Month: June 2017

Day 7

Starting new things is exciting.

Have you had a job for awhile and it has become routine? It seems dull and boring. Maybe you drag yourself to work. Maybe you stop working the last five minutes as you count down the seconds until you can leave. Then, there is a new person. They come in to work all excited. First, they are glad to have a job. Second, it is all new and fresh. You look at this newbie. You smile and nod and think how long will that last? When will the newness wear off? Maybe there is even a work place pool betting on when the daily grind will take over.

That is how it is with most any new thing. You started. Maybe you did a happy dance in the kitchen. You sang your personal fight song. You feel on the top of the world. Everything you want is coming into your life.

It starts out great! You are knocking things off your to do list. But then it is getting harder. Or you hit a snag. Or have neglected other things and now you have to take care of those things. You got side tracked. Your enthusiasm is slowly fading. You realize this is happening. Now you wonder why you did that happy dance in the kitchen. This new thing, well, you pick at it like the left over turkey on Thanksgiving night. You still like it, but it isn’t what it was when you started.

What to do?

Get in the groove. Keep the momentum going. 

One of the things that will help with this is a little routine. Get in the groove. Commit to working on this new thing at the same time every day. No excuses. When you feel you are slipping and not keeping the project going, give it a shove. Keep the momentum going.  It is easier to keep anything going than to start from a stop.

Commit to others. Vow to accomplish some goal in so many days.

I love writing blog posts. I hope that just one person is inspired even a little every day. I made a commitment to make 1 post a day for 30 days on a special series of little motivators for a  transformation outline for change. This is only day 7, and I am tired of the project. I love doing it, but every day is a lot of commitment. It takes 45 minutes to an hour a day. And I don’t even know if I a reaching anyone. I assume I am reaching someone, but I am not sure. Just in case, here I am.

Do it for you.

Did you start something new to help you to grow as a person? Did you start something to turn your life around? Did you start something out of pure necessity? Just like doing something nice for others or giving a gift, don’t do it for pats on the back. Don’t expect a parade in your honor. Do it for you. The sense of accomplishment is a great thing. And when you help yourself, you really help others. But don’t get me wrong. I think that as you accomplish goals, you should celebrate because it is hard to keep going when the newness wears off or other things get in the way.

Remember, the way things are is your comfort zone. Doing something new is going out of your comfort zone. It is easy to stay comfortable. But when comfortable becomes uncomfortable and you become restless, you need to do something.

Coach

www.facebook.com/lisaylifecoach

 

Day 6

Hello~

Today is day 6 of the 30 day transformation plan.

Keep going.

Trying to do something new can be hard. Trying to do things differently than you did before can be hard. One minute it seems all is going well, and the next it seems so hard you wonder why you even bother. It would be so much easier to just stop.

I am thinking about riding a bicycle. It is tricky at first. You have to keep your balance. You have to ride at some minimum rate of speed to keep from tipping over. You start out with training wheels. At first you like the training wheels because they keep you from tipping over. When I was a kid with training wheels on my bike, we had a dirt driveway. At the end of the driveway was a pot hole. I used to position my bike just so and my back tire was situated somehow so that I could pedal and not go anywhere. I used to think that was great fun.

There comes a time when you don’t want your training wheels anymore. You aren’t a baby for goodness sake. When your dad comes out with the screwdriver and takes off the training wheels, that is a great feeling.

Learning to do just about anything is the same. You are out of your comfort zone. It is exciting at first. You are on a new adventure. It is sort of like dad took the training wheels off your bike and you can now explore a whole new world. But sometimes you get stuck. You may feel like you are spinning your wheels in the pot hole at the end of your comfort zone and going nowhere. But unlike when I got my bike stuck in the pot hole (which I did purposely for the fun of it) spinning your wheels in a pot hole is not fun. It is actually frustrating. You get tired trying to get going again.

You ask your self why you are doing this. It isn’t fun anymore. I don’t want to anymore. My life is just fine without this. I should just go back to where I was. Comfortable.

Well, you most certainly can do that. You can go back to your comfort zone. And if you really have learned to hate whatever it is you are trying to do that may be the answer for you. There is nothing wrong with that.

But if the quality of your life can be better by pushing through the tough times then I say keep going. The question is whether or not the rewards of pushing through are greater than not continuing. That is, are the rewards of pushing though greater than what you have if you stay in your comfort zone? For some of you, this may not be much of a question. Where you are is not good. You need to get out of your situation. You need a change.

My suggestion to you is don’t do it alone. Don’t struggle to get through the challenge alone. Share your goals and ambition with at least one other person. But make sure that person is supportive. And don’t let any past failures stop you from trying.

Just like learning to ride a bicycle, start with training wheels. Sooner or later you will get comfortable in the new zone, and you can take the training wheels off. And then you will be ready to take the next step into a new zone if you like.

Cheers.

Coach.

www.facebook.com/lisaylifecoach

Day 5

This is day 5 of the #30daytransformation

How are you?

Topic for today is push yourself.

If you want to be the best you can be, you have to push yourself. It is all about going past your comfort zone and trying new things. It is about doing things you may not want to do. You do these new things to accomplish goals you to meet challenges.

Have you ever made a decision to do something then after a short time thought, “What was I thinking? This could be climbing a difficult trail which you are now stuck doing because others are expecting you to finish the hike. This could be taking a long walk, and now you are tired and have to continue on because you have no other way to get home. Could be to give up sugar. Maybe it is buying a new business or taking a new job, and you don’t know what you are doing, and what else can you do but continue.

I think about a line from the Hobbit. We must go in the direction of our greatest fear for therein lies our greatest hope. That really inspires me. Now that may be a little dramatic. I am not saying that conquering a great fear because it is  your only hope. What I am saying is that if you do something challenging, push yourself past your comfortable limits, you will find you have more ability than you thought. What a great sense of accomplishment that is.

I remember learning to walk. I remember mom getting me up after my nap and carrying me to the family room. She set me on the ground held me up to stand on my legs. On the other side of the room, maybe ten feet away was pop. He is crouched down and saying, “Come to papa.” I remember thinking I didn’t want to. Walking was hard. But I did it. Now, I don’t know if mom helped or not. But I remember crossing the room on my feet. It seemed a lot farther than the ten feet.

The point is that was out of my comfort zone of sorts. I did not give up. That may not seem like much now, but at the time it was a challenge. And I accomplished it.

I want to leave you with this one thought. Commit to yourself.  You don’t have to do anything for anyone but you. Actually, you never have to anything. But if you make a decision to do something, even if no one else knows, honor your self see the commitment to the end.

This is why maybe you don’t try to change everything in your life at once. Baby steps if you will. Make goals that are manageable. Manageable goals are easier to meet and not something you are so likely to quit. Once you accomplish one goal you can raise the bar so to speak.

Coach

www.facebook/com/lisaylifecoach

Day 4

Day 4 of the #30daytransformation

Stay the course.

Sometimes it is fun to make things up as you go along. Have you ever gone for a ride in the car and said hey let’s go that way. And you just drive until you are ready to go home and find the road that takes you home? Well, people don’t do that so much anymore. We used to call that a Sunday drive. It was a nice quiet, slow paced drive somewhere away from it all. It is actually hard to  be able to do that anymore. People are in such a hurry these days. If you try to take a leisurely drive anymore you are likely to encounter a horn, a car speeding by, and maybe a rude gesture.

Think about kids. They love to make things up as they go along. Have you ever played a game with a kid who continues to change the rules (always in their favor)? You smile because it is cute. Kids love to make up a game. I know when I was a kid we made up games. Adults don’t do enough of that.

But if you have a goal you are trying to reach making things up as you go along is not the best idea. I talked about this before in a post about “winging it”. I know someone who wings it a lot. He never worries about consequences or problems he may encounter. He will handle whatever happens when it happens. The issue I have with “winging it” is that if you gain an accomplishment with it and try to recreate that you don’t always know what you did that accomplished that. Then when you want to do it again, you can’t unless you get lucky experimenting.

It is better to have some sort of course of action to follow. It does not have to be too strict. You want a plan which is flexible. But for the most part stay the course. You don’t have to do everything in one day. But try to accomplish at least one thing every day. Take one step, one move toward reaching your goal. If you deviate from the course, you may end up somewhere else. Or at the very least you will go in a direction you don’t want to be going.

Imagine being a train. You have a track to follow. Now, the track can change, but not much, and you don’t want to get off track.

Coach

www.facebook.com/lisaylifecoach

Day 3

Hello~

This is day 3 of the #30daytransformation

Never let your guard down. 

Sometimes things are going along just as you like. Everything is right on track. You are feeling very comfortable with how things are going. You are not holding your breath waiting to see if your efforts will pan out. But then, you are blind sided.

If you play casino games you know what I mean. You can sit down at a game and it just wins and wins and wins. In just a few minutes, you turned $20 into a $100. Now,  it loses a bit. That’s OK because it will hit again soon. It goes up and down a bit, but goes down more than up. Then you think come on machine you can hit something good any time now. Now, you are below that $20 you put into the machine and you wonder what happened? Then you think, I should have stopped when I was ahead. Or maybe I should have stopped 5 minutes ago.

It is baffling, isn’t it? When everything seems to be going your way then suddenly things just shift. I had a small business. It was doing fine. Then it just exploded. It boomed. I was so happy. I relaxed. I thought nothing could happen to ruin this. It was too good to be true. And it lasted for a number of months. Then, business dropped. The loss of customers was slow. At first, I thought that was just normal. I could not expect that booming business to last. But I did not pay so much attention. But I let my guard down, and suddenly business was low. It was lower than it was before the boom.

I was so comfortable with how well the business was doing; I failed to watch it as closely as I should have. I was not in control. The business was on cruise control. And it suffered. It did not die, but it lost a lot of life.

So, no matter what you do don’t let your guard down. Don’t get comfortable with good times because you never know when the tide will change. When it does, and it more than likely will, you want to be ready in order to prevent too much loss of a good thing.

This does not mean don’t enjoy the good times. And it does not mean you should have a negative attitude. It means be in control of your life and everything in it or else they may control you.

Coach

www.facebook.com/lisaylifecoach

 

Day 2

This is Day 2 of the #30daytransformation.

Be ready for anything. 

I remember a job I had at a dry cleaners many years ago. My boss was adding credit card machines. I had a handful of “what ifs”. The other lady who worked there also had a few questions. My boss had the attitude that we were worried over nothing. He may have been right. But, that was my mindset at the time. I thought of all the possible things that could go wrong.

It isn’t that I expected things to go wrong. I just wanted to know what to do if something went wrong. I wanted to be ready for anything.

I have never been a person who likes surprises. I like knowing what is on the other side of the mountain, round the curve, or the end of a book. Yes, I am that person who peeks at the end of a book to see how it ends.

Sometimes I am good at thinking on my feet. I have on occasion been able to handle some sort of an emergency with some quick thinking. I have done what had to be done to handle a situation. And frankly, I like doing that. I like being the one who jumps in to help.

Sometimes I am not that good at thinking on my feet, and I don’t want to get stuck not knowing what to do. More, I don’t want to have something happen and I get baffled in the moment and feel temporarily helpless. I don’t want to go home and that night and replay the scene in my mind again and again thinking what I should have said or done.

I know that no matter what happens there is always an answer, a remedy to solve a problem or issue. I know that things always work out. But if something happens and I don’t have a ready response I tend to get flustered and frustrated.

To me, life is just a lot easier if you know what you would do  if  something goes wrong or the unexpected happens.  Now, this may seem like negative thinking. It may seem as if I expect things to go wrong. This is not the case at all.

Think about the police, the F.B.I. or the fire department. These people train for everything. They think about how they would respond if things were to go wrong or if something unusual happens. This is what I am talking about.

If you are taking on a new challenge, then, think about the hurdles that may come up. There will be hurdles. And the best way to get over them is to be informed. Know what to expect. Think through the entire process of what ever it is you want to do. What is step one? How do you do that? What is step two? How do you do that?

You can’t think of everything. I have had things happen, and it is so hard to believe that that happened because you never “in a million years” would have seen that coming. Some things are just unheard of. But if you think about the answer to other hurdles, you more than likely have a good response for this unexpected hurdle and get right back on track.

So be ready for anything, well almost everything. 

Coach Lisa

www.facebook.com/lisaylifecoach

 

30 day transformation

Hey~

So, today I want to start a program I call 30 Day Transformation.

Before I start I want to make a purpose statement for this blog:

I love helping and inspiring people. If I can help or inspire someone with just one post, that would be so wonderful. I do have my passions sadness/depression, care for caregivers, addictions, hoarding, and pets. My mind is always going with ideas. I am inspired every day on all sorts of subjects big and small. 

I also am a coach for those who need a little more guidance than a post provides. It is a general belief by coaches that people have the answer in them, and that it is the job of the coach to give any needed guidance to bring forth the answer. 

So in this 30 days of transformation posts, I want to give an outline of getting out of your comfort zone.  What I want to accomplish here is to give a general outline for a way to make change in your life if that is something you want.

These 30 posts are not meant to be all the answers, but rather a starting point. If you can take the thoughts provided here and make a change from that, good for you! But if you get even a little inspired to make a change I am available to provide that extra guidance.

So, here we go.

Day 1:

There is talk of zombies taking over the world. The image is of people with outstretched arms grunting. But isn’t that how we really are? Well, we may not walk with outstretched arms and grunting, but how much thinking do we do anymore? We are so often on cruise control. See more of this here: http://www.ctacoaches.com/lisay/2017/06/08/get-out-of-the-rut/

We have our comfort zone. Think of mice not wanting to leave their little hole in the wall. Don’t take that wrong.  I did not call you mice. These little mice have heard of the world out there. But the world past the familiar is scary. We know how to get through the maze of our lives. It is easy, but we often do it without thinking. How often have you been driving somewhere and thought, “Wait where am I going?” when you missed your turn. But then again staying in the comfort zone can be uncomfortable. It can be restless. We may not think we are doing enough. We want to try different things, but doubt creeps in.

I think one of the best things to do is to try to do one challenging thing every day. What is one thing you would like to try to do that you have not tried? This can be something as simple as going to a bar, restaurant or movie alone. But you should take one small step toward change every day no matter how small. Once you get comfortable with many small steps you can move up to bigger challenges.

If you have been following along, you know that I have challenged myself to a new exercise program I developed myself. It is a modified military exercise program. The first day I was so sore. I was sore immediately after doing 100 push ups. I could hardly move my arms. And my chest hurt. But today, I did 200 push ups and my arms and chest don’t hurt at all. I worked through the pain. That makes me smile. It makes me feel as if I accomplished something. I earned that pain. I was used to push ups, but in the past I would do 30 at a time.

The point is that doing new things may be painful in a way. If it takes you out of your comfort zone, you will feel uncomfortable. If you were to say, go to a restaurant alone, you may feel everyone is looking at you in a judgmental way. Probably not. People don’t really pay as much attention to us as we think. Who knows? Who cares? You did something new. Good for you!

Suggestion: Once you accomplish that challenge reward yourself. You worked through the pain. And really, it was better than having an operation without anesthesia, right? So, give yourself an ice cream or something.

There you go. That is lesson 1.

Now, go do something new.. anything.

Coach Lisa

www.facebook.com/lisaylifecoach

P.S. Do I have to remind you to not do any dangerous stunts? I didn’t think so because if I did I would have to write a disclaimer. You know like don’t do anything dangerous or illegal.

 

 

 

What do you want?

Story number one: So, once upon a time a politician was canvassing neighborhoods. She was walking a quiet street. This street had no curb and no side walk. So, as she went door to door, she promised that if elected she would make sure there would be a curb and sidewalks.

But, that was not enough to convince people to vote for her. It actually turned some neighbors off.

Story number two: So, once upon a time a product an older couple had malfunctioned and ruined their rug. They contacted the manufacturer and let them know. The manufacturer felt terrible. They offered the older couple some money.  “No”, answered the old couple. They offered them more money. “No”, answered the couple. They made every offer they could, and the answer was always no. Finally, the manufacturer asked, “What do you want?” “We just want a new rug”.

Moral of the stories: The politician  assumed that everyone wanted curbs and sidewalks. It never occurred to her that some people like their street just plain. Maybe they liked the more rural look. Maybe they just had no need for the curbs and sidewalks.

The manufacturer assumed that people want a lot of cash. It did not occur to them that a simple replacement of the old rug would suffice.

The point: Unless we ask what people want, it is not always best to assume that we all want the same things. Think about it. Do you value certain things and you have a friend who does not value them at all? Sometimes people want less than we want to offer and sometimes they want more. The best way to help people is to start with asking, what do you want?

Think about married couples and what happens when they want different things in life. Many refer to that as “growing apart”. (FYI The key to helping in this situation is what I call RAT: Relationship Acceptance Training where people, married couples, friends, siblings, co-workers etc. learn to accept each other rather than change each other, but that is a topic for another day).

Some people know exactly what they want. Others may only have a general idea what they want, and may need help defining it. (There is a simple exercise called 7 Levels Deep that can be very helpful in defining a goal or desire. I can share that with you if you want.) Whatever the case may be, I have one question for you, What do you want? 

Then I ask this:  If you could meet those goals, what is that worth to you?

I will let you think about that, and I will leave you with this last thought, I have had negotiation training. That is where I learned to ask what do you want before making any offers.

If you want that 7 Levels Deep exercise, let me know: www.facebook.com/lisaylife coach

Coach Lisa

 

 

 

 

 

Goals

What are your goals?

If you could meet those goals, what is that worth to you?

Let me know.

www.facebook.com/lisaylifecoach

Coach Lisa

Exercise for mind body and spirit

Hey~

So I am starting a new military style exercise program. I have modified  military training for civilians. More importantly for a 53 year old woman.

A little about my exercise history. So, I have been a on/off gym person for years. I am currently not a gym person. I have been away from the gym since last November so about 7 months. I still keep up my long walks. My bike needs work. So I am not riding right now. I also have been using free weights.

In general, I consider myself to be in relatively good shape for a 53 year old woman. I do a fair amount of yard work that gives me a lot of exercise. That includes building a rock garden one bag of rocks at a time. It includes putting out who knows how many stepping stones. And then there is the tree trimming, lawn mowing (part of which is done with a push reel mower), and leaf raking. But I want to be in better shape. And hey, it is a lot harder to keep in shape after 40, but not impossible. And frankly, eating right is not enough.

Here is my thought. There are a lot of physically fit people out there. But who, as a whole is more fit than the military? So, I examined their exercise programs and determined the basics of their fitness program. I narrowed it to 12 exercises. Don’t worry. We don’t do them all every day. No, we mix it up. I came up with a 30 day program that repeats.  Some we do nearly every day and some only a couple of times in the 30 day period.

As I said. This is modified for civilians, but that does not make it easy. But, it isn’t military hard either.

If you are looking for a new exercise challenge, I invite you to join me.

Disclaimer: OK, so I really don’t want to have a disclaimer, but it is unfortunately necessary. You are familiar with the disclaimer. It goes something like this: You should consult a physician before starting this or any other exercise program. Anyone following this program assumes full responsibility for their safety. Do not continue if you sense you will be injured.

OK so there you go. If you want to follow this program, there will be 30 posts to give you the daily routine at www.facebook.com/lisaylifecoach

Hey, if you give it a go, and like it, let me know.