Author: plcwp-admin

How to Revive Your Goals

Written on March 19, 2013. Posted in Working Mothers Newsletter.

Now that we’re a few months into the new year, I hope your new year is off to a fulfilling and successful start. The January newsletter provided tips on how to outlast your new year’s resolutions and this issue offers more tips to keep that momentum going.

Also, be sure to like me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter to receive more regular tips and tricks to achieve success that’s balanced.

Here’s to your continued fulfillment, success and balance.

Warmly,
Amber

How to Revive Your Goals

Focus on the Positive – One reason goals can fall short is they tend to stress the negative. Instead of thinking about what you want to eliminate in your life, think about what you want to create. For example, instead of just losing weight, think about creating health. Or instead of shrinking debt, think about creating abundance.

Remember the “Why” – To help keep you motivated when the going gets tough, it helps to remember why you set out to achieve your goal in the first place. For example, if you want to create a healthier lifestyle, what will be the benefit of this? Having more energy to play with your kids? Feeling better and looking better? Feeling more confident?

Make Self-Care a Priority – If you really want to make changes in your life, it’s imperative to take care of yourself and manage your stress. Start by making sure you’re getting enough sleep and eating well. I also highly recommend creating a daily renewal ritual to help you manage stress. This is any quiet, reflective activity that allows you to slow down your thinking brain (which can be caught up in fear, doubt, worry and guilt) and truly be in the moment. It allows you to recharge your battery so you can be more present and energetic throughout the rest of your day. Examples include meditation, yoga, journaling, prayer, yoga, nature walk, listening to music or any personal quiet activity. Start with 10 minutes/day and notice all the great benefits you receive.

Reflection – Review your progress at the end of each week. If you’ve achieved all your goals for the week, great! If you haven’t reached your goals, all is not lost. This is a valuable time for reflection. What did you learn by not reaching your goals? What was the benefit?

Celebrate Your Successes – One of the most important parts of working towards your goals is rewarding yourself when you’ve succeeded. Be sure to choose a reward at the beginning of the goal setting process and decide on when/how often you’ll cash in on that reward. Since you’re working on developing new habits in the beginning, I recommend starting with weekly rewards and slowly moving towards monthly rewards. The trick is to be sure to follow-through with rewarding yourself. You’ve worked hard and you deserve it.

revive your goals

How to Outlast Your Resolutions

Written on January 7, 2013. Posted in Working Mothers Newsletter.

Happy New Year! I hope you’re able to focus on whatever is most important to you this year.

My year is off to a fun start as Balance Bar® has hired me as their Balance Life Coach/ New Year’s Resolutions Guru. Join us for a live Twitter chat on January 9th at 1:30pm est/10:30am pst (#ResolutionChat). Balance Bar® is also hosting an Outlast Your Resolutions Facebook contest from 1/1 to 1/18. The grand prize is an hour long personal phone coaching session with me and a great prize package featuring Balance Bar products and items to help you achieve healthy balance in the coming year. In related news, I’m now on Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to like me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter to receive more regular tips and tricks to achieve success that’s balanced.

In the meantime, to get you off on the right foot, check out the first of two articles below on how to outlast your resolutions.

Here’s to your fulfillment, success and balance.

Warmly,
Amber

How to Outlast Your Resolutions

Resolutions are as common as champagne on New Year’s Eve and, unfortunately, they lose their fizz just as quickly. In fact, nearly 80% of all new-year’s resolutions are broken by the end of January each year.

This time of year, I tend to hear from many folks that they want to lose weight, get fit and create more organization. To set yourself up for lasting success, it’s important to approach your resolutions from a balanced perspective. Here are some tips that can set you on the path to success:

Short-Term Focus – Humans, by nature, have a short-term focus and work better with small steps. Many don’t consider this when making resolutions. It takes too long to achieve a goal of losing 20 pounds or of fitting into your skinny jeans. It’s much more realistic, for example, to commit to replacing one can of soda in the afternoon with a much healthier alternative. A piece of fruit or a handful of baby carrots will help curb your sugar craving and are healthier alternatives. The positive feedback from small, daily successes will create motivation and – eventually – lead to lasting, balanced change.
Be Patient with Yourself – On average, it takes 21 days to create a new habit. When you first get started, it will take more time and energy to focus on your daily goal. The trick is to notice when you didn’t accomplish your daily goal – and to not beat yourself up about it. After about three solid weeks of working on your daily goals, they’ll become second nature and part of your daily routine.
Enlist Your Support Network – Build the support and accountability you’ll need to make your resolution a reality. Talk with your partner or folks in your support network about your goals. Saying a resolution out-loud or even via social media creates outside accountability and increases your success rate by 80%. That’s why I’m excited to participate in the “Outlast Your New Year’s Resolutions” Facebook contest and offer you more tips.
Gauge Your Progress – Create a simple chart, diagram or collage that will help you to gauge your progress one day at a time. Simply refer to this tool at the beginning and end of each week and month to review how far you’ve come. You can represent your progress with percentages, different colors or smiley faces. There’s no one right way to do it. All that matters is that you create a measurement tool that works for you.
Create a Theme – If resolutions don’t appeal to you but you still want to make some changes in your life this coming year, consider creating a theme for the year. A theme is a word or succinct phrase that describes how you want to show up in the world, the qualities you’ll bring forth and the impact you’ll make each day, week and month of the year. Examples include “going out on a limb,” “feeling good and looking good,” or “enjoying the fruits of my labor.” You get the idea.

Once you have your resolution or theme for the year, you can make a list of actions that will help support your intention. For example, for the theme of “feeling good and looking good”, perhaps it’s following-through with all those doctor appointments you’ve been putting off or committing to start each day with breakfast.

To help anchor your resolution or theme so that it has a longer shelf life and you’re reminded of it on a daily and weekly basis, try writing it as the screensaver on your computer; as the wallpaper on your phone; or on the front page of your hard copy calendar. The idea is to have it front and center so that each day you’re reminded of your intention for the year. Then, each day, you choose one small, achievable, realistic action step that will help support your theme or resolution.

outlast your resolutions

Ditch the Resolutions and Create Real, Lasting Change

Written on January 24, 2012. Posted in Working Mothers Newsletter.

Happy New Year! Now that we’re a few weeks in, I hope your new year is off to a fulfilling and successful start.

If you’re having trouble keeping your new year’s resolutions but you still want to make some changes this year, read my article below on how to create a theme for the year. A theme is a way of showing up in the world, the qualities you’ll bring forth and the impact you’ll make each day, week and month of the year.

Also, check out USA Today’s recent feature of my practice as a life/career coach for working mothers and Bay Area Parent’s recent interview with me on how to make important life changes. Happy reading and here’s to your new year!

Warmly,
Amber

Ditch the Resolutions and Create Real, Lasting Change

I’m not a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions. Even with the best intentions, resolutions tend to lose momentum and fizzle out in the first few weeks of the year. You’re left feeling like you “failed” and you beat yourself up for not following through.

Instead, try setting yourself up for success by looking out over the year ahead and thinking about your theme – a succinct phrase or word that describes how you want to show up in the world; the impact you want to make; your intention for each day of the year. Examples include “going out on a limb,” “feeling good and looking good,” or “enjoying the fruits of my labor.” You get the idea.

Once you have your intention for the year, you can make a list of actions that will help support your intention. For example, for “feeling good and looking good”, perhaps it’s following-through with all those doctor appointments you’ve been putting off; scheduling exercise into your calendar for twice/week and finding a pair of jeans that fit well and you feel great in.

To help anchor your theme so that it has a longer shelf life and you’re reminded of it on a daily and weekly basis, try writing the theme as the screensaver on your computer; as the wallpaper on your phone; or on the front page of your hard copy calendar. The idea is to have it front and center so that each day you’re reminded of your intention for the year. Then, each day, you get to choose what one small, achievable, realistic action step you can take to support your theme.

Over the years, many readers have written in with their themes for the year. I’ve been impressed and moved by the depth, meaning and variety of themes and look forward to hearing from you this year.

create lasting change, ditch resolutions

Top Ten Tips for Working Parents

Written on April 22, 2011. Posted in Working Mothers Newsletter.

As I look out at our garden, the signs of spring are exciting, inviting and full of hope. I invite you to take a moment to notice what’s growing around you.

I’m happy to share my brand new websites Pacific Life Coach and Working Mother’s Coach with you and I’d love to hear your feedback.

Warmly,
Amber

Top Ten Tips for Working Parents

1) Build Your Support Network
Talk to your partner or folks in your support network about your work/life vision. You’ll strengthen your relationships, save time and energy and build the support you’ll need to make your vision a reality.

2) Communicate at Work Too
Not everyone has the luxury of working with colleagues who are familiar with the challenges of a working parent. Talk regularly with your supervisor and/or your staff about your schedule, priorities and options. Only you know what you need to balance your roles as parent and professional, so speak up.

3) No Parent is an Island – Delegate!
One of the secrets to success as a working parent is learning how to delegate to other staff, your partner, your family, etc. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, take a look at your to-do list and ask yourself some honest questions. What do you absolutely need to do right now? What can you postpone, delegate or say “no” to?

4) Learn How to Say “No”
Saying “no” is a critical skill you can build. The inability to say “no” is one of the biggest obstacles to achieving balance. Once you have defined your priorities, you have a clear idea of how you want to spend your time. Saying “no” allows you to say “yes” to your priorities.

5) Learn How to Let Go
Take a hard and honest look at what’s in your control vs. what’s out of your control. Once you figure this out, you can shift your energy, time and focus to that which can truly benefit from your attention.

6) Create a Childcare Safety Net
A key ingredient to feeling good about working is knowing that your children are getting the best care possible. Pay attention to your intuition and your child’s individual needs when choosing childcare. And create plan B and C for the inevitable emergency needs.

7) Schedule Self-Care into Your Calendar
The success of your work/life vision depends on your self-care. Schedule your self-care activities into your calendar as non-negotiable dates and times.

8) Learn How to Manage Guilt
The next time you feel guilty, shine a spotlight on guilt. Get really curious about it. What happened right before you started to feel guilty? What’s the cost of feeling guilty? Spend a minute writing down everything that comes up for you around guilt. You’ll notice that by writing it down, it decreases the power of the emotion. Better awareness of guilt leads to better management of guilt.

9) Lower Your Expectations
If you want to maintain your sanity and sense of well-being, adopt the mantra “good is good enough”.

10) Get Comfortable with Constant Change
Once you can embrace rather than resist the constant change that parenthood brings, you’ll experience much less stress. Working parenthood calls for you to be agile and adaptable – work on stretching that muscle.

tips for working parents

Stop Being So Defensive!

Written on July 13, 2010. Posted in Life Coaching Newsletter.

Happy summer! I hope this email finds you enjoying long days and lots of light.

If this issue’s headline caught your eye – yes, it was meant to be provocative and somewhat ironic. Check out the full article below for tips on how to be less defensive and more powerful in your personal and professional communication.

On a personal note, this March, our 2-year old daughter welcomed her baby brother to the world and what an amazing few months it’s been. Our household has been full of love, laughter, challenge and not much sleep. There’s nothing like a toddler and a newborn to keep things interesting.

With much gratitude,
Amber

Stop Being So Defensive!

Have you ever been in a conversation with a colleague, friend or family member about a sensitive topic and ended up in a power struggle, conflict or shutting down? Or perhaps in response to someone else’s criticism, you find yourself justifying your behavior, blaming the other person or avoiding him or her all together? It sounds like defensiveness is at play.

So, how do you stop being so defensive?

You can start by practicing powerful, effective communication.

Curious Questions

One option is to ask curious, innocent, and neutral questions to understand accurately what the other person means, believes, or feels. For example, if someone acts upset, simply ask him/her directly about your assumption so he/she can confirm, deny, or qualify. For example, “Are you angry (upset, frustrated, irritated) about something?” Try to avoid questions that start with “why” as they tend to put others on the defense. For example, “Why are you so upset?” makes an assumption (which may or may not be accurate) and will likely make the other person feel like they’ve done something wrong. Instead, try “I get the sense that you may be upset. Am I reading this accurately?”

Nothing More Than Feelings

Another way to approach a sensitive conversation is to make statements that start with “I feel”. If you’re simply stating what you genuinely feel and you use a neutral tone, the other person can’t say you’re wrong. Your feelings are your feelings and clearly stating them will help to stave off a power struggle from the get-go. For example, instead of saying to your partner “You’re always late”, try “I feel disappointed when we don’t get to eat dinner together.”

But(t) out!

A third way to nip defensiveness in the bud is to use “and at the same time” instead of “but”. Often times when you use the word “but”, it negates everything you said before the “but”. For example, instead of “I understand you had to work late but I made dinner” try, “I understand that you had to work late and at the same time I made dinner”. Notice how it changes the whole tone of the message? Again, it doesn’t blame the other person. Instead, it simply states the facts.

Next time you find yourself in a potentially defensive situation, try out these tools. They may help you avoid unnecessary conflict, gain respect and strengthen personal and professional relationships.

stop being defensive

How to Manage Stress in a Fast-Paced Culture

Written on February 2, 2010. Posted in Life Coaching Newsletter.

If you want to achieve more success and fulfillment this year, this issue’s feature article offers insight into the role that stress plays in your life and practical tips on how to manage that stress.

Also, if you’ve ever been curious about working from home or owning your own business, check out Bay Area Parent’s Jan. 2010 article “How You Can Work From Home”. The article profiles several work-at-home moms, including myself, about the joys and challenges of owning a home-based business.

Here’s to creating more of what you want in your life and career this year.

With deep gratitude,
Amber

How to Manage Stress in a Fast-Paced Culture

Do you ever feel you have too much to do and not enough time? Perhaps you find yourself forgetting to breathe, trying to do three things at once or unable to be in the moment. If you’re like many of us, a fast-paced life of multi-tasking combined with regular family and career challenges can easily induce stress on a daily basis. And, unfortunately, stress has a significant impact on the human brain and can affect relationship skills, creativity, and joy.

That’s a pretty big impact. So, how can you better manage your stress?

The first step is to simply notice when you’re stressed. Shine a spotlight on it and name it. For example, every time you notice that you’re feeling stressed you can say to yourself, “I recognize that I’m getting overwhelmed in this moment”. Or, you can make a check mark on a piece of paper every time stress rears its head. You may have 100 checkmarks on your paper and that’s OK. It’s important to just acknowledge it and try not to judge yourself.

Once you get really good at noticing when you’re stressed, start to identify the sources of your stress and how you react. For example, what’s the first thing you notice in your body when you’re stressed? What does it feel like? What happened right before you felt this in your body (what triggered your stress)? Better awareness of stress leads to better management of stress.

The second step is to get really clear on the cost of your stress and the benefit of addressing it. For example, the cost may be loss of productivity, the inability to fully relax and a short temper. And the benefit, for example, may be more quality time with your family, lower blood pressure and better communication skills at work. We all need reasons to act and identifying the benefit of changing your behavior can be a terrific motivator.

The third step is to create new best practices to proactively manage your stress on an ongoing basis. Self-care is a great place to start. It’s all about you taking better care of yourself which will, in turn, benefit your family, your career and everything else that is important to you.

Below is a list of effective self-care practices – ideal for moms – or for anyone who wants less stress in their lives.

1) Schedule Ten Minutes for Yourself Every Day
2) Talk to Friends or Loved Ones
3) Remember to Breathe (deeply and often!)
4) Actively Notice and Express Gratitude and Appreciation
5) Allow Time to Adjust to Life Transitions
6) Take Small Spiritual Retreats (even if it’s just a moment in your yard or a walk around the block)
7) Exercise
8) Keep Investing in Yourself
9) Allow Interests to Surface
10) Be Creative (draw, sing, doodle – just release that energy)

These are just a few examples. Which of these (or other) self-care practices appeals most to you? It’s all about identifying and integrating the tools that will work best for you and that you will use on a daily basis.

Sometimes the simplest life changes have the most impact. If we practice them every day, all we have to do is invest a small amount of time in ourselves.

What will it take to put self-care at the top of your to-do list?

manage stress

How to Make Important Life Changes

Written on November 9, 2009. Posted in Life Coaching Newsletter.

Happy fall! In the spirit of Thanksgiving, thank you for the opportunity to connect with inspiring, thoughtful folks like you. I feel incredibly fortunate to have a career that empowers others to effect meaningful change in their lives.

Speaking of change, autumn often evokes powerful images of change. If you’re thinking about making a big change in your life – for example a new career, more time with family, a healthier lifestyle, etc. – this issue will help you break through barriers and create your own action plan.

“If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies.” – Author Unknown

With deep gratitude,
Amber

How to Make Important Life Changes

If you’re like many of my clients, you may want to make big changes in your life – for example, a new career, more time with family or a healthier lifestyle – but you don’t know where to start, life gets in the way or you end up feeling stuck.

So, what’s holding you back?

Perhaps it’s procrastination, self-sabotage or fear of the unknown. Or maybe you start initiating change, but quickly fall back into an existing comfort zone. This “easy route” often leads to complacency and stagnation.

How can you make lasting changes to enrich your life?

Here are a few thoughts that I’ve picked up through coaching over the years:

Slow Down – If you’re stressed out or operating at full steam all the time, it’s incredibly difficult to make any real, lasting change in any part of your life. So, your first step is to slow down and free up the mental and emotional space that’s needed. Decades of research point to the benefit of reflective activities that quiet fear, doubt and worry and allow you to be more energized, engaged and in the moment. For example, try carving out 10 minutes twice a day for a daily renewal ritual such as meditation, yoga, prayer, writing, listening to music, walking, painting, knitting, etc. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as it allows you to truly slow down, create space, and renew your energy – all necessary ingredients for change.

Draft a Vision – Before you spend the time and energy that’s required to make a big change, take a step back and focus on what’s really important to you. When the time feels right, write out a couple of paragraphs about where you want to be with your goals one year from now. For example, how will success with your goals impact your life and how you show up in the world?

Identify Your Strengths – In our culture, there’s a lot of focus on shortcomings and weaknesses which can make us feel powerless. Instead, what if you empowered yourself by focusing on the strengths that are inherent in you? If you determine your core strengths and leverage them, you’ll be more successful in achieving your vision and more fulfilled in the process. For example, if you want to get into a new career and one of your strengths is connecting with others, it will serve you well to attend networking events and to conduct informational interviews. Since you excel at these types of activities and they come naturally to you, chances are you will not only succeed but also enjoy the process.

Craft a Plan – Once you know your strengths and have a clear vision, break your goal into small, achievable action steps that are big enough to give you a sense of progress yet small enough to be realistic. If you’re a high-achiever, you may try to take on everything all at once, which can set you up for failure. Instead, set yourself up for success by starting with small action steps and slowly working towards your goal.

Create Accountability – On average, it takes about 28 days to create a new habit. For example, if you’re trying to create a healthier lifestyle by eating right and exercising more, it will take about a month for these actions to become routine. Change is often one step forward and two steps back and you’ll inevitably face challenges and set-backs along the way. You’ll need support while you make major changes in your life and work towards your vision. Don’t try to do it all by yourself. Talk to your friends, colleagues or coach about your plans and ask them to help hold you accountable. Other people will help you stay motivated, accountable and on track and when you accomplish your goals, you’ll have others with which to celebrate.

Now that you have an rough outline of how to effect personal change, I encourage you to work through your plan and customize it in a way that serves you.

Ready, set, go. You can do it.

important life changes

Author: plcwp-admin

How to Revive Your Goals

How to Outlast Your Resolutions

Don’t Let Fear Trump Success

Ditch the Resolutions and Create Real, Lasting Change

How to Complete Your To-Do Lists

Top Ten Tips for Working Parents

Stop Being So Defensive!

Curious Questions

Nothing More Than Feelings

But(t) out!

How to Manage Stress in a Fast-Paced Culture

How to Make Important Life Changes

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