Intentional Tuesdays

The phrase work-life balance has been around for a long, long time.  I’ve always struggled with this phrase for a few reasons.  For me, the boundary between work and life feels arbitrary and unhelpful.  If you think of work and life as separate and distinct, it is inevitable to experience tension between them.  At the same time, I appreciate that work and life have a meaningful distinction for most people, so we’ll come back to this topic some other day.

For now, let’s focus on this idea of ‘balance’.  Dictionary.com offers two definitions:

1. An even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady
2. A condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.  

There are things about these definitions that I like and things that I don’t, as they apply to Life Design.  I like the idea of keeping something ‘upright and steady’, as a metaphor...

When was the last time you changed your mind about something?  I’m not talking about some in-the-moment decision, like ordering the steak or the quinoas salad.  I’m talking about changing your mind on an important topic or even changing one of your core beliefs.  I asked myself this question…when was the last time that I changed my mind?  The answer was alarming.

I’ll save the deep exploration of my own thinking for the video portion of this post.  Suffice to say, I found it really difficult to come up with examples where I changed my mind on a significant topic. This surprised me, because I see myself as an open-minded person.  If that is true, then why don’t I have a bunch of examples where I changed my mind?  Is it because I’m just on the right side of the argument most of the time?  Wait, don’t answer that.

Let’s talk about the phenomenon of changing our minds.  To keep us on...

 What does it take to make a change in your life?  What makes the difference between grand plans real progress?  In one word…Process. 

Significant change, requires more than simple resolve. Resolve is the first step, to be sure.  However, without a process resolve will fizzle out and you’ll be left exactly where you started.    

I recently listened to author Dan Brown’s Masterclass and he had a chapter titled, “Protecting Your Process.”  In this lesson, Dan explains that writing a novel is a long process, not something you can accomplish overnight, no matter how inspired you may be.  Writing a novel requires you to implement and stick to a process of writing, a little bit each day.  The same logic holds true for making changes to our Life Design.  

Most of us intuit this.  If we want to get in shape, one trip to the gym isn’t going to get us there.  If we want to strategically...

Given the choice between certainty and randomness, we usually choose certainty.  Sometimes, even if we know the choice that we’re making is not great, we’ll opt for the devil we know.  There is comfort in certainty.  There is safety in certainty.  Of course, certainty is an illusion. But we’ll get to that soon enough.  

I’ve you’ve spent much time around the Life Design Center, you’ve heard me talk about fear.  I like talking about it. That’s because fear is the number one reason, by far, that people don’t take the necessary steps towards improving their lives.  Instead of taking action, many people prefer to stand still and simply endure.  They do their best to adapt to make their current circumstances tolerable.  They make the best of a crummy job, a failing relationship, deteriorating health…you get the idea.  If this sounds familiar, fear not, you’re not alone. 

A...

Recently, a friend came to me to get my thoughts on a dilemma she was facing.  She had just received a really great job offer that would allow her to make a lot more money, offered tremendous career development opportunity, and would shorten her commute, to boot.  “What’s the problem?” I asked?   She said,  “I feel like the work that I do in my current job is really important.  I feel like I’m doing good in the world and I don't want to lose that.”  My friend was experiencing “diverging journeys” and by recognizing this she would be able to stand confidently in her decision about whether to take the new job or stay in her current one. 

Each of us is simultaneously living two distinct journeys.  In their lecture, The Hero’s 2 Journeys, authors and screenwriters Michael Hauge and Christopher Vogler describe the inner journey and the outer journey.  The hero’s outer journey is...