Coaching – Page 2 – Life Unfolds Blog

Go Green Sangha Radio Show Tomorrow

Tomorrow from 4:00-5:30pm PT, I’ll join host radio Ananda Leeke and fellow guest panelists Jennifer Moore of Pink Heels and Alicia Valair of Lifestyle Design Interiors for a discussion on “Transforming Your Life, Career, and Home into Sacred Space for the New Year.”

You can listen to the show online and participate in a Q&A with the panel.

Go Green Sangha Radio features programs that discuss how people choose and incorporate mindfulness, green living, creativity, diversity, the healing arts, and service in their daily lives, businesses, organizations, and communities.

Hope you’ll tune in!

AEDM Day 30: Right-Brain Business Plan ’09 Part I

Today is the last day of the Art Everyday Month challenge! What an awesome month of creativity, exploration and play. I also love the community and new connections this challenge fosters!

During the final two days of AEDM 2007, I invented my Right-Brain Business Plan, so it was only befitting that I use the last day of AEDM 2008 to start my new Right-Brain Business Plan for next year!

Part of what I envision is making a broader impact on the creative entrepreneur community and women in business. While I’m putting myself out there, I want to honor my values of fun/play, authenticity/trusting myself, peace/harmony, and beauty/creativity/expression.

One of my big accomplishments this year was hiring a Virtual Assistant. I’ve really enjoyed the extra support so that I can focus on the more strategic and profit-oriented aspects of my business. In 2009, I want to continue that process and develop more streamlined systems so I can work smarter and expand my business in new and exciting ways.

Also, I’ve had a blast this year with creating The Right-Brain Business Plan e-Book and the Unfolding Your Life Vision Kit. Next year, my goal is to finish my first book and get started on the other two that have also been percolating! I also want to develop new innovative products and services to offer.

Plus, I want to continue increasing my media exposure. Would love to be back on The View From The Bay and to get on The Martha Stewart Show to demonstrate an Unfolding Your Life Vision collage book, along with other TV, print and online venues!!

Last year, when I set my financial goals, I didn’t realize this, but I focused just on the actual amount rather than also including what the money would actually get me. While I’ve come pretty darn close to my goal, I know I can dream bigger for next year and beyond! Since money is not what drives me in running my own business, I brought into my vision more aspects of the lifestyle I want to be living. I think that’s something that really came home for me when I participated in a money circle earlier this year.

I look forward to fleshing out the details of my plan like I did last year. That’s really where the rubber starts meeting the road and the vision can come to life! I also just ordered a book that just came out earlier this month called The Creative Entrepreneur: A DIY Visual Guidebook for Making Business Ideas Real by Lisa Sonora Beam. It looks right up my alley and I bet it’ll give me more ideas for detailing out my 2009 Right-Brain Business plan.

All of this creating and art visioning during AEDM has inspired me to revisit the new letter from the future I started writing a few weeks ago. That will give me additional insights into my plan and I’m sure I’ll now have more things to add to my letter!

The end of the year is a great time to start thinking about what you want the next year to be like, so I hope you’ll do some visioning and planning, too! Please let me know, I’d love to see!!

AEDM Day 29: An Explosive Year in Review

Most of today was spent completing my “year in review” project on my exploding box. It ended up taking a lot longer than I anticipated, but it was great to spend time reflecting on all the exciting events and accomplishments that have transpired so far in 2008.

My moo cards were the perfect size to decorate the pages.

I even made a miniature brochure that unfolds just like the real one!

Wow, 2008 has really been an amazing year! So many of the things that I had envisioned in my Right-Brain Business Plan last year have manifested. I look forward to finishing up my year in review next month and to envisioning more for 2009!

AEDM Day 19: Book Sell Sheet Part II

So, I kept the commitment that I made in yesterday’s post to spend the afternoon today doing work related to the book. I printed out drafts, organized my book binder and did some writing. I also did the second side of the future book sell sheet. I based it on the format of the other examples my book coach provided me but added a creative touch.

Feels good to have made more progress on my project. And as luck would have it, our guest speaker at the SF Coaches meeting talked about the process she went through writing her book. She had a friend call her each morning to hold her accountable! She also shared how she helped her clients finish their books and other creative projects by simply taking small steps. It could be just writing one paragraph each day and then slowly working up to a page per day. Or spending 15 minutes a day painting. Before you know it, you’ll be farther along that you every thought you could be! I like that approach.

AEDM Day 11: What I Love About Me

Tonight’s art is inspired by my week four question to Kate and Molly on the sisters’ blog Kiss The Paper. This week’s prompt is “What do you love most about you?” as a follow up to last week’s prompt “What do you love most about your sister?” It’s been so cool to witness the amazing creations from this dynamic duo! Makes me wish I had a sister!

I had fun answering the same question as my Art Every Day challenge for Day 11. You can click on the image above to see a larger version.

I’d love to hear… What do you love most about YOU?

AEDM Day 5: Hue Are U?

I’m always learning new things from my clients, which is one of the things I love about my job! Today, one of my clients came over for a session and she brought along a card deck called “Hue Are U? A Deck For Discovering Your True Self” by Dewey Sadka. I’m a personality-typing nut, so I was all over this system, especially given that it’s based on simply picking colors you’re naturally drawn to. You also pick colors you don’t like (what you resist persists!).

Earlier tonight, I drew my cards. You pick your favorites and least favorites out of different groupings of colors for things like your basic motivation, how you relate to people, your hopes and fears, how you take on the world, your suppressed emotions/needs, etc. There are descriptions on the back of each card. My faves were in the green/yellow/blue family and least faves in the reds/purples.

It was a fun and enlightening exercise and I decided to diagram my results (see below).

AEDM Day 4: Having Fun With Values

What an amazing and historic night!!

Earlier today I finished my 10th collaged value card. I’ve been having so much fun exploring my values in a visual, tangible and creative way that I just had to create a card to honor my value of fun and play!

fun, play, enjoyment, experiential, in the body

Fun / Play / Enjoyment / Experiential / In the Body

Those colorful striped tights remind me of the whimsy, adventurous spirit and independent spunk of Pipi Longstocking. When I was a kid, I used to love watching Pipi Longstocking. I wished I had her crazy sideways braids and her unusal strength!

I also found a super cute image of a beagle to remind me of how fun it is to cuddle and play with Emmett.

values

I’ve been really enjoying interacting with my value cards – which makes sense considering “experiential” is an one of my values! Today, I placed my deck of cards on an easel by my computer. I choose to display my value card of grace, elegance and flow as I spent a good part of today writing. It reminded me of the ease and flow I enjoy when I’m in my creative groove.

visual values list

I also played around with using my cards to see how well certain aspects of my life stack up against my values. This spread here shows all of the values I’m honoring by working on my book. I’m looking forward to using this visual process to help me make future decisions, assess my commitments and align with what brings me most alive.

AEDM Day 3: More Collaged Values Cards

For Day 3 of Art Every Day Month, I made a couple more collaged values cards.

integrity, authenticity, wholeness, true to self, integrated

Integrity / Authenticity / Wholeness / True to Self / Integrated

love, connection, friendship, meaningful relationships

Love / Connection / Friendship / Meaningful Relationships

This has been a great exercise that I look forward to continue working with more deeply. In fact, earlier tonight I coached a client who is preparing for her certification exam. To practice and get feedback, she coached me for a bit. I got some great coaching on something I’ve been stuck around for the past several weeks. By asking about my values, she helped me get clearer on some actions to take. The biggest realization for me was that by avoiding direct requests and boundaries, I was out of integrity. Not doing anything was actually not speaking my truth. And that violated my value of integrity, authenticity and being true to myself.

I love that I now have a visual reminder to help me stay connected with this value. To help reinforce how speaking my truth from my heart keeps me on my path.

AEDM Day 2: More Collaged Values Cards

I finished three more collaged values cards today. Again, I was only going to do one and then I just got caught up in the fun! Turns out I was honoring my values of creativity and flow :).

risk-taking, stretching, branching out

Risk Taking / Stretching / Putting myself out there / Accomplishment / Excellence

peace, tranquility, harmony, inner life, meaning

Peace / Harmony / Tranquility / Inner Life / Meaning

learning, personal growth

Learning / Personal Growth

As I look at today’s cards and my cards from yesterday, I’m reminded how sometimes core values may actually conflict with each other and how they can all be interconnected as well. For example, when I put myself out there (like I did for my TV appearances), I might disrupt my sense of peace and tranquility for a bit but I’ve usually challenged myself to learn and grow so afterward I feel great! Another place where my values sometimes rub up against each other is around creativity/expression and my need for at least some order, structure and efficiency. My value of creativity ranks higher than my value for structure, though, so usually that wins out. I know structure and efficiency are important to me though, because when they’re not there in some form I get frustrated. The key is having awareness and making conscious choices about what values you’ll honor in any given moment.

I’m really enjoying this process of exploring my values in a visual and more tangible way. I hope you’ll make some of your own!

Day 1: Art Every Day Month 2008 Starts Today!

I can’t believe it’s already November! That means Leah Piken Kolidas’ Art Every Day Month challenge has begun. I’m excited to explore art and creativity in new exciting ways each day.

For my first project I started creating collage cards for each of my core values strings. I just wrote an exercise about these values cards in a chapter of the book that I’m working on, so I wanted to experiment with it a bit.

Values are what’s most important to you. When you’re honoring your core values, you feel totally alive, authentic and aligned. When your core values aren’t being met, you’ll probably feel frustrated, angry or resentful. When you’re faced with a decision, it’s helpful to see how well the different options honor your core values. Once I have my completed deck of values cards, I’m going to practice using them to make decisions in a visual way.

I planned to just make one card per day for the next several days, but I just got really in the creative flow so I ended up doing four tonight! They are collaged onto 5×7 pieces of card stock

beuaty, creativity, expression