Know Your Strengths. Knowledge is Power!

Frankly, I am not great about putting things away.  I am forever hunting for things, having yet to embrace the logical notion that picking a "home" for each thing I own will greatly reduce 11th hour stress.   But I always told myself that just because I was messy, didn't mean I was dirty.  Fair enough.  

This morning my husband was frustrated because the freezer was overstuffed, he couldn't find anything in there, and it was tough to even just close the drawer.  As soon as I heard him moaning about it, I decided this time, I would drop everything I was doing and join him in a freezer-sorting brigade.  We worked like a team.  If neither of us remembered buying it, we threw it out.  If it had freezer burn, we through it out.  We found 6 bags of frozen onions.  Six?  Really?  We decided to appoint sections for things to keep better organized.  Breakfast items here, veggies over there, meat on the bottom, etc.  And then I saw the frozen peas that had somehow escaped their bag, and were lying there on the  freezer floor below the shelf.  And all sorts of other crud.  I didn't know it was there.  I wasn't dirty, I was just messy.  Really...

So we took out the drawer and started scrubbing, vacuuming, & scraping.  It sparkled. We put the drawer back in with the help of our son.   Nice to work as a team.  I decided to clean around the edges of the wooden kitchen floor, as our cleaning person hadn't been to our house in a few weeks, and found gunk.  Lots of it.  Really?  My first inclination was to think, "Wow, why hasn't the cleaning person cleaned this?"  My next thought was, "Well, how is she supposed to clean with all the crap lying around, so don't blame her!"  My next thought was, "Well, everything is a gift.  How is it a gift? It gives me the opportunity to serve my family by cleaning the floor."  And then I thought, "That's a beautiful thought. It's a big load of crap, but would've been a beautiful thought, if only I could embrace it."  And I realized that the cleaning was sort of...a meditation for me.  I really pondered, "Was this story about being messy but not dirty true?  No, it wasn't.  With all the mess, I can't really be completely clean."  I'm not suggesting I become a neat freak, but somewhere between a ton of hidden gunk and neat freak is where I want to be.   

So, with that revelation, I decided to take it up a notch.  If this was going to be a gift, let's wrap it with a pretty little bow.  How else am I fooling myself where I think I am "clean" but I'm really not?  How about wanting kindness from others but not always being kind? How about wanting my husband to be calm, but somehow not managing to be on time? How about saying I want to have more intimacy in our family's life but allowing all of us to be glue to a variety of "screens"?  How about promising to "come right up" to tuck the kids into bed and finding them fast asleep by the time I do?  

Before this turns into a big self-bashing slug fest, I'll stop, because I now have plenty to work for the time being.  Finding that dirt really *was* a gift.   It will be a lifelong intentional journey of coming clean, and I'm up for the challenge.

If you need me, I'll be outside, meditating, holding a mop.
~~~
~Debby Rauch Lissaur, CPCC
is an Executive Coach & Leadership Facilitator is committed to 
Optimism (hope) and Compassion (service and action). 
~She is certified in the SEIP (Social & Emotional Intelligence Profile), a tool designed to promote self awareness and interpersonal impact.  
~Debby is also a Certified Bigger Game Trainer, a workshop designed to dial up meaning and integrity in one's life.  
~She uses humor, irreverence and kindness to champion those around her.  
...And she writes to keep herself honest.

Around this time every year, it’s easy to get into “should” mode (I should exercise, I should eat better, I should retool my career, I should give back, etc.)  Then, we make that proverbial list of “New Year’s Resolutions.”  We are determined to start the year off on the right foot, because this year, we’re really going to...(fill in the blank.)  

What we generally don’t do in our list-making frenzy, is take the time to get really clear on what we want the end of the year to look like (and beyond), or, we have little idea how to get ourselves to a different place.  And sometimes, the “should” voice we use to create our resolutions doesn’t even come from us at all!  We internalize the voice of a family member, boss, friend, or just society pressure -- instead of creating from a place of what we most deeply want.  Simply put, most of our lists are born from obligation or guilt, instead of a place of inspiration and life-long well-being.  Our resolutions manifest as an urgent check list rather than a transformed way of living.

And so, time unravels these “best laid plans” because they aren’t anchored to something so important to us that we cannot not do it.  We get all busy and the next thing we know, we haven’t gone to the gym, made healthy food choices, gone to that networking event we meant to attend, or volunteered at the local shelter, etc.  (Insert self-judgement and disappointment here.)  Sigh...Maybe next year.

But what if we used a different approach?  

Cut to the Bigger Game.  Rather than manufacturing a forced list of obligation, The Bigger Game Experience provides a hands on way to get clear on what feeds our soul, what frustrates or inspires us, while providing a wonderfully dynamic and flexible roadmap to creating a more meaningful life.  Not just for a month following New Years, but forever, because it’s not a list, it’s a way of life.  

The Bigger Game teaches us not to go it alone, to keep checking in on how things are going, & supportively pushes us to the exhilarating precipice where we leap into action toward that which really matters, and where we make dream after dream become real.

And here’s the cool part - all you have to do is pick something - just for right now - that you’ve never done before, & you know that once you’ve done it, you’ll look back with a smile and think, “Look what I created!  I really did that!  What else can I do?!”

                                                                                ###

Debby Rauch Lissaur, CPCC and Robbin Jorgensen, CPCC are 
Certified Bigger Game Trainers, passionately committed to waking up the world 
to living a more meaningful life.  They are both coaches, certified by both 
The Coaches Training Institute (CTI) and The International Coach Federation (ICF).

For more information about how you can attend The Bigger Game Experience 2-Day workshop, or bring it to your area, contact Debby at Debby@OptimismInc.com or Robbin at Info@IgniteTheNext.com  

The next Bigger Game Experience  co-led by Robbin & Debby
will be in DELRAY BEACH, FLORIDA 
Jan 11-12, 2014  
Click To Register 

The Bigger Game Experience ™ is a registered trademark of IAMU.