Self Improvement

Start small: How daily habits improve our lives

When you take care of the little things, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find out that the big things often happen much more easily. Sophia Amoruso, #girlboss

It’s funny how starting one practice compounds and makes a huge difference in outcomes. Once we master one area of our life, we can dust our hands and move on to the next. Of course, we don’t let the area we have mastered backslide. We maintain that area.

Don’t tackle multiple areas at once. You’ll get overwhelmed and each area will suffer.

Rachel Hollis, in her book, Girl, Stop Apologizing, says, “When it comes to personal growth, (people) often approach it like a buffet. They want to work on a little bit of this and a little bit of that. They reason that all the areas of their lives are important, and so they should try to fix them all at once. Maybe that’s possible for some people, but I can tell you what’s worked for me, in contrast, is focus.

It’s hard for first-timers to commit to only one area when they’re passionate about growth. What they don’t realize is that a goal is like a harbor. When the tide rises in the harbor, all the boats rise. This amazing thing happens when you start to grow in one area of your life: other areas improve with it”.

I’m always looking to improve, up my game, and adding little daily habits are definitely one of the ways I do this.

We set up systems, routines if you will.

Here are three practices to get you started:

Make your bed every day. Doing this one thing will make a huge difference in your life. You are more likely to pick up the rest of your room if your bed is made. It amazes me that I went for years, for most of my life, without making my bed. I HAVE to make my bed now, which isn’t a problem, it’s not a task I come back to. I make my bed as soon as I get out of it.

Making your bed will reassure you that you are on top of it. You’ll get a sense of satisfaction when you come home and see your bed made. Plus, my bed is so much more comfortable to climb into if I’ve it’s already made.

Put your keys in the same place every time. I know this sounds simple, but I hear women complaining about always having to rifle around their bags for their keys. Why? Tuck your keys into the same pocket in your bag every time. It is so frustrating to spend time looking for keys.

When you get home hang your keys up, or have a plate in your entry to place them. Don’t waste another minute looking for keys.

Clean the room when you are done using it. Set the room so that is ready to use the next time. If you watch a movie, put the blankets away. If you make a meal, clean it up. If you do yard work, put the tools away.

You’ll be amazed how in the words of John Maxwell, “Consistency compounds,” and you’ll start to see real progress by starting with small actions. These actions take energy and time, but they also save us time, and it’s more likely that your space will be clean if an unexpected guest pops by.

What daily actions have you made routine that you love?

2019 Book Reads (and listens)

Looking over my list, I see that I’ve rated just about every book a 4 or 5 star rating. I feel this is because I have no tolerance for books that don’t interest me. I have no trouble abandoning a book half-read. There are too many amazing books in the world for me to waste my time with mediocre books.

I hope you enjoy my (eclectic) list.

The Way of the Superior Man: A spiritual guide to mastering the challenges of women, work, and sexual desire, David Deida

***** You might rightly wonder why I, as a woman, would listen to this book. It is a fascinating look into male/female relationships. It taught me things about my worldview that I didn’t realize before. It has also helped me look at all people I come across as divine, and hustling the best they can, just like me. I highly recommend this book for everyone.

Rules for a Knight, Ethan Hawke

***** Ethan Hawke found a book among his family’s inherited memorabilia that belonged to a great great grandfather in Europe, who was an elderly knight. The experienced Knight wrote a book of advice to the younger knights including his sons and grandsons. It is such a great book of advice that would help anyone become a better person. The book also tells what stone henge really was.

Half the Sky, Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

Practical Politics, Human Rights, Globalization & Politics

I can’t rate this book because to rate it would be to put it into the same category as other books. This book describes the plight of girls worldwide, girls who are forced into the sex trade or forced to marry men who rape them. If we think we have come a long way in women’s rights, this unforgettable book shows us just how far we still have to go and how much help is needed.

Conversations with God, Book 1, Neale Donald Walsch

***** Spirituality. This book is filled with wisdom and insight. It made me reflect on what I believe about God, the Universe, and our place in it. I highly recommend this book to everyone.

Conversations with God, Book 2, Neale Donald Walsch

***** Spirituality. I gave it a few months between reading the first book in this series and buying the second. I go back and read passages in this book like it is scripture. These books left me on a spiritual high that lasted for months.

12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson

**** Self Help. Jordan Peterson tells it like it is, and a lot of young people could benefit from listening to him. I gave his book 4 stars instead of 5 because he is long winded, and I could only make it through half the book.

Money, Master the Game, Tony Robbins

***** Finance. This book is the deepest dive into financial literacy I’ve read. Robbins consulted experts that the lay man or woman doesn’t have access to. If you follow the advice in this book, you will be well on your way to financial freedom. It is an advanced read.

The Female Brain, Louann Brizendine

***** Popular Neuropsychology. This book was a fascinating look into ancient wiring that explains why women do what they do. I’m looking forward to reading her book, The Male Brain.

A mind of your own, Kelly Brogan

***** Health and Wellness. This book continues to change my life as I implement Dr. Brogan’s recommendations. The winter blues are far, far away this year, thanks to Dr. Brogan.

Stress Less, Accomplish More: Meditation for Extraordinary Performance, Emily Fletcher

*****This book took my meditation practice and my life to a new level. I was meditating regularly in the morning, but committed to meditating regularly in the evening too, and easily continue to do what I need in the evening with sustained energy. I’ve adopted Fletcher’s meditation methods, and really love them.

Party Girl, Rachel Hollis

**** Fiction. This is an enjoyable beach read. It is fiction based on Hollis’s early career as an event planner.

Sweet Girl, Rachel Hollis

**** Fiction. This is the second book in Hollis’s girl series. It’s cute, but the story is similar to Party Girl, and I haven’t made it to the third book yet.

Girl, wash your face, Rachel Hollis

***** Self Help. Rachel tells it like the boss she is, no holds barred. If you want a better life for yourself, stop making excuses. Highly recommend

The Miracle Morning, Hal Elrod

****Self Help. Hal gives steps to jump start your day in order to jumpstart your life. I only read half the book because I am already doing my own version of what he suggests. But I did hand the book off to a friend, and I think it has helped her a lot.

Blue, The Color of Noise, Steve Aoki

*** Memoir. This book chronicles Steve’s life as the son of restaunteer Hiroaki Aoki, who founded the Benihana restaurants. I read this book after watching Steve’s interview on Impact Theory, but I had never heard of him, and by the end of the book was questioning why I kept reading. But Steve had some treasures at the end. He mentions Anticancer, by David Servan-Schreiber MD PhD, which lead me to Kitchen Table Wisdom by Rachel Naomi Remen.

Composed, the Memoirs of Rosanne Cash

*** Memoir. I’m not familiar with Cash’s music, but I her book is worth a read. It offers an honest look into the life of her father through her experience.

Lies my teacher told me, James W. Loewen

***** History – Nonfiction. This book is amazing. Everyone in America should read this book. Loewen is a history professor who is beyond frustrated at the version of American history taught in American text books, from Columbus being hailed as a hero despite the countless atrocities he committed, to the plague that decimated the native american population, to the nadir period of African-American history.

Anti cancer, David Servan-Schreiber MD PhD

*****Health and Wellness. If I could give this book more than 5 stars, I would. Everyone should read this book. Servan-Schrieber is diagnosed with a brain tumor twice as a young doctor. This book chronicles what he learns about how to prevent and heal cancer to compliment traditional therapy. Of all my reading on health, this is the book that finally got me to switch to butter from grass-fed cows and raw milk.

Bulletproof Diet, Dave Asprey

*****Health, Diet. I checked this book out from the library then made myself stop reading it until I got my own copy because there is so much good information in this book and I wanted, no, needed to write notes in the margins. I’ve implemented some dietary changes before I even finished the book.

The Third Plate, Dan Barber

*****Food, Sustainable Farming. Dan Barber is a famous chef and his book is a fascinating look into the world of a white tablecloth restaurant. But this book offers so much more. It takes a hard look at the industrialization of the American food system, from chemical fertilizers and pesticides to the practice of huge farms that only plant one crop. The solutions are simple, but not easy.

Kitchen Table Wisdom, Stories That Heal. By Rachel Naomi Remen

*****Medical, psychology, short essay. I gifted this book to my siblings and friends for Christmas this year. It is a collection of short essays from a medical doctor turned therapist to cancer patients and co-founder of (kt) treatment center. The stories touch upon humanity in such a beautiful way.

tiny beautiful things, Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar, Cheryl Strayed

*****Strayed is raw, and the questions she answers are equally raw. She writes with such love and compassion, and sage wisdom to the letters she receives as Dear Sugar. She never judges, but encourages people to live boldly. She sees and embraces the naked mess that life is sometimes.

Girl, Stop Apologizing, Rachel Hollis

***** Business, Self Help. Hollis is my girl, she is an amazing business leader who tells it like it is. She has started multiple successful businesses and shares her tools, tips, and tactics in this kick-ass business book.

Self Improvement

A book review: Rachel Hollis’ Girl, Wash Your Face

Rachel Hollis, of The Chic site, is a business badass. She moved to LA, by herself, when she was 17, started her own event planning business not long after that, and now runs a lifestyle mega-business with her husband. She has a huge following, keynotes to sold out events, and is a best-selling author and speaker. Pretty much, she’s my hero.

She wrote the wildly successful book, “Girl, Wash Your Face.” One part made me tear up a little, because I recognize myself in her. The need to prove myself, the need to always get things done, as if I’m trying to save myself by staying busy.

Few things give me anxiety like a day with nothing planned.

Rachel calls herself a workaholic. She says, “The need to prove my worth, coupled with the fact that I’m good at my career, made me one heck of a workaholic.”

She writes about making herself sick from the stress of working too much. She got Bell’s Palsy, twice. I’ve had that shit, and it ain’t fun!

She got Vertigo, that she couldn’t shake. She says, “I resigned myself to the fact that life would be a little dizzier forever. It wasn’t a big deal, I told myself. It only meant that instead of giving 100 percent, I now would need to give 130 percent to make up for not being able to work fast anymore. It may sound crazy to write that, but in my overachieving mind, it made absolute sense.”

“In every single instance, my vertigo was a physical response to an emotional problem.”

Her Vertigo got so bad that she went to see a healer. He asked questions and listened to her and then told her to:

“Go home and do nothing.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Go home and do nothing. Sit around, watch TV, spend an entire day on the sofa. Discover that your world doesn’t implode without you going a hundred miles an hour. Get up the next day and do it again.”

“What would happen to you if you stopped moving?” He asked me.

I shook my head in blind panic. The image of a shark floating to the surface of the ocean, dead from lack of movement, came to mind.” All I could think was, I don’t know, but it will be bad.

I forced myself to stop working so many hours. I went to the office from nine thirty to four thirty and was shocked to discover that the world continued to spin on its axis. I pushed myself to rest and do nothing. It gave me massive anxiety, so I poured myself a glass of wine and kept right on sitting there. I looked for joy. I looked for peace.

I stopped drinking so much caffeine. I played with my kids. I did a lot of therapy. And then I did some more. I prayed. I looked up every scripture in the Bible that talks about rest. I had dinner with my girlfriends. I went on dates with my husband”.

She says, sometimes, “I still feel compelled to work until I’m exhausted, physically ill, pissed off at the world, or unable to focus my eyes-but at least they don’t all happen at the same time anymore. I feel like I’m gaining on this problem.”

I’m not there yet. I don’t have dinner with my girlfriends, I don’t go on dates with my husband. We do have a movie night every Friday, and I read to my kid and we watch popular science videos on youtube as I drift off to sleep every night. This is non-negotiable, and a favorite part of my day, but I usually stop working around 9:00 pm for this.

This is one of my life lessons. One that I learn over and over again. Slow down, take a breath. Recover. Rest. Don’t make the other people in your life crazy.

Here’s what I want, here is all I want: meaningful, fulfilling work where I can move at a steady pace. Trusting that money that is abundant. Knowing that we have enough for our needs. Family and friends that are close. Knowing that there is always work to be done and time to do it.

Self Improvement

How to be a Ninja: Improving career skills improves life skills

I was my strongest when I was teaching yoga. People would ask me how I got so strong, was it because I did so much yoga? And how did I get so good at yoga, did I do it every day? I told them that I did not do yoga everyday, I cross trained through running and weightlifting, and would usually attend a dance class every week just because I loved it. Everything I did made me better at the other activities. Yoga made me a better runner. Strength training improved my yoga practice.

It is the same in our life outside of fitness. Take business for example. I’ve found that any improvement I make at work carries over into my personal life. Here are some of my hard earned business lessons:

If you have information that is useful to someone else, the sooner you say it – the better:

I fight an innate passive nature. I naturally tend not to say anything until the last moment. I think I do this subconsciously to protect myself because I feel people around me will get upset by anything disruptive. But withholding useful information usually causes awkward moments at the least, and emergencies and chaos at the worst.

For example, I’ve told someone at the beginning of the day that I need to ship the job they are working on that day. They say OK, but as the day progressed they weren’t working on it, and I knew it has to ship at 3:00. My inner battle is “Am I being too compulsive, because, I can be that way, or do I really need to say something. I still have to muster my courage and tell them at 1:00 that I need the job by 2 or 2:30 so I can get it ready to ship. The sooner I give my coworker all the details, the better it is going to be for all of us.

Leadership means I have to let people know my expectations, I can’t leave them guessing. I would see something that would trigger a red flag in my brain, but subconsciously, I would dismiss it in order to keep myself safe and not rock the boat with anyone. Then later the issue would come up, and I would say, “I saw that, I just didn’t say anything about it.”

I’ve really had to train myself, and my team to question everything. I tell them, “If you have a question on something, ask. If you see something, say something”. And in communicating, I’ve found it is always better to let people know any information I have as soon as I can. This is more about scheduling things and noticing potential pitfalls than giving people feedback, which needs to be done carefully and thoughtfully.

This has helped me in my personal relationships as well. I tend to live in my head, but if I have information that my family needs, the sooner I let them know, the better for everyone.

Think about what your customers want

This one changed my business, and me. I have sometimes felt a pull of customer demands weighing heavily one me. My ideal life would be me nestled into a couch reading a book. It would look like this: Hmm, what is on my schedule today? Oh, all I have to do is stay here and read all the books that are waiting for me. No one is going to ask anything of me?

But in reality, I have to interact with people and people have needs. It was taxing for me when people made requests from me. What changed for me is when I really took time to consider how I could serve my customers. Their wants are pretty simple: they want their jobs done on-time, correctly, and within budget.

I also ask myself regularly if I have taken the time to care for myself and others in my personal life, and how I can better serve my family.

Organization

Order sends a meta-signal of peace. Kelly Brogan

I was raised amid clutter, and I took to it like a fish to water. And, I love paper, so an empty surface is in danger in my house. I was a graphic artist at my first job after college, and I got really good. I was super fast, I was a pilot, and my keyboard was the control center. But I had a tendency to work right up to quitting time, and not take any time at the end of my day to clean my area, and then in the morning, I would just start right in again where I left off. One day my manager said that he was going to start giving awards to the people who had clean desks at the end of the day. I’m pretty sure that contest was aimed at me.

I still had this bad habit when I returned to the workforce after my 10 year stay-at-home mommyhood. I couldn’t figure out how other people kept their desks clean. I’m sure they had just as much paper floating through their lives as I had, but somehow they kept their desks neat and tidy.

I can walk by a shelf at work and tell when one of my coworkers has been in that area because everything is lined up. It is very calming.

But now I’m the boss, and have to set an example. I ask my team to keep their areas neat, and “don’t work on top of work.” When I have time, and I don’t always have the time, I get to the shop early and tidy every morning for 15 minutes. And then at the end of the day, I take just a minute to gather what I have been working on into a neat pile to go through in the morning. It makes a huge difference.

Patrice Washington says, “Clutter is the physical manifestation of chaos in your mind.” I have to believe that’s a little bit true. As I meditate regularly and work hard to eat right and workout, I feel the chaos in my mind quieting, I feel the clutter and cobwebs clearing. I’m able to slow down and get an aerial view of my life, which is pretty awesome.

I’m now at the point where I straighten shelves at work as I pass them by.

This new tidiness bend is showing up at home too. I don’t have cleanliness in every space yet, but I’m getting there, and really enjoying the tidy spaces I have created.

I’m a tidiness ninja.