The Art of Hartful Living
Adventures, Misadventures & Executive Decisions
June 7, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
So maybe you’ve made some decisions that didn’t turn out like you had anticipated. Maybe you’ve gained your life experience from some ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ decisions. Make an executive decision to use the lesson, not lose the lesson of your experiences.
As a speaker and author, I tend to chalk it up to another adventure… or misadventure which gives me lots of material for my programs and articles. Re-framing any incident, whether it be a moment or monumental, can make the situation a little easier to endure. We have the power to make that executive decision on our perceptions. I tend to think of life as a grand adventure made up of many smaller adventures and new experiences.
Just like a pearl necklace; your life is a strand of many moments strung together. It’s our decision to create those moments that make up the grand strand. Who wants a boring life anyway? Why not take some risks – no risk, no reward.
Because adventures make good stories, and good stories are made up of overcoming conflict or adversity, then coming out victorious; I’ve made an executive decision to view my experiences as fodder for my work.
It seems to me that the measurement of a good story stemming from a misadventure is directly proportional to the length of time that has passed since that episode. 🙂 It takes more time to pass for some adventures before they can become ‘a good story’ without the sting pf their rawness.
Yes, even being stranded in the Sea of Cortez for a couple hours alone with my SCUBA guide, running out of air, abandoned by our dive boat (with all my belongings – ID, money, clothing), being swept out to open ocean by the current, verging on the realm of hypothermia, the sun setting, nobody to be seen for miles around, and my ship departing in the very near future.
That little misadventure not only took several of my 9 lives, it took several years before I could re-frame it without a visceral reaction to the memory. How are you seeing your challenges? I contend we can choose how long it takes before we re-frame something. You know they say we will look back and laugh about some of our bad decisions and misadventures. We can also choose to laugh sooner rather than later. It’s all about what we DECIDE to do. There’s no magic formula.
How do you see your life? Are you living your own adventure? What types of life experiences are you creating? How are you re-framing your misadventures so you can make better decisions next time. As one of my mentors says, “You can’t hit a home run if you don’t swing”. I choose to take a swing at life and chalk it up to an adventure.
As entrepreneurs, execs and enlightened employees, we make umpteen decisions daily. Isn’t running your own business a grand adventure? We may never know how just one tiny decision can change the course of our life. It’s up to us to course-correct if needed, or remain on that path. I’m making an executive decision to live an adventure. I’m choosing to see my life experiences and ‘bad decisions’ as stepping stones on my way to success, how about you? If you need a guide to lead you through some of your executive decisions and plot your entrepreneurial adventure, give me a call.
Deciding is the First Step to Success
June 6, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
What is the secret of success? Right decisions. How do you make right decisions? Experience. How do you get experience? Wrong decisions.
It all starts with a decision. Deciding to act. No action is started without first making a decision to do it. Deciding sets off a series of behavior that takes us down a path – we choose the path to success or otherwise. Once you realize you may be on the wrong path, it’s your decision to continue in that direction or bushwhack your way back to the right path.
Sometimes it’s a gentle nudge that tells us we’re on the wrong path. Sometimes if we don’t recognize the nudge, we get a shove, or a slap in the face, or a full-on hammer to the head to drop us to our knees. In life, as in hiking the back-country, our job is to be open and aware of our surroundings, what’s happening around us, what are we experiencing and are we following our internal compass and listening to our gut. Often our instincts kick in before our consciousness does to let us know something isn’t right, a person isn’t quite what they seem, a situation feels icky, somebody seems smarmy. Those are your signals to find a shortcut to your right path.
Once we realize we’ve made a wrong decision, don’t lose that lesson learned from the wrong path. At least you know what not to do or where not to go next time. It’s called experience. I call it adventure. As a speaker and coach, I gather all of the stories from my midadventures around the world as fodder for my programs so I can share with others what not to do. Sometimes the best stories come from the missed adventures and overcoming bad decisions.
So next time you find yourself lost in the woods, on the wrong path, with the wrong people, without a trusted guide and experiencing things you’d rather not; think of it as another life experience on your way to making the right decision. Pay attention to the signs. Listen to your intuition. Take note of where your decisions are leading you and if it’s not where you want to be, make different decisions. Remember the definition of insanity – making the same decision over and over and expecting a different outcome. Change your decisions, make better decisions and change your life for the better.
Living the Work You Love
May 20, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Just finished a radio show with the amazing Margaret Salmond, owner of Bay Area VA, a Virtual Assistant firm located in the Oakland/San Francisco Bay area. Her show is Bay Area VA Chat: www.blogtalkradio.com/bayareava where she interviews guest experts on their business, their lives and how they find success in both. Check out our interview about Living the Work You Love and Why I Love My Work.
Thrilled to have the opportunity to share insights with Margaret’s listeners and you on living the work you love. In our 20-minute interview, we answered the questions of:
- How do you know you are in the right line of work?
- What is the tingle test?
- How do you incorporate fun and passion into your work and why is it important?
- How can you find work that you love and live it daily?
- How does it feel to live the work you love?
- How a life changing event, contract ending, boss from hell can really be a blessing in disguise – a tap on the shoulder from the Universe to nudge you into your own power
- How does listening to your heart lead you to work you love?
- Why DECIDING is a huge factor in creating work and a life you love.
- Why a values match with your organization or your boss is so important.
- One key step in jumping the corporate ship and breaking free of your golden handcuffs.
Call 866.Fun.at.Work or email me at Gail@GailHahn.com for more details on how to get expert guidance on finding the work you love, merging your life, your heart’s desire and your passions and turning them into profits by creating your right livlihood. Get mentored on how to be an Energized Entrepreneur and live the work you love.
We packed a ton of tips into 20 minutes! Cheers to Margaret for breaking out of the contractual, corporate world to start doing the work she loves and bringing it to us. I’m delighted to be a small part of it, at least for 20 minutes this morning!
What are you doing to break out of your golden handcuffs and live the work you love? Your life and your freedom to live and to earn what you’re worth is worth more than a dental plan or holiday pay.
On Being More Childlike vs. Childish to Have More Energy
May 19, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Upon attending an outdoor concert the other night watching the toddlers dance and play and make new friends very quickly; I’m reminded to be more child-like (not childish) in order to keep up my energy.
Childish is whiney, self-centered, me, me, me. Child-like is inclusive, joyful, open, free and possibility thinking.
This was not a Wiggles concert, it was an 80?s party dance band that got everybody rockin’ from 2 year-old’s to 72 year-olds and the energy was amazing. Here are some observations on being more child-like:
1. Free-flowing self-expression. What are you doing to express your creativity, your emotions, your message, and your authentic self to the world? One boy just kept running across the dance floor with his arms spread out yelling, just yelling and venting and letting it out. Try some sound therapy – vocalize a long A sound loudly for as long as you can in a deep breath – it helps get the energy moving through your body.
2. If you fall down, get back up quickly and keep moving forward. Another boy just kept running in circles at top speed. He’d fall, look around, smile and get up to keep running. This went on for 1.5 hours. He never stopped smiling and running, even if he ran into people or tripped and fell. He just kept going. Ski racers and other athletes know the race could go to the one who gets up the fastest after falling.
3. Laughter keeps you healthy and vital. As a Certified Laughter Leader, I’ve written on the benefits of laughter. It helps boost our immune system, it connects others, it keeps oxygen flowing to our body, it helps our lungs and it gives us internal exercise. Children laugh 350-450 times per day, adults laugh maybe 15. See the difference?
4. Make friends easily. I mean real people, not just Facebook friends. Go out and meet others in person. If the internet crashed tomorrow, how many real friends would you have? Friends boost our energy, help us live longer, give us a place to vent and bounce ideas off of and are a soft place to land if we do fall. One little girl just walked around with her arms open and gave kisses to everybody. Sometimes she would just stand there, arms spread with a wanting look in her eye and others would give her a hug.
5. Free flowing movement, dance with abandon, run, skip, make a game out of what you’re doing and make it fun. Make a game out of cleaning your house – set a timer and see how fast you can do it, create competition, put on some music, ride your bike for errands, walk to the store, and invite others to join. One boy made a game of jumping from one colored marker on the dance floor to the other and did a happy dance when he made it across without touching the other colors. Sheer happiness and a celebration of success.
6. Change directions, change activities when your energy is waning on one activity, to focus on another that will pump up your energy. When a child loses interest in something, they immediately change to something else that catches their eye. We adults call it a short attention span. I call it a smart move to keep your energy and enthusiasm up to pump up your resilience to life stressors. If you feel your energy draining, change directions to something new and feel the spark.
7. Take new risks, try new things and learn from failures. We can’t win at everything, but when we lose, don’t lose the lesson. Have a beginner’s brain and try something new. I’ve have a pact with myself for the past 25 years to try something new each year and to learn something new – hang gliding, parasailing, moving to a new country, dog sledding, sky diving, bungee jumping or something a little lower key like starting a new business, taking a class, learning a new language or trying vegetarianism.
What are you doing to celebrate your successes? What are you doing to keep your energy and interest at its peak, build resilience, and stave off stress? How are you expanding your horizons and learning new things or taking new risks to be more childlike? What puts you in beginner’s brain to be open to new experiences? Now excuse me to go change activities….
Your Values, Feel Valued, Give Value & Matching Values
May 10, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
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There’s a lot of talk about value these days. Whether it’s knowing your own priority of values, feeling valued by others, adding value to a sale or service,s or matching values with your partner or your workplace. Is there alignment with your values and those you choose to deal with in your work and home life?
If we don’t feel valued, we walk. Whether it’s in our personal life or in our professional life. If our partner isn’t valuing us or our values don’t match with them, there is a good chance the relationship will fizzle or you will walk away before the big downward spiral.
In business, it’s the same thing. If we don’t feel valued as a client or customer by the service, attitude or inferior products or behavior – we take our business elsewhere. If we’re mistreated, not honored, patronized, ignored, spoken to in a rude manner, experience unacceptable or sub-par service, we walk. It takes just one person in the service delivery chain to really screw things up for a business owner or company. Your font line is your bottom line where the rubber meets the road in customer retention and one surly, sour receptionist/cashier/call center rep/sales person can ruin it for you. And there goes the lifetime value of that customer.
It pays you dividends many times over to train your team in the manner you wish to be treated and wish them to treat your customers. It starts at the top – how they are treated is how they will treat your clients. Value your team and they will be more likely to value your consumers. It sure helps to hire them with positive dispositions in the first place. You can train skills, but it’s much harder to train attitude and outlook.
Matching your values to your workplace or to your preferred providers of service is critical in maintaining a long-term happy partnership. Before deciding upon a career path, job or personal or business to business provider, get clear on how your values match the values of that other business. If there is a big discrepancy, then it will create tension, strife, frustration and ultimately a deterioration of the connection. It is not a pretty sight. If you can determine some of the foundational values of your chosen business, then you’re one step ahead of the game.
Clues as to what a company values is in their marketing materials, how they treat their team members, how they treat their customers, what type of business they are in and who is running the show. Make sure there is a good match between what you value and who you spend your time and money with to ensure smoother sailing in future endeavors.
How are you offering value to your customers, your employees or business partners? How do your personal values spill over to your work? How about your friends, family, loved ones? Is there a good match between what you hold in high value and what they hold in high value? If not, there may need to be some tough decisions ahead.
Is there an alignment with your values and what you do for a living? Or your values and how you treat your customers? If things are out of alignment, you will know something isn’t right. Take stock of your values and how that colors your choices in your personal and professional life and make changes to align them to feel more energized.
Mind Your Mindset in the Moment & Enjoy the Flow
May 5, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
As a former Recreation Professional (yes we got paid to play); we knew that it wasn’t just about the leisure activity we provided that provided the benefits to our participants, it was their mindset when they were participating.
Come to think of it, I’m not sure ‘former’ is appropriate, maybe ‘recovering’ would be a better term. I will always have a recreation and leisure outlook on life and will always embrace the importance of play, fun, re-creating, re-charging and renewing my mind, body and spirit.
I digress…. You see, we can be gardening, playing in the garden or working in the garden. It can be the same activity, but our mindset while we are doing it can be very different and thus create very different outcomes. Is cooking a joy and a creative experience to show love or is it a chore you must do to get fed? What is your mindset towards your activities?
What once was a joy can become a burden simply because of your mindset. Sort of like what attracted you to a person, may become annoying? Sound familiar? Minding our mindset when we are involved in the moment, in an activity can influence our material outcomes and our emotional/stress management outcomes as well.
Are you in the flow and in the moment? Are you fully aware and experiencing what you’re doing in that moment, or are you distracted, pre-occupied, thinking in the future or worrying about the past, or just not into it? Being in the flow, where the challenge meets our skills and time disappears is renewing, refreshing and fun.
If you’re doing an activity and finding yourself in a negative mindset, then you’re likely not reaping the benefits of your actions. If you’re just going through the motions, you may need to find another motion that’s more fulfilling or building more resilience to stress, rather than producing stress.
Minding our mindsets can help us fully engage in our lives, fully express and experience our activities and fully be in the moment without regard to the outside influences. Being conscious of our mindset throughout our day, whether work or play (or is it all play?) can help us reap greater rewards for a richer life.
Put Yourself on a Time Out to Increase Your Energy
May 4, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Time outs are not only for unruly children. I believe we all need to call a time out once in a while for our sanity. Taking time to take care of ourselves, our loved ones, our business, our physical bodies, our emotional well-being, our homes, our life or just to enjoy our surroundings near or far, here or on vacations.
I’ve written in prior posts about taking holi-moments when we can’t take holidays. Taking some time for yourself is critical for being the best we can be for ourselves, our work and others. If we are burned-out, rusted-out, worn-out and about to give-out, then we are not any good for others. We can’t give what we don’t have. And that includes our energy.
We must guard our appointments with ourselves to amp up our energy as fiercely as we guard our appointments with other important people such as doctors, clients, family and friends. It’s all about balance and giving ourselves permission to do what feels right and knowing when we need to take ourselves out of the game for a period of time. Call an adult swim and take 10 minutes, or 10 hours, 10 days or 10 months if you need it to come back refreshed and renewed. That’s what sabbaticals are for, or as I call them self-batticals.
One friend calls them ‘rewind days’ where she just takes care of life – bills, laundry, cleaning, letters and other catch-up stuff. I call a housekeeper to do that! 🙂 You may set aside time for physical activity, meditation, dreaming, scheduling, journaling, writing or other rituals that recharge you.
We must serve and take care of ourselves so we can attract others who want to do the same. Our health, wealth and vitality vibrate and resonate with others who are feeling similarly. If you want to attract healthy, vibrant clients, be healthy, vibrant and vital. We attract who we are and not what we want.
I recently gave myself a permission slip to mourn the loss of my only child, my dog Madison. She was my first and only. She was my muse, my heart, my joy, my model and a legend in my greeting card business. She was my daily ritual, my time-out. Even when I wasn’t quite ready for a time-out, she would ever so gently paw at me or just look at me with that face to let me know I’d spent too much time on the computer and it was time to walk and play.
I took a time out last week to allow her play time and allow me to mourn and celebrate her life. We had the ultimate last day for a doggie day: went to the dog park, played squeaky, romped in the people park, drove with the windows down and the wind in our ears, and then took the last drive to doggie heaven. Her spirit is all around and I am reminded to take time out and enjoy the day, take time out for myself even though I don’t have that little reminder nudging me. I took off last week to renew my spirit after she passed and I do it without feeling guilty.
In loving memory of Madison, my puppy-mill-rescued little girl. Take some time out for yourself and go play.
Merging Money, Meaning & Life Purpose: Free Training Course
May 2, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By Gaia Hart
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