Helping You Create Your Extraordinary Life
For the past several months, I’ve been prepping you to take the leap, get out of your comfort zone, and finally take action on your goals and dreams. I’ve shared the psychology of comfort zones, tips to motivate yourself to expand yours, and examples of the amazing things that can happen when you are brave enough to get uncomfortable. But the time for talking is over. No more planning. No more thinking about it. It’s time to take action.
Getting from your comfort zone to your dreams will require you to take a giant leap of faith in yourself. There is no certainty in life. You can never know for sure if you’ll succeed or fail. Even if you’ve meticulously planned every step, there are too many external factors that can (and will) pop up on your journey. This isn’t said to scare you, but rather to give you that final push you need; you’ve done all you can!
The only thing left to do is to take...
As I look back over the past twelve months, one of the things I’m most proud of in my business is how consistent I was with my podcast and blog. Despite vacations, my son’s bike racing, and everyday life “interruptions”, I made the time to create new content to help you stay consistent and create your own version of an Extraordinary Life. Below are the top five podcasts and blogs that people enjoyed the most; surprisingly, my very first podcast ever captured the #2 spot! I hope you’ll enjoy revisiting some of my favorites, to help set yourself up for a great year ahead.
In today’s episode, I interview Tina Short, an artist living her version of an extraordinary life. Through parenting twin boys, divorce, and finding her path as an artist, she’s come up against many obstacles. Yet through it all, she’s stayed committed to growing and staying true to...
Chasing your dreams and changing your life for the better isn’t easy. It requires you to step out of your comfort zone again and again, something most of us would rather not do. Over the next few weeks, I’m sharing thoughts and strategies to help you get more comfortable with being uncomfortable, so you can start taking action and create the Extraordinary Life you’re dreaming of. First up is courage.
I’m going through my fifth recertification for High Performance Coaching right now, and in today's class we role-played the coaching session on courage. It got me thinking about how subtle courage is in our everyday lives. For most of us, being courageous isn’t about running into a burning building to save a bunch of kittens, but it’s showing up in smaller (though just as scary) ways.
Everyday courage looks like setting strong boundaries, trying new things, breaking bad habits or...
We tend to associate creativity with painting, crafting, or music, but it goes far beyond that. I know that I never thought of myself as creative until my husband pointed out how I can create meals out of anything we have on hand. Still, you don’t need to make something to express yourself creatively; creative expression is all about how you share your unique identity with the world.
With my coaching clients, we spend an entire session on creative expression because it’s so important to living an Extraordinary Life. It’s about sensing and exhibiting the true you. It’s about voicing your ideas and leaving your authentic mark on the world. Being the REAL YOU is at the core of your Extraordinary Life.
Comparison can get in the way of your creativity, but so can consuming the creativity of others. With so many movies, tv shows, Tik Toks, Instagram reels, social media, etc.,...
I recently had the opportunity to interview the personal trainer Jenny Roth of Coaching Character. She is full of life and has built her unconventional business by breaking the rules and on the radical belief that you’re the expert of your own body.
There are a lot of experts out there doing the things they are best at, helping others with their talent, and making a living at it. As a personal trainer, Jenny is an expert in strength training and movement, but she takes a different approach. Rather than showing up to each session and telling you what your body needs, she wants to listen to your body first.
In the early years as a personal trainer, she saw a lot of people being dismissed by “the experts”. The younger, fitter trainers would dismiss the complaints, concerns, and experiences of their usually older clients when they shared how they felt. It really struck Jenny that anyone, even herself,...
I've had several opportunities to reflect on my young adult life lately. One reason is that I’m watching my daughter navigate her life in college and my son weave his way through high school, but something else has popped up. I may have an opportunity to advise students at the university I attended, and it’s brought back memories of all kinds.
I’ve been looking back at how my own young adult life unfolded, and where a mentor would have been very helpful and maybe changed the trajectory of my life. Regret isn’t productive and I don’t have room for it at this point in my life. After all, if my life didn’t happen the way it did, I wouldn’t have all the people and relationships that I’m so grateful for now. Rather, I’m looking back at the choices I made, how I made them, and what I can learn from them for the future.
With this new opportunity to advise students...
I’m following my own advice about building relaxation time in your schedule on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. Right now, I’m almost three weeks into a road trip vacation with my husband and son, and (like most vacations), not everything has gone as expected. Here are the lessons I’m learning on the road, to both inspire and entertain you.
Our vacation was planned around my fifteen-year-old son’s race in the National Mountain Bike Championship in Winter Park, Colorado. We hit the road ten days early so he could get some time getting used to the high altitude, with our first stop being the mountains in California.
The plan was to spend five days hiking and riding in the mountains, but after just one day in, a fire started near where we were. The smokey conditions meant that we were stuck inside with the windows closed, rather than breathing the fresh mountain...
Have you ever looked back on your life at those pivotal moments that changed everything? You likely had no idea those moments or events would be so important, and yet the course of your life changed forever in a way you could never have guessed. I recently had a chance to interview an inspiring colleague, Tracie Root, who not only knows this all too well, but has embraced the idea that great things come from the unexpected.
During our chat, we cover many of the unexpected (and some tragic) events in her life that somehow opened new doors and ignited new passions for her. We all know what it means to "pivot", thanks to the pandemic, but Tracie puts a unique spin on the whole idea. For her, letting go of some control and managing expectations when things go sideways are what have led her to where she is now.
Today, she is leading an Extraordinary Life as a self-employed speaker, coach, bestselling author, and community builder who is...
As a life coach, it’s easy for me to see where my clients’ thoughts are impacting their lives and results. Seeing the same things for myself, however, is more of a challenge. Examining my thoughts is something that I’ve been working on, and I’m using a method called “The Model”. My own mentor introduced me to this framework, which was created by Brooke Castillo. Brooke says “The Model is the one tool you need to change anything in your life by helping you understand how your circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results work.” I’ve been using a variation of The Model as I work to uncover the thoughts that may be holding me back, both in my mind and in my journaling practice.
There are five parts to The Model which work together to help you understand why you are getting your current results, which in turn gives you the...
I recently had the honor of interviewing Nafissa Shireen, a coach who I worked with several years ago. In the first half of our conversation (listen to it here), she shared how important belief in her dreams was to achieving them, which was no small feat. One of her big dreams was to own a ranch, and she was afraid of horses! In the second half of our chat, we transition from her path up until now to the path she wants to walk in the future.
We are both similar ages, and she touches on how her current view of being fifty-ish years old is a lot different than the view of this age when she was a child watching The Golden Girls on television. As she says, “The Golden Girls were my age! And I realized that our generation is aging differently. We're looking at it differently, and not accepting age as a defect or defeat. We still have so much to do. It is not over just because you're over 45. Our priorities change for...
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What if you approached self care as a gift, because you know you deserve the very best?
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