From the Deep

Today it begins.

For some, it began January 1, 2009. But for those of us with children, the New Year starts today. The husbands (if we have them) go back to work. School-age children return to academia; younger kids return to preschool or their scheduled tot activities. Perhaps we, too, return to our jobs. Whatever our scenarios, moms around the world are facing the first Monday of 2009 and going back to the grind.

So how will it be different? When the New Year approaches, some of us create resolutions to make the current year better than the one before. Some of us eschew resolutions yet want to invite change of some sort. It’s natural. A New Year denotes a new beginning, an opportunity to take stock, to see what we like about our lives, to jettison what we don’t, and to invite something new to manifest itself. But those high hopes born in the holiday euphoria won’t ever become realities if we don’t take steps toward them in the harsh light of the Monday morning after.

Today, January 5, 2009 is where the rubber meets the road. If you want to create true life change this year, begin by answering these questions today:

• What do you want to leave behind in 2008?
• How will you practically accomplish that today?
• What do you want to invite into your life in 2009?
• What step will you make toward that beginning or change today?
• Who will you invite into the process to help you along the way?
• Will you contact that person today?

I wish you all the joy and richness of creating the life you want beginning today where the rubber meets the road. And if you’d like guidance from a life coach along the way, please contact me. I’d love to take this journey toward change with you!

Because I believe so strongly in transformation, I want to help you determine the life change you want and create ways to make it happen. To this end, I have three offers:

1. A free thirty-minute Sample Coaching Session. This offer is always available to anyone who has not yet hired me as a coach. In one half-hour, your life can change, and at this time of year, you can use this session to create a New Year’s resolution and a positive step toward fulfilling it.
2. Half-price off a set of Discovery Sessions. This special set of two one-hour coaching sessions helps you understand who you are at your core. From that knowledge base, you can create life goals. In these two sessions, you and I can discern meaningful resolutions for the year and create a plan for fulfilling them. This offer is currently available to anyone who has not yet hired me as a coach.
3. Half-price off a Laser Coaching Session. This offer is available to past and current clients only. In this twenty-minute session, you and I will create a resolution and a plan for fulfilling it, using the self-knowledge you’ve gained in past coaching sessions.

Offers 2 and 3 are available until January 31, 2009. I hope you will take advantage of these offers to consciously choose and create the life you want to live!

I have to admit something that may seem anathema to being a life coach: I haven’t made a New Year’s resolution in years. In fact, the last resolution I ever made was this one: “I resolve not to make any New Year’s resolutions.” That has been the one resolution I’ve made for perhaps the past twenty years, and it’s probably the only resolution I’ve ever kept.

Which is the reason I don’t like resolutions: I don’t keep them. Who does? The hour strikes midnight, a brand new year begins, and we face it with all the optimism of Pollyanna. This year we’re going to get it right. We’re going to lose those twenty pesky pounds. We’re going to get out of debt. We’re going to declutter and get organized. But do we? No.

Why not? Why do we fail so miserably at keeping our promises to ourselves? After all, we want good things, don’t we? Losing weight would help us be healthier. Getting out of debt would give us more financial resources for ourselves. So why are gyms full during the first two weeks of the year but by the third they’re back to normal?

I think we fail to fulfill our resolutions for two reasons. First, we make resolutions based on what we’re going to get rid of rather than what we’re moving toward. They’re negative. We’re going to lose weight, lose debt, lose disorganization. To fulfill these resolutions, we encounter what we don’t like about ourselves. We feel shame about the state we’ve allowed ourselves to get into. And that yucky feeling is like a punishment. In simple behavioral psychology terms, we face a negative consequence every time we try to fulfill our resolution: we connect with what we like least about ourselves. No wonder we slowly, almost imperceptibly, let our resolutions slip away until the next new year rolls around. Then we make the same resolution and begin the cycle again.

A second reason we often fail to fulfill our resolutions is that we make them based on external input. We want to lose twenty pounds because our society is obsessed with thinness, and we want to be culturally acceptable. We want to get out of debt because we feel like slackers if we’re in it. We want to become organized and without clutter so we can invite people over and have them see how we have it all together. But we haven’t quite owned these resolutions within us. They don’t come from our internal value system. They come from what we perceive society wants from us, and something within us rebels against that.

As a life coach, I’m about life transformation. I want people to live in the bigger story they’re meant to live, to play the bigger game. For that to happen, they need to make choices to change their lives. When a client comes to me, he’s paying me to help him become unstuck and shift into a different, more fulfilled, more balanced, and more joyful life. This requires change, sometimes very difficult change, and my clients make these adjustments and live their bigger lives. As a coach, I know how to encourage transformation in others. So if you’re hoping for something different for yourself in the coming year, here are some steps you can take to make more effective resolutions, ones that you’ll keep:

1. Choose a positive resolution. Choose something you’re moving toward instead of making a negative resolution to stop doing something. Instead of saying you’re going to lose twenty pounds, perhaps make a goal to exercise regularly and eat more healthfully. In this way, you’re choosing to move toward your more creative, resourceful, and whole self instead of shunning what you perceive as your deficiencies.
2. Choose resolutions in line with your values. As I described in a previous post, values are what make us each uniquely ourselves, what make us come alive. When we choose to make resolutions or set goals from our values (as opposed to the external pressures of society), we feel more alive in the pursuit of them, and that encourages us to continue the pursuit. So, for example, if we want to become more healthy, and we have a high value for the outdoors, we’ll naturally feel more inclined to fulfill our resolution for greater health by tweaking it to include outdoor activity. (To learn more about values, read this post: “Having a ‘Harried’ Christmas? Make it a Merry Christmas! Here’s How!” )
3. Make SMART goals. SMART goals are specific, measurable, accountable, realistic, and time-specific. If you want to choose a more healthy lifestyle, put some parameters around it to bring it to fruition. A SMART goal might be that you are going to walk outdoors five days a week for thirty minutes each day with a partner or that you’re going to eat five fruits or vegetables everyday.
4. Create an accountability structure. We’re not meant to do life alone. We need each other. And when we want to live bigger lives we need people on our side to reflect to us that these changes are worth making, that we can achieve them, and that someone witnesses our attempts, struggles, and triumphs. Accountability shouldn’t be something we dread. Accountability can offer the relief of letting someone else in, whether a friend, relative, or life coach, to help us become the creative, resourceful, and whole people we were originally designed to be. Choose someone who will extend you grace as you move toward your goals. Sometimes we don’t do what we said we were going to do, and instead of that being a source of shame, it’s an opportunity to be curious about it and to learn from it.

Last week I went off the radar, and when I returned, the game had changed. I recognized my place in the Bigger Story. I received greater clarity about what I’m doing and who I’m being, and that clarity has been confirmed over and over in the days since. So I feel the need to make a declaration: I’m all about transformation. When I talk with people, parent my kids, coach my clients, I want to be a conduit for meaningful, lasting life change.

If you’ve looked at my website, followed my Twitter feed, or read this blog, you know that for the past year I’ve focused my work on moms of gifted children. I still consider this a focus of my work. In fact, I truly want moms of gifted children to experience life change. I know how hard it is to spill yourself out for these youngsters who, delightful as they are, require extra vigilance and energy. If you mother gifted children, here’s what I long for you: that you would know yourself at your deepest core and create your life–your mothering and beyond–from that place.

And that’s what I want for every person I meet. I am now opening my arms and my coaching practice wide for whomever wants to taste life deeply. I’ve named my coaching business Deep Waters Coaching and Communications after this proverb: The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but someone of understanding can draw them out (Proverbs 20:5, my paraphrase). As a coach, I have skills to help people discover the purposes swimming deep within themselves. I know how to tell them where to look. And I love to help people look there and to witness their journey as they begin to recognize themselves in the reflection of those deep waters.

I do not do this work alone. I follow God’s leadership. I allow His Wind to blow where it may, and to blow me along with it. It’s who I am and what I do.

And that’s my declaration. I don’t know where this will take me, but I’m looking forward to the journey!