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Choosing Clarity and Confidence for 2010

Have you noticed that this year has flown by and is nearly over! Yep, that's it. Ten months of the year are now history.

That's the nature of life and that's what allows us to savor and appreciate our time here. I heard someone say recently that you don't begin to live until you face death.

This year has been one of huge transformation for me. I finished my PhD in Communication after 6 years of graduate work, and I realized more clearly than ever that I don't want to play the academic game of going for tenure. (Note that no university is asking me to apply for tenure at this point.) I've had this sneaking suspicion for a long time, but like many of you, it took some reflection for me to begin to trust my ability to create a life that supports me in every way.

I'm excited about getting ready for 2010. Not in a hyper way, but I have a calm confidence that it will be a year of continued growth and prosperity for me, a time of reaping and sowing new seeds. My life is meaningful and profitable.

Like many of you, I'm not doing more things; actually I'm paring down my activities and focusing on leverage. Leverage gets you more time for yourself, in my case, to do nothing. ;-)

Here are some questions to help you get ready for another trip around the sun:

- What are you doing to get ready for the next year?

- How clear are you on your true purpose and priorities?

- What are you doing differently that will produce better results for you?

- What relationships and activities are you letting go of because they don't serve you?

- Do you trust yourself to make choices?

It's fun to take inventory, assess your progress and develop new plans. We're still in October, barely, and here's to living with greater clarity and confidence in 2010!

The Opposite of Being Nice....

....is not being mean, it's asking for what you want. Asking in a way that shows you mean business and in a way that's drama free.

I'm not sure why it's so hard for some of us to ask for what we want.

I work with this client, Michelle, who is sooooo nice. Everyone loves Michelle.

Unfortunately, Michelle has always had a hard time asking for what she wants. She knows and expects certain things to come forth, and gets angry and/or frustrated when they don't appear. After all, she is a very nice woman. She goes beyond the call of duty consistently and her students adore her.

That's part of the reason she loves teaching. In the classroom, she is the authority figure. Everyone has to play by her rules. Once she leaves the classroom however, it's often a different story.

Part of her problem comes from taking everything personally. So, we're working on her seeing situations as impersonal business deals. In business, you always ask for more than what you expect, and you don't expect to win every concession.

The real deal for Michelle is getting clear on what she wants. So many times, she's given a "whatever" sort of answer to people that they're not used to her having preferences. She's so easy going, easy to please, easy to deal with.

Not anymore. Michelle has come so far in a very short time and I'm extremely proud of her.

She's constantly writing down in her journal lists of things she wants. She asks for all kinds of things.

She asked her landlord to lower her rent (one did not, the next one did), she asked her boss for more money (she got some of what she asked for), she's asking her ex for more money (in process), she's asked for refunds when the policy is no refunds (gotten partial and complete refunds), she asks the cashier at the bakery to cut the huge brownies in half (no problem), she asks to pay in installments without paying interest (no problem), she asks for charges to be reversed (no problem), she's asking asking, and asking.

She's asking with a quiet determination these days. Finances have been a huge issue for her and she's learning, quite frankly, to ask for more. She doesn't do it perfectly and sometimes the people she asks get all angry with her for acting out of character. But she's winning a lot more these days.

Before you can get what you want, you have to know what you want. Then you ask.