by Caroline Leach | Mar 31, 2021 | Leadership, Work/Life
What do you really, really want?
Not what you think others want you to want. Not what you believe is socially acceptable to want. Not what you think you’re capable of achieving.
No, what do you really want?
This is one of the most important questions any of us can contemplate. It’s a question that’s often at the heart of a coaching journey.
You don’t have to know how to get what you want. Once you know what you want, you’ll figure out the how. Step by step and day by day.
You’ll become more attuned to opportunities that could help you move forward. You’ll become more discerning about what to decline, because it doesn’t serve your larger vision.
Now that we’re one quarter of the way through 2021, it’s a good time to pause and reflect. How is your year going so far? Is it what you intended? And what do you really want?
by Caroline Leach | Feb 28, 2021 | Social Media
We’re at about the one-year mark for our stay-at-home lives to stop Covid-19. There’s light of the end of the tunnel. People are wearing masks and socially distancing. Case positivity rates are dropping. More vaccine doses are becoming available.
And yet there’s also a sense of extreme fatigue. Time has taken on odd proportions. Days blend into nights. Days becomes weeks. Weeks become a year.
As I contemplated the month of March, a feeling of sameness crept in. All I saw on the calendar was work, work, and more work. Don’t get me wrong. I love the work. And I’m thankful to have it.
But life is not solely about work. It’s about people. It’s about enjoyment. It’s about the journey.
What was missing from my calendar were all of those times. Time with friends. Time for fun. Time to simply BE.
It’s time to take a break already. As humans we’re wired to work, play, and rest. When it gets out of balance, everything suffers.
What’s a fun break you will take today?
by Caroline Leach | Jan 31, 2021 | Leadership, Work/Life
Life can be endlessly complex, no? More technology, more commitments, and more goals and dreams. Layered over that is a global pandemic, climate change, social justice, and political polarization. It can make life feel especially heavy.
When overwhelm rears its head, as it often does, one question can help. It isn’t to imply that the challenges any of us faces are easy, or simple, or straightforward. But in any given moment, asking “what would made it simple?” can help you identify new ways to take action.
This blog is an example. I’ve posted to it each month for the last six years. There’s a phenomenon about “not breaking the chain.” Once you do something repeatedly, you accrue “check marks,” day after day, or month after month. As you rack up more check marks, it provides its own momentum to keep going. This is not my original idea, but it resonates with me.
So here it is, the last day of January. If I do not post to my blog by midnight, I will break the chain of 72 months of posting. Usually my posts are 500 or more words in length. But I don’t have 500 words to share right now. Life is busy and complex. So how can I make it easy? By sharing this question with you.
by Caroline Leach | Dec 31, 2020 | Change, Leadership, Learning
What do you share on social media when life is difficult? When life is even busier than normal because of pressures that come with living in the Covid era?
For me it’s meant I haven’t posted on social media as much in the last few months. In part it’s because my business is growing — consulting, coaching, speaking, and teaching — and I have more work to do. That’s a good thing. It’s a blessing in this environment.
Yet it also brings new pressures. How do I continue to deliver my best work? How do I scale my business to the next level? How do I automate certain processes and which ones?
The other part is just how difficult it’s been. The struggle. The juggle. The terror of wondering, day after day, will everything work out?
This part comes mostly from the steakhouse my husband opened in the summer of 2020, after two years in the making. The dream became reality, and Covid turned it into a nightmare. And we have lots of company in this strange space.
The good news is people love the restaurant. Tonight we’re delivering three times of the number of New Year’s Eve meals we estimated.
The bad news is takeout and delivery is not a sustainable business model. I understand why indoor and outdoor dining has been prohibited to help stop the spread of Covid. What’s harder is moving forward day after day when most of your ability to operate isn’t there, with 260 empty seats.
This has all run headlong into my guiding mantra to only share positive news and information on social media. My focus is providing insight and inspiration about personal branding, social media, and leadership that others may find valuable in their own professional lives.
Some words in a book I read this month crystallized the downside of this approach. “This is where we are now, endlessly cheerleading ourselves into positivity while erasing the dirty underside of real life,” says Katherine May. She’s the author of Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times.
The dirty underside of life right now, for many people, is it’s really hard. Life is difficult. It always has been, but the last year has brought it into sharp relief.
It’s okay to feel down. It’s okay to feel discouraged. It’s also good to connect with others and ourselves to be with the reality, at the same time as we strive to improve upon it. The dirty underside of real life is present. And that brings new challenges. Many of them are outside of our control. But our response remains within our control.
In my case, my operational, marketing, and human resources skills are increasing exponentially because things need to get done at the restaurant, and I’m doing them, working with a great team my husband has formed. Setting the uncertainty aside, this “dirty underside” is also a huge period of growth.
So I’m consciously shifting my mindset, as a strategy to get through this. The reality is present and unchangeable and a huge bummer. What is changing is me.
Also, a year goes by in a flash. Next year has the potential to be very different. Although Covid is sadly spiking now, a vaccine is on the way. There is light at the end of the tunnel. We will all have new skills, experiences, and perspectives from this time that we can apply to the future.
How about you? What parts of your real life are you struggling with? How are you growing and transforming as a result? What will be different and better a year from now?
by Caroline Leach | Nov 30, 2020 | Social Media
As the adorable blue fish Dory said in the movie, Finding Nemo, when you’re lost and you don’t know where you’re going, just keep swimming.
That’s a great mantra for the strange and unprecedented year 2020 turned out to be. Everything is changing minute by minute. Change has always been in our lives. Yet before it was often imperceptible. Now, dynamic change sometimes feels like it’s happening every hour.
It’s in the shift to working from home, longer term. It’s in the shift in how we socialize virtually. It’s in practically every way we live our lives.
So if you feel lost, you’re not alone. No one really knows what will happen next. That can be scary. It can also open up a whole new world of possibilities. It’s a liminal moment — a transitional stage — where we’re betwixt and between the world as we knew it before Covid, and what the world will be like after it.
We still have agency in our own lives. We can pursue goals. We can connect with others. We can try new things. We can just keep going. What are you doing to keep swimming in this liminal time?
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