Pictures

Capturing a moment in a picture has become so easy and accessible.  It takes seconds to grab your phone, snap a few pictures and capture a moment forever.  Add in a few more seconds and your picture can be shared with hundreds of your closest friends and family.  Film cameras seem like something from the ancient past.  You’d selectively take your pictures, not wanting to have too many of the same shot because you “only” had 12 pictures on the roll.  You had no idea if everyone was smiling or not or if your finger was over the lens.  You took the shot and hoped for the best.  I remember going with my mom to drop off the rolls film at the tiny little photo hut in the middle of a random parking lot on Robertson.  We’d return a couple days later, eagerly anticipating the photos that were waiting for us in the envelope.  If you wanted to share the pictures with your friends and family, you looked at the negatives, selected the number and then went back to the photo hut to have copies made.  When describing this to my kids, they can’t even imagine what it would be like not to be able to instantly view your pictures.

Technology is amazing.  When we took picture with film cameras we used them to capture only special events, holidays and vacations.  Now, we use pictures to capture any moment, meal or image that moves us.  Earlier this week as I was driving home I saw the most amazing sunset.  The sun was setting behind a mountain, which gave the mountain a purple hue.  The yellow and orange made it look as it the top of the mountain was on fire, and for some strange reason reminded me of a scene from Finding Nemo.  The colors across the sky were amazing and my first thought was, I have to take a picture.  I knew I should pull over to get the perfect shot, but then worried that it would delay me in picking up the kids.  Thankfully the next light turned red and I was able to quickly snap a picture (above).  When I looked at the picture later though I realized that it didn’t even do justice to the sunset itself.  Sure you could get an idea of the spectrum of colors, but the real thing was so much more beautiful.  Maybe it’s only me because I’m not a professional photographer, but rarely do my pictures capture the full beauty of the moment.  It got me thinking our first instinct now is to grab our phone and start snapping pictures, but what are we missing in the process?  Are we taking the time to really look at the sunset, appreciate the colors and admire the beauty for what it is?  Over the next week, there will be many opportunities to take pictures and document the holidays in great detail.  Fortunately you can take pictures to your heart’s content and don’t have to wonder if the film is going to turn out or not but keep in mind, the picture will rarely capture the full beauty of the moment.

Heart-FULLy Yours,    

Kacey

Less Stress, More JOY

This is my favorite time of the year.  Starting with Thanksgiving all the way through to New Year’s there is a special feeling in the air.  There is excitement and anticipation.  There is a feeling of kind heartedness, generosity and gratitude.  And then about this time every year, less than two weeks before Christmas, there is a feeling of stress that starts to creep in.  The days are ticking down and the to-do list is getting longer.  The burden of the “perfect” outdoor lights, indoor tree, Christmas card, wrapped gifts, table scape and gourmet meal start to weigh down on you.  A few years ago as I hurriedly rushed around the mall, weaving in and out of people, impatiently waiting my turn in line, it hit me – this is supposed to be fun.  What happened to the joy of the holidays?

Over the last few weeks, I had the opportunity to lead two journal workshops on this exact topic.  I knew I was not alone in my feelings of getting so “wrapped up” (pun intended) in the day to day tasks of holiday preparation that it stopped being fun.  Ever since my moment in the mall, I’ve made a conscious effort to remember joy throughout the holiday season and I wanted to share some ideas that have worked for me over the last couple years.  One of our exercises was to write down what we think of when we think of the holidays.  In one column we listed all the emotions that we associate with the holidays and in the other column all the physical things, like the tree, gifts, etc.  After writing down everything we could think of, we looked at how the emotions aligned, or did not align, with the things that were on the list.  We discussed traditions that we were maintaining that we really didn’t even enjoy.  We discussed things that were on the list just because everyone else is doing them.  We then prioritized the emotions and the things, which ones meant the most to us and which ones should we try to eliminate.  Emotions like stress and family drama were definitely on the elimination list, but how to eliminate led to a great conversation.  We talked about the work that Shawn Achor has done studying happiness.  His research has shown that happiness and negativity are contagious.  We have far more influence on those around us than we might realize.   Our mirror neurons instinctively reflect the happiness, someone smiling at you, or the negativity, someone impatiently waiting for a plane, around you.  (You can watch the talk here.)  We concluded that family drama may be inevitable, but that we all have a choice on how we are going to approach it and what we are going to do.

At the end of the workshop I left the group with a challenge and now I'm challenging you too.  Whenever you see the word "joy", pause for a minute and check in with yourself.  If you are feeling stressed, take a deep breath and reset.  Let joy bring a smile to your face and use it as a reminder as a reason for the season.  Yesterday a co-worker came back from lunch with a "joy" decoration for her desk (picture above).  As I was driving home from work listening to a local pop station, the name of the song I had heard dozens of times, had the word joy in it and I never realized it.  Joy is all around you, all you have to do is look for it.

Joy-FULLy Yours,
Kacey   

    

Not Flexible

On Wednesday morning, I read an article in the November issue of O Magazine about flexibility.  The author had never been a flexible person and went to see a physical trainer whose specialty was stretching to achieve greater flexibility.  He explained to her (I’m paraphrasing) that most people’s muscles are imbalanced, as a result groups of muscles over compensate for other muscle groups.  When this happens you overuse certain muscles, which leads to tightness and imbalance.  The trainer put her through a series of stretches and exercises to help release the tightened muscles and her flexibility instantly improved.  My thoughts in reading the article were #1 releasing those tensed up muscles must feel so amazing and #2 I wish it were only as easy as a few deep stretches.

Later that afternoon, I was invited to a work dinner with a client.  I was given about an hour’s notice and my boss encouraged me to go.  Jokingly I said to her “When in 11 years have I ever been able to do anything with only an hour’s notice?”  The answer is….never.  I am fortunate that she completely understands, being a working mom herself, as did the client (who ended up cancelling at the last minute anyway).  Little did they know how full my night already was with softball practice, homework, dinner (somewhere in there) and a last minute run to Target for supplies for the science project.

The very next night, I stopped by a going away happy hour for one of my team members.  I knew it would be a quick stop, but it was important to me to stop by and wish her well.  I was envious of everyone’s frosty drinks but knew that I had to be getting home.  I picked up the kids, everyone had a great day and homework was done – hooray!  As I waited for the dinner to cook, I caught up on Facebook.  A friend was tagged in a picture of a list of the 5^th & 6^th grade Spelling Bee participants (of which her daughter was representing one of the 5^th grade classrooms).  I looked at the rest of the list to see if there was anyone else’s name I recognized……..when all of a sudden I saw my daughter’s name next to her class.  How exciting!  I rushed into the other room to ask her about it and her face lit up with a big smile.  Yes, she had forgotten to tell me but it was true, she was in the Spelling Bee!  We celebrated, this was so exciting.  A couple minutes later I asked the telltale question -when is it?  It’s tomorrow.  At 8:45am.  My heart sank.  What?  (My first reaction is always panic, like that feeling when your alarm doesn’t go off and you wake up late.)  I have meetings in the morning and it’s really late for me to try to change them now.  She started to cry and I wanted to cry.  Thoughts of frustration, anger, sadness and hopelessness ran through my head.  How could she have forgotten?  What am I supposed to do?  I can’t possibly miss this, can I?  I took a deep breath, apologized and told her I would do everything I could to make it.  In my head I knew it all came down to a choice.

My life is not flexible.  My life works like the body works, each muscle playing it’s part and compensating for the ones that can’t do it on their own.  It’s not easy and though I may write this blog every week, I still struggle to find my own balance.  The key for me is that it is all about choices.  In every situation you have a choice.  Every day you get to decide what is important to you for that day.  What is important to you in the morning may shift and change in the afternoon.  Those shifts and changes are ok as long as you are the one making the choice, rather than letting another person or situation make the choice for you.  The thing about choices is that there are consequences.  The consequences are inevitable.  Whenever you have to choose one thing over another you risk disappointing someone or making them angry with you or putting yourself at a disadvantage.  When you weigh the options and make a choice own it, the good and the bad and be unapologetic.  Don’t commiserate over what could have been or replay it over and over in your head.  Don’t judge yourself for the choice that you make.  Make the choice that is right for you.

The choice I made was to email my coworker, explain my situation and ask if there was a way she could cover me in the meeting we had at 9am.  I knew that if she said no, then I would go to the meeting and miss that part of the spelling bee.  I knew that if she said yes, it could mean losing credibility with the client or more work for me, but this was my choice, I had to own it either way.  Fortunately for me, she emailed me back about an hour later confirming she’d be at the meeting.  In the end it all worked out.

The moral of my story today - you can’t do it all.  It’s physically impossible.  Instead you have to make choices.  Before you make those choices you have to dig really deep within yourself and decide what is important to you, you and only you.  Only when you are clear on your own intentions, your own flexibility, will you be able to make the choices that are best for you.   

Heart-FULLy Yours,    

Kacey

One more thought – working on your “flexibility” is hard!  As you can see, even after working on it for a couple years I still have moments of struggle.  But the good news is that along the way I’ve found tools that really help and I’d love to share them with you.  Email me at balancedheartcoaching@gmail.com and we can chat more about how you can find your flexibility.

Road Trip

Like many people, our Thanksgiving tradition includes a road trip.  The drive from Phoenix to Los Angeles is between six and seven hours, depending on how often you stop and how fast you drive.  The beginning of the trip always starts out with a lot of excitement.  Eager for the journey ahead, spirits are high and there is constant chatter over what awaits us at our destination.  Batteries are fully charged, bags are filled with fun stuff to do and snacks are plentiful.  The trip has begun.

An hour into the trip, we get our first “how many more hours?”  The answer isn’t a popular one, but it’s accepted and they easily go back to their movie or game of the moment.  During the middle of the road trip we are surrounded by open roads and desert for as far as the eye can see.  There are few places to stop which makes it easy to keep going, moving forward and all the while getting closer to our ultimate destination.

The last two hours are always the hardest.  Surrounded again by the comforts of a city, there’s an anticipation that any of the exits could be “the one”.  Legs are starting to cramp and tempers are starting to flare.  Snacks are no longer a special treat and everything to do has turned boring.  Inevitably we get stuck in traffic, which slows the trip down even more.  ‘Are we there yet’ becomes a banned phrase that can no longer be uttered by any human within the confines of the vehicle. 

When we finally arrive, all the excitement and energy from the beginning of the trip returns.  Hugs from family members erase any tension that built up over the miles.  You can finally take a deep breath, there is comfort simply in the fact that you have arrived.

As we were driving, I couldn’t help but think about how the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are also like a road trip.  You start off excited and happy.  Somewhere in the middle, it gets harder and you wonder if you are going to make it.  You want to pull off the road.  Obstacles get in your way that you down.  You may have to take an unexpected detour.  When you are in the middle of the trip it’s easy to feel like you are never going to get there but through it all, but your destination remains the same.

I hope you are packed and ready to go.  Set your GPS and if you have to decide between two routes, let your heart be your guide.  The road trip to the holidays starts today. 

Heart-FULLy Yours,    

Kacey

p.s. You may be thinking, the blog is great, but I could never do that!  I disagree and am here to help!  Let’s schedule a 30 minute consultation to define what matters most to you right now and create a plan on how to spend more of your time doing that.  Email me at balancedheartcoaching@gmail.com and we’ll work out the details. 

What's this about?

Over the last couple weeks I’ve had a couple people ask me “What’s your blog about?”  Oddly enough the question catches me off guard and I struggle to answer because to me the blog is about so many different things it’s hard to narrow it down.  I usually end up responding that it’s about parenting and work life balance.  That it often includes funny stories about my kids going through various situations where someone always responds, “my kids do that too”.  Even though I think that was a pretty good answer, the question is still nagging me.

The blog is also my chance to share quotes, ideas and concepts that I’ve read about that make me stop and think.  This week I read a quote from the book “The Upside of Stress” by Kelly McGonigal:

Stress caused by the news, as opposed to stress caused by your life, is unique in its ability to trigger a sense of hopelessness. Watching TV news after a natural disaster or terrorist attack has consistently been shown to increase the risk of developing depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. One shocking study found that people who watched six or more hours of news about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing were more likely to develop post-traumatic stress symptoms than people who were actually at the bombing and personally affected by it.

Can you believe that?  People who watched over 6 hours of news on the bombing had more symptoms than the people who were actually there!  That is crazy!  What a vivid reminder that what we choose to pay attention to matters. 

This week on Facebook millions of people created word clouds showing their most used words in their posts over the last year.  I’m not typically one to participate in all the Facebook quizzes but this one intrigued me.  My word cloud looked like this:

There are many words that stand out at first glance: time, day, love, beautiful, happy, one, think, kids and weekend.  But as I looked at it again, the words that really stood out were time, day, love and one.  Shuffling them around they make the phrase “Love one day (at a) time” which is another accurate description of what this blog is about.  It’s about giving yourself a break, not being consumed by the to-do list and taking time to enjoy each day as it comes.

The blog is also my opportunity to share with you some of my favorite things.  This week we will all celebrate Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays of the year.  I love the outpouring of gratitude that is not only expressed but also felt during Thanksgiving.  In one of my favorite quotes, Marie Forleo says it best:

Gratitude is simply a deep and genuine sense of appreciation for what you have in your life. For things big and small. For the air you breathe; the unconditional love of your pet; for blessing of someone who loves you.And this shouldn’t just be an intellectual or mental exercise, it should touch you and fill you up emotionally.Because when you genuinely fill yourself up with the emotion of appreciation, it changes how you feel and it completely alters the actions you take and, therefore, the results you’ll create.

Happy Thanksgiving!      

Heart-FULLy Yours,    

Kacey

p.s. You may be thinking, the blog is great, but I could never do that!  I disagree and am here to help!  Let’s schedule a 30 minute consultation to define what matters most to you right now and create a plan on how to spend more of your time doing that.  Email me at balancedheartcoaching@gmail.com and we’ll work out the details. 

Focus

Have you ever noticed that when you focus on something you start seeing it everywhere?  For example at the end of a recent workshop, I encouraged the participants to look for the word “joy” and when they saw it to post a picture in the event group.  In just a few short days there were pictures of joy in all shapes and sizes.  Given the time of year, “joy” is pretty easy to find if you are looking for it.

Focusing on specific things always brings them to the forefront of what we pay attention to.  If you are looking for a new car, you will see the car you are interested in all over.  If you are thinking about planning a vacation to a special destination, you may start to see articles and references to that place more often than usual.  Have a new baby?  Babies are everywhere.  Your kids are interested in something new?  All of a sudden that new character, toy, video game or sport appears whenever you turn around.  I suppose it makes sense – we are exposed to thousands of messages and images on a daily basis.  Most of these messages remain in the background because we simply cannot process them all.  However when we are focused on something, that specific item or idea breaks through the noise and grabs our attention.

Of course it works the opposite way as well.  Does your child/spouse/co-worker/friend do something that drives you crazy?  Chances are you are going to notice every single time they start doing it.  Are you worried about health/finances/job?  Every sniffle/dollar/project will be placed under a microscope, reviewed, analyzed, criticized and second guessed.  It’s easy to focus on the negative.  Somewhere we started to think that if we worried about it, it would somehow get better.  It’s unrealistic to think we can ignore negative things but what we can do is decide how much of our attention we give to each situation/feeling/person currently in our lives.        

Author Mike Dooley says “Thoughts become things.”  What are your thoughts?  Where is your focus?  Pick something and see how often it crosses your path this week.

Heart-FULLy Yours,    

Kacey

p.s. You may be thinking, the blog is great, but I could never do that!  I disagree and am here to help!  Let’s schedule a 30 minute consultation to define what matters most to you right now and create a plan on how to spend more of your time doing that.  Email me at balancedheartcoaching@gmail.com and we’ll work out the details.

What's our secret?

This week my husband and I celebrated our 15^th wedding anniversary.  Because I am a numbers girl I had to do the math - fifteen years is about 35% of my life!  No wonder I have been feeling like it is such a big number, I’ve almost been married longer than I was in school.  I know that there are plenty of other couples out there that have our 15 years beat by a mile, but unfortunately these days, we are not in the majority.

I often talk to new moms and while I expect to talk about their babies and motherhood, many of their struggles are about the changes they feel in their relationships.  When you are pregnant you focus a lot on how your life will change with the baby in the house, but it’s rare to think about how your life as a couple will also change.  It’s hard enough figuring out what all the baby stuff is about, add to that exhaustion and a changing dynamic in your relationship…..it’s enough to turn your whole world upside down, flip it around and back again.

So what’s our secret?  Here are a couple of the biggest lessons we’ve learned:

·       Be willing to have an open and honest discussion about how you are going to manage your money.  We decided early on that we were going to combine our accounts and have never looked back.  That choice is certainly not for everyone, but for us it worked.  If you choose a different arrangement, discuss what will happen if one of you lost their job, had to take a pay cut or wanted to stay home with the kids.  Talking about money is never easy and is always an emotional discussion.  It’s important to keep an open mind and be able to talk honestly.

·       Have a discussion and divide up the household chores.  Sure, you naturally fall into different roles and each of you begins to do certain things around the house but there are always those things that are no one’s favorites.  This really comes to light when babies come into the mix.  The dishes start piling up, the laundry is never ending and even the vacuum starts to gather dust.  You must talk about who is going to do what, when and how frequently.  If you don’t have the discussion, chances are the other doesn’t know they are waiting for you to take care of something.

·       Be open to change.  My husband and I are not the same people that we were when we got married.  We didn’t enter into this marriage expecting to change something about the other, it just naturally happened.  We are all constantly having new experiences. From those experiences you learn new things and grow.  You must be open to that evolution.  Chances are in the early days of your relationship you were willing to change to be a better person for the other, that drive to keep improving should never stop.

·       Don’t keep score.  Those of you who’ve been reading the blog for a while know this is a big one for me.  You can’t say “You went out with your friends two nights this week, I went for a mani-pedi which counts for half, so now I get 1.5 nights out.”  If you keep score you make things infinitely more difficult for yourself and your spouse.  If you want to plan a girl’s night out, then plan a girl’s night out.  If you want to sleep in on Saturday, then talk to each other about trading off weekend mornings that you get to sleep in.  We live in a busy time and days get filled up quickly.  If you need a break, an afternoon or night out, ask for it.

Did you catch the common theme?  It’s communication.  Communication goes beyond just talking.  In order to communicate, you often have to take a really good look at yourself.  Why is this so important to me?  Why do I feel this way?  Is there something more that I’m not considering?  In order to communicate you have to listen.  What are they trying to say?  Is it possible that I could see it differently?  In order to communicate you have to set the emotion aside to truly get to the center of it all.  It’s not always easy.  There’s no point when you get to set the cruise control and everything just takes care of itself, unless maybe that happens at 30 years?  All I know today is that I wouldn’t have it any other way.  

      

Heart-FULLy Yours,    

Kacey

p.s. You may be thinking, the blog is great, but I could never do that!  I disagree and am here to help!  Let’s schedule a 30 minute consultation to define what matters most to you right now and create a plan on how to spend more of your time doing that.  Email me at balancedheartcoaching@gmail.com and we’ll work out the details.