Time for Spring Cleaning Your Life

We made it to spring! For those of you in the Northeast, like me, we are experiencing whiplash weather. Some days it is 60 and sunny and other days its feels like the damp, drab cold of February. But it is officially April, Major League Baseball is going to happen, and as we look back on the first quarter of the year, it is probably time for a little spring cleaning.

There is something about the beginning of the spring season that compels us to air out our homes, do a thorough cleaning from top to bottom, and purge our closets of those items that no longer bring us joy. The spring is also a great time to think about a spring cleaning for your life.

We completed the first quarter of the year. How did you do on those New Year’s Resolutions? If you are well on your way, now is a great time to recommit to them. If you struggled, well, it is the start of new season, so why not start again or even set new goals with the brightness of the days ahead to help light your way. Write them down and take one small, achievable step each week to get a little closer.

Did you want to find a new job this year? There is still time to network and job search before the summer vacation season starts challenging schedules.  Try committing to doing three things to advance that goal, one for each month of the spring season. Take 30 minutes this week and identify 1-2 networking opportunities and put at least 1 of them on your schedule for April.

Maybe instead of adding things, you are looking to Marie Kondo some things in your life. Are there habits that no longer serve you? Perhaps there are relationships that you have outgrown and you need to set some new boundaries. Remember, in order to say yes to those things that are most important, there are things you will need to say no to. Identify them and be a little bit ruthless about limiting their impact on your life.

Whatever it is that you want to accomplish, the longer days of spring may give you that boost of energy and motivation to make progress. If there is there something in your life you want to get better at this year, commit to hiring a coach or a teacher to invest in yourself. If you need motivation, look no further than this inspiring Ted Talk by Dr. Atul Gawande, who saw the benefits of hiring a coach for both his own improvement as a physician and in the outcomes for others. Coaches hold you accountable and can help improve your performance.

So, whether your goals for the year are improving your guitar playing, figuring our your next professional step, learning how to be a better manager, doing less of (or stopping entirely) those things that no longer serve this year’s version of you, or whatever else was on your annual list of resolutions, find someone who can help coach you towards those goals and with time and work, you will get closer. I would love to help!  

If you’re still experiencing the winter doldrums and aren’t quite ready for your spring cleaning, remember that time is a construct and that whenever you are ready is the right time for you. Spend a little more time resting and preparing for what comes next. Summer will be here before we know it.

I Could Never…

As the Winter Olympics are in full swing, many of us are watching in awe of the grace, strength, speed, and courage of these athletes.  Many of us are also saying to ourselves, I could never [fill in the blank with the amazing feat of athleticism] …  What we don’t see is the years of training and hard work these athletes have put in to prepare themselves for these games.  

Take Olympic gold medalists Nathan Chen, who dazzled with his figure skating.  He started skating at age 3 in Salt Lake City.  He was competing in national championships at 16. Nathan Chen spends 4-5 hours a day training to be able to perform those gravity defying quadruple axels . And while a quadruple axel may be out of reach for most people, learning to ice skate is not.

When you catch yourself saying, “I could never…” to something – a job, an activity, an accomplishment of any kind, you are limiting your ability to dream and to achieve something that is possible simply because the path to the big goal is unclear.  What if instead of telling yourself you could never, you asked yourself, “how could I get one step closer?”

James Clear, author of “Atomic Habits” talks about continuous improvement. The highlight of this approach is that the most effective way to work towards a goal is to make choices that allow you to get 1% better each day. Hoping to increase your flexibility? Commit to 10 minutes of stretching a few times a week before jumping into that hour-long hot yoga class.  Do you want to work some mediation into your regular routine? Start with setting a 1-minute timer or use a short, guided audio meditation a few times a week. Want to read more? Carve out 5-10 minutes a few times a week to sit down with a book or listen to an audio book while you are in the car or walking.

The importance of choosing to take these smaller actions is to help you break away from all or nothing thinking, a cognitive distortion that causes you to evaluate yourself in extreme terms (e.g. if I can’t read a book a week, I’m a total failure). Instead, by breaking your bigger goal into smaller tasks that are achievable in the short term (with a healthy dose of self-compassion), you can work to get 1% better each day. Over the course of a year, that would be 37 times better than when you started! And while it might not get you to land a triple Lutz, it would get you cruising around the ice with more speed and skill than if you never started at all.  

So what is something you want to get 1% better at?

Setting Birthday Goals instead of Making Birthday Wishes

In recent years, I have started using birthdays as deadlines for achieving big goals. Last year, I ran my first half marathon. As an athlete growing up, distance running was my mortal enemy. Running wasn’t fun, playing basketball and running a soccer field was fun. Running was boring and painful. I couldn’t figure out pacing or how to breathe without getting a stitch in my side. Building the stamina it took to run long distances felt too hard and unpleasant. And so I didn’t. Over the years, I half-heartedly tried and failed at becoming a runner a number of times while I was searching for my athletic identity as an adult.

Fast forward to season one of the global pandemic. We were home. Home all the time. Home all the time with the same people. We were trying to figure out home schooling and getting groceries (and wiping down those groceries with sanitizing wipes…). We were too anxious to leave the house. Too anxious to spend time with friends in person, and mostly too burnt out for another Zoom happy hour. I needed exercise because it helped me think and feel better (and boy, did I need to feel better), but going into the gym wasn’t happening and adding to my paltry home gym at the time wasn’t a possibility due to supply chain issues. Enter running. Again…

Could it be any different this time? Yes, because it can always be different. I was different and so were my circumstances. First, I had a dog (a just pre-pandemic pup) who loved to exercise and took to running like a duck to water. She was most excited on the days she saw me stretching for our runs. Second, running was one of the rare times that I had space alone for thinking or sometimes not thinking. Third, I reset my expectations on what it meant to be “a runner” and started small. I started with a slow pace and shorter distances, breaking up running intervals with walking. Gradually, it got easier. I could run longer distances. I needed fewer walk breaks. 5K, then 5 miles, then 10K. Then I decided I was going to train for the 13.1 mile half marathon distance and that I wanted to run it for my next birthday in January 2021.

During that training season, my Dad got sick. Really sick. And instead of giving up running, I didn’t… While during that time, we all felt like we couldn’t help my Dad, I could control my running. So I did. I took him to doctor’s appointments and then I ran. I called his medical team and then I ran. I brought him to the hospital and then I ran. We received his terminal cancer diagnosis and then I ran. I called my friends for support and to cry and rage and then I ran. Many times I felt that I was quite literally running away from my problems. While everything else felt like it was spiraling out of control and we were dealing with the weight of our grief as a family, I stuck to my training because it felt good to be able to achieve something even when everything else felt so awful.

So on January 17, I completed my 13.1 mile journey (with my trusty runner dog) and 11 days later, my father passed away. 2021 wasn’t any kinder or easier than 2020. We lived through what felt like year 100 of the pandemic. I faced the unpleasant realization that simply bending over could be enough to throw out my back. I grieved. But I remembered that having a goal I was working to accomplish gave me focus and a respite from the things in life that felt chaotic and out of control. So I worked to find a new goal and this time I wanted that goal aligned with my professional purpose. What would I do next? I realized the work that resonated throughout my career was helping others find their own paths to success. This realization brought me to professional coaching. I attended the ACT program at Brown University to obtain my leadership and performance coaching certification for the technical skills to better help others turn their goals into action plans. And I set my own goal to launch Crisilid by my next birthday.

And here we are…

So what’s the moral of this story anyway? I suppose it is this: I know what it is like to struggle with where you are and what you are doing. I also know it takes resilience, determination, and the support of others to get you through when things seem too hard. Some may say that my goals weren’t that grand or challenging so completing them was no big deal. But they were MY goals. Comparing my running to Des Linden’s or my new business to a Bain or a Deloitte would be demoralizing and a waste of time. Shifting our perspective on our goals helps us keep them in sight. Moving forward on our own goals means first setting ones that are personal to us and then working to get a little bit better than we were the day before. And avoid comparing your chapter 1 to someone else’s chapter 20.

I don’t know what my next birthday goal will be yet, but I am looking forward to the inspiration. I’d love to hear about yours. And if you would like assistance setting and attaining your next goal, birthday or not, schedule time for a coaching session.