisons your goals or lives solely to complain is forcing you to live The Sour Life. I can attest that, whether you live in a ginormous city like Manhattan or you live in, well, Guam, there are people there who can be happy for your happiness, whose eyes light up when you share something that lights you up, and who won’t undercut you and your decisions. Jealousy and bitterness is a bitch. Be your own best friend – again – and get these frenemies away from your awesomeness.
3. Celebrate your wins along the way, no matter how small. Wrote your 100th blog post? Buy yourself your favorite flowers. Launched a new product after hours (days! months!) of hard work? Treat yourself and your babe to weekend getaway. Graduated from life coaching school after 2 years? Throw a big fat party with a beer tower (I know nothing about this. If it was Opposite Day). Discover all those things that make your life sweet. Start a Celebration List if you’d like with sweetness big and small. Then, when you hit a milestone, pick a celebration from the list and stick to it, reveling in why the stargazer lilies are on the kitchen table or why you’re getting an hour-long massage. Or just pick one because you’re having a crappy day, and salted caramel pretzel ice cream would make it just a wee bit better.
2. Do something every day that allows you to move forward personally or professionally, and make sure it brings you joy. Would I have built my business on blogging and tweeting and social media-ing it up if I hated it? That wouldn’t be a sweet life at all! But I love all that. For me, my Sweet Life is about connections, & the coaching’s the icing on the cake. If you can’t get away from the icky stuff, see how you can minimize it (& treat yourself to that ice cream to make your day happier).
1. I never, ever, ever thought that I would live an unpassionate life. Ever. It was just not an option. I never thought, “What if I spend my whole life in this cubicle?” or “I’ll never be able to make a living doing what I love!” After I came to terms with / accepted / grieved over the decision to leave the business of show behind me (a 20 year dream that I devoted a ton of love, energy, money, dedication & sacrifice to) I knew that, while I had no idea what else I could be passionate about in my life, it was out there. Waiting for me. And I had to find it, goshdarnit!
If you don’t know what your passion is or could be, then start a Big Likes list. If you don’t know what to put on it, carry it around with you & when you realize you’re doing something you like-like, write it down. Or write down the things you think you might like, and just start trying them, no strings attached. If your Logical Vampire (“Vampire” is the voice in your head that sucks the good stuff right outta ya!) is telling you that you can’t possibly think you can actually bake a pie or be a wedding singer or make a living being a freakin’ life coach for Pete’s sake, then get out the garlic & tell it to take a hike. You get one life, and without sounding like a complete hippy, each day you keep the happiness away is a day, well, without happiness. If you hate Mondays, then you hate 1/7 of your life. Yup. That blew my mind, too.
How have you found your Sweet Life, or how are you gonna commit to finding it (& living it!)? I’d love to hear about your experiences & your insights in the comments section. Just remember that your Sweet Life is different from my Sweet Life &, well, anyone else’s Sweet Life. Find what it means to you & gobble it up with a spoon!*
* Salted caramel pretzel ice cream optional, yet highly recommended.
Michelle Ward, aka The When I Grow Up Coach, helps creative people devise the career they think they can’t have – or discover it to begin with! A certified life coach by the International Coach Academy & a musical theater actress with her BFA from NYU/Tisch, Michelle uses a dose of empathy, a shot of butt-kickin’, a wagon full of enthusiasm, & a crapload of inspiration to help solve the puzzle & turn her client’s grown-up skills & values into a passionate (& possibly out-of-the-box) career. She’s been featured in Newsweek & Metro News, has spoken on the panel at Blog Out Loud 6 & could be found coachin’, bloggin’ & givin’ away free stuff at whenigrowupcoach.com.
{all images: The Wheatfield by the super-inspiring Katie Daisy}
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