After a self-imposed moratorium I’m back to the blogosphere with a renewed sense of energy and purpose!
I’m not sure how last year ended for you or your new year started, but here’s a snapshot of mine and some a-ha moments I had 🙂
When I reflected on the past year, in some part in conversation with my kids, my 8 yo daughter kindly stated “We had a huge year mum, I need a holiday!”
And she was right!
After 25 years in the corporate world, I left the organization I had been with for two decades. But that was just the first in a series of big changes…
…Next our family moved back home to Australia after having lived just over 3 years in Singapore. Having enjoyed every minute of our time there (and our youngest not remembering much of Australia at all) the transition home was not without its bumps and bruises. My eldest started TAFE, the younger two started at one school which ended up being not the right fit and had to change to different schools for the last term of the year. We also had some minor renovations done to the house.
To top it all off, I also took the leap from being a corporate employee to solopreneur.
Yep, we needed a holiday!
We were extremely fortunate that during the holiday period, both my husband’s and my siblings and both our parents were all in the same country as us. With everyone living in various different locations it had been quite a few years since we were all together. So “spending time with the family” during the holidays took on a whole other context!
But it did also mean that our holiday wasn’t exactly restful. And when it came to start the new year, I turned to my husband and said “I’m exhausted and need a break!”, to which he thoughtfully replied, “A break from what?!?” At that point when I almost committed a murderous act, I realised I needed some help.
So I called one of my coaches, Jayne Johnson from The Clearing Sight to help me get my perspective back!
[I’ve often been asked why people use coaching and whilst there a multitude of reasons, I’ve always believed at its core, coaching is a mechanism by which you as the client are able to gain perspective in a supportive environment because a coach’s role is to be objective for you.]
With my coach’s help I had a few a-ha’s which have set me on my way for the new year. This new-found perspective is easily summarized in a way that resonates with my purpose of Igniting Your SPARK.
SPIRIT
It is important to acknowledge how you feel. In the moments I felt exhausted – rather than thinking I shouldn’t feel that way – a more productive way to deal with the feeling would have been to acknowledge it and then work out what to do about it.
There’s a saying coined by Carl Jung,
“What you resist, persists…”
The more I resisted my feeling of exhaustion, the more it persisted and flattened my spirit. Once I acknowledged it with Jayne’s assistance, I was better empowered to allow my spirit to thrive and reinvigorate myself with better sleep, nutrition and exercise.
The truly exciting thing about this was that my husband and I committed to taking a full-day walk/hike once a month in and around Sydney, to allow us to exercise our bodies and rest our minds, reacquaint ourselves with our home town, spend time together and in nature – all things that lift my spirit…and all at the same time!
PERFORMANCE
To live a high-performance life of full engagement, joy and confidence with balanced and positive relationships, it’s imperative to have a heightened and sustained sense of clarity, energy, courage, productivity and influence.
At the start of a new year, a lack of clarity can be derailing. I knew it would be challenging to get in the swing of things if I wasn’t clear on my short-term goals. So when another of my mentors, Blair Singer conducted his Champion Level Goal Setting webinar I made sure I attended – even though all around me was in chaos with a household full of 8 kids ranging in ages from 1 – 10 (it was after that that my husband was exhausted and needed a break 😉 !?!
In my ongoing pursuit of high performance, I have designed a long-term vision for my life. I call this my Dream Life. This sets the direction for everything I do, and the regular setting of short-term goals is what creates momentum towards this vision.
Goals are critical as life throws you challenges and distractions constantly. So having goals is like having a rudder on a ship i.e. the ship will go off course unless it has a strong steering mechanism. Interestingly, it wasn’t until I got serious about living a high performance life that I realised I needed to set goals regularly in a holistic manner for my life, rather than just focusing on one aspect of life like my career.
AUTHENTICITY
As a result of attending Blair’s webinar, I also defined my Most Definite Purpose for the year. Now I have gone through this process several times, but I really struggled with it this time. Having been in the corporate environment for so long I realised that I had a bias towards goals being related only to “tangible” outputs because of course that’s what you are measured on in your “job”.
However, now being a solopreneur but also knowing I made the decision to leave the corporate environment to be more available for my children, I struggled with my most definite purpose showing up as “Being a better mother for my children”.
Why?
Because there was a part of me that thought it should be a goal that was easily measurable e.g. business revenue or skill achievement. However, if I was to remain authentic to my true self and who I want to be, what requires focus as my most definite purpose this year is being a better mother. And when I accepted that I simply had to find a way to measure it which was certainly not comfortable! But the feedback from my children and their development will ultimately be an indication of my progress.
RESILIENCE
The transition from employee to solopreneur has been an interesting one that has definitely tested my ability to be resilient. There are innumerable ways I could describe this but the most recent experience that gave me the biggest jolt was getting back to work after the holidays.
For the first time ever in my life no one was expecting or waiting for me to “get back to work”. For the first time ever, I was able to be on holidays for the same length of time as my children (and longer if I chose). And for the first time ever, I wasn’t earning any money. For me, the conflicting challenge of excitement vs anxiety that this created was enormous.
On one hand I was excited about the freedom I had to spend time with my children, my husband, my extended family and friends, as well as read, relax by the beach and generally do all the “nothing” things I’ve always dreamed of doing. On the other hand, I had a level of anxiety about the fact that no one was expecting me back at work and concurrently I wasn’t generating any income, and hence I felt adrift.
Unfortunately it took some time to for me to recognise this challenge and the “Sword of Damocles” I felt hovering over my head. And once I did recognise it, the question was how could I overcome it rather than become paralysed by it?
So I made the decision to “return to work” when the kids returned to school, which still gave me the freedom to be on holidays but with a finite end date. And leading up to the return I ensured I had goals and a schedule that would allow me to restart my daily habits to ensure a productive outcome every day, even if that was getting the housework done!
What I realised was that my goals, schedule and daily habits enabled me to be resilient and shed the Sword of Damocles feeling irrespective of whether I was “working” or not.
KNOWLEDGE
I love to read…and during my holidays I rekindled my love for fiction, but I also overdosed on that same fiction. I realised I had overdosed because I noticed a change in my mental state and thought patterns which then of course impacted my mood and behaviour, and not in a good way!
It was a strong reminder that what you “feed” your mind has a high degree of influence on who you are.
I definitely feel blessed and eternally grateful for the opportunities I have had in my life. But these first holidays as a solopreneur have reminded me again of the need for a coach – the real secret to perspective – especially as I am committed to living a high performance life!
If you have any thoughts or input about this post please be sure to like it and leave your comments below, or click to organise a chat as I’d love to connect with you about your own journey. And take the High Performance Quiz to find out more about living a High Performance life!
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