Tag Archives: decision making

Life Plan

I have learned many things in the last 10 years of my career, but I think the most valuable lesson has been that setting goals and a making plan to achieve them works. Shit gets done. It is very simple. This is how our business runs.

This may be another one of those obvious truths that other people have always known, but for me it has been a revelation. I always kinda flew by the seat of my pants, living in the moment and taking life one day at a time. Working in show biz (the first 10 years of my career) is very deadline driven, but the deadlines are hours, days or maybe weeks away. Nothing is long-term. Truthfully, I was very happy to live that way. It was exciting and fresh and fun.

BUT… when you are ambitious, and you want to make progress, and living hand to mouth starts to get stressful because you have babies- you need something to work towards that is a bit more substantive than curtain up at 8.

I made my first five-year plan in 2007. Actually, it was more like a shadow of a hope of a plan, but still, it worked. It was simple. Buy a house, live there for 5 years, buy a better house. Somewhere into year two of this plan I went to a corporate offsite business strategy session where we were encouraged to envision what our life could look like in 5 years. It was a surprising exercise. I saw myself sitting in the sun on a dock. I had a nice manicure. We had to draw a picture. I did. We had to stand up and say it, I did. Then… I did nothing.

Flash forward to Jan of 2014. I am packing my bedroom because we are moving to a better house. I am going through my notebooks and binders and folders and purging all of the business documents I really don’t need. I find my drawing. My vision of the future… and my eyes almost pop out of my head as I look at the page clutched between my polished fingers. Because… our new better house is steps from the lake. And we have access to a private dock and beach. And we pretty much live in paradise (for 4 month of the year at least, fuck you every season but summer). My vision became reality…and I didn’t even make a plan. I just saw it and drew it and said it. I believe that subconsciously every choice I made after that point led me to today. To making my vision a reality.

And now I wonder to myself … what can I accomplish if I am consciously making choices to achieve a vision?

I kinda went here on a really surface level in my first blog post, but the other day I decided to do some real soul-searching… which sounds so heavy and labourious, but really all it took was to ask myself these questions: How do I want to spend my time? How do I want to feel? What do I want to see?

In less than 20 minutes  I got this:

Short Term (next 18 months)

  1. Spend more quality time with my husband
  2. Spend more quality time with my children
  3. Space to decompress, re-energize and truly consider my career aspirations in an unbiased and objective manner
  4. Healthy and fit body, mind and soul
  5. Comfortable attire at all times!! Make up for special occasions only!
  6. Cultivate my creativity
  7. Have more sex
  8. Travel with the kids as much as humanely possible while they still will.
Medium term (2-5 years)
  1. Location independent career, or in a location I love, accountable to self.
  2. Find my tribe – live surrounded by people I love where friendship is a priority
  3. Continue to live in a beautiful home on or near water. (In a forest with a pool is ok too)
  4. Flexibility with schedule to allow for Doula work
  5. Kids continue to get a good education and have meaningful friendships
  6. Give a Ted Talk (I know, super weird right?!)
  7. Drive a Tesla or other equally awesome maching
  8. Date night once a week at a min (double or group dates are acceptable)
  9. Travel! 2 trips a year at least

Long term (5 years and beyond)

  1. Retire!
  2. Overwinter or live somewhere warm
  3. Expend energy making a positive difference for people
  4. Travel!
  5. Own and operate a retirement community for my friends and loved ones
These might all change, or they might stay the same. Who knows. What I do know is that when I am making choices I can ask myself…is this in service of my goals? What choice gets me closer to my personal truth? Am I saying yes or no to achieving my vision?
I asked my husband to make a list of his goals for me. He hasn’t done it. He is a musician, and I think when I bug him to do this stuff he feels like I am boxing him in. Maybe I am. I just want to make sure that our goals are aligned, and if they aren’t, reevaluate and adjust our expectations. So far, he has just said that his goal is that I achieve my goals.
Well look out baby because now I plan!!
OR, maybe he will get lucky and I will completely forget that I made this list. Maybe in 5 years I will look back on my early blog posts and see this and be amazed.

 

Yes or No, or, Yes and No?

I have been going to Yoga for a few weeks now. Over the years I have gone off and on but mostly off. The main reason for this is laziness, followed closely by the secondary issue of just not having the time. To have the time means taking the time away from other things – like lying around with a book and tea.

The thing about lying around with a book, or my phone, or watching TV  is that I am present at home and available for the kids. They are older now and have their own thing going on in the evenings. Mostly revolving around Minecraft and Skyping with buddies. They don’t much need me, but when I am not present at home I am missed, I know this. Missed my them, missed by my husband.  I hear about it.

So I go to Yoga in fits and starts because eventually a combination of guilt and laziness sets in and I just give up. Those weeks when I have work obligations in the evening, or coffee with a friend or a new episode of Brooklyn 99… exercising falls off the to do list.

Why don’t I get up early and go in the morning you ask? ARE YOU JOKING?! DON’T YOU KNOW ME AT ALL? (If you are reading this and you are not my sister, you prob don’t, since I have only told like 3 people I am writing this blog, but trust me, I would never).

Back to Yoga. The instructor I had last night is my fave (Normally I do not abbreviate words but spell check objects to the Canadian spelling and I object to US spelling so it is my way of keeping the peace).

Back to the teacher. She is totally into the workout, which is what I like about Yoga. It is totally my speed, and as far as any of the working out I have ever done (stop laughing people who know me!), it is what my body likes the most (All of that great stretching and balancing and lying around setting intentions (which I suck at btw).

Another reason I like this particular instructor is that she never talks in that soft airy yoga voice, or says anything about chakras, or makes us chant or any of that other shit that makes me uncomfortable in other classes. (UPDATE: I have grown to embrace the “woo woo”)

She is pretty hardcore about the moves, her set list rocks, and I am sweating my ass off at the end of class (yes, it it HOT yoga, shut up).

Last night though, she got kinda philosophical and what she said was this:

Saying yes always means you are saying no to something, and saying no always means you are saying yes to something.

Maybe I was delirious from being dehydrated and doing a hundred cobra to downward dogs (I have low blood pressure, it makes me light headed) but in the moment, and still today, I find this obvious truth to be so profound.

I feel like I have a new framework for decision-making that is more holistic and thoughtful, with the potential, just like my pin #, to bring more positivity into my day.

It came at a good time. I have been asking myself a lot of really intense questions lately, and my husband too. I have been impatient for us to make some pretty massive life decisions so there is a lot of conflict going on right now (i.e. he is being passive aggressive and I am shrieking and swearing). It’s not great. I know I am stressing him out big time.

I can see now, one of the problems is that I am very much YES. YES. YES. YES. YES. We need to do this amazing thing that I want to do because it is amazing!!

And he is kinda like… well, maybe, but no, ok fine yes, actually no, but why? It might amazing or maybe what we are doing now is more amazing…

What we really need to do, together, is determine if we say yes to this amazing idea (or bad idea depending on who you ask), what are we saying no to? And if we say no, what are we then saying yes to?

Am I right?