The Choice Of Balance

I got an email from a friend on Saturday. He told me he had been reading my blogs and he thought I should go back to corporate life. He said I seemed too centered and I needed the imbalance the corporate world provides.

It was the second time in one week I got a similar reaction. Another friend remarked how good I looked and that my outlook was so positive. She seemed surprised as if she was expecting me to have had enough with this reinvention thing and be ready to go back and look for a "real job."

These things will happen if you choose reinvention. Especially when that reinvention is in the direction of your genius. People will wonder. They won't understand that it is easy to be centered when you are doing what you love. That even with the stress of when that next check is coming, the worries about whether you shouldn't just go and learn how to be a barrister at Starbucks, all those uncertainties that do throw you off balance, that you know are in the right place. You are on your path. And that is enough to keep you happy. That is what sustains the smile on your face.


The ones who have known you the longest tend to be the most perplexed. You have become one of those people who likes their job. You're not commiserating when they start to complain about theirs. They know you as the stressed, pressed for time, corporate executive, running so fast forward that sometimes she forgot where she was going. They thought that was who you really were, not this new calm, balanced model. You did too. For a long time.

But now you know what they don't really want to believe. That there are choices. And you've made yours.

The Humor Of Fear

There's no getting away from it. Fear. We all have our own unique list of what it looks like. We have a job, we fear losing it. We lose a job, we fear never getting a new one. We have money, we fear it will disappear. We don't have money, we fear we'll never save a penny. We don't have a boyfriend or spouse and we fear we'll never have one. We have one and we fear breaking up or divorcing. We're fat. We fear never losing the weight. We lose the weight and we fear we'll get fat again.

It's a vicious cycle.


Fear creates worry. Worry is a waste of time. Nothing gets done when worry sets in. For some it can be debilitating. They take Xanax to make it through the day. My grandfather used to sit in his Barcalounger holding on to a pair of pale blue worry beads he had brought from Greece with him. That's how people dealt with worry in the days before pharmaceutical solutions. They played with a string of beads so they had something concrete to hold on to.



Fear can be looked at as a good thing. Fear is often the catalyst for change. The beginning of a decision to reinvent things.



Sometimes it can be used for distressing purpose. Terrorists use fear to try and stop what they don't like. The RNC has a new fundraising strategy aimed at manipulating fear of Socialism to raise money for the Republican party.


I can get pretty serious when my fears pop up their ugly little heads. I don't medicate and I don't take out the worry beads. A glass of wine doesn't hurt but I find humor the most effective.

Laughing at myself and at the absurdity of whatever my fears are at that moment feels a whole lot better than the fear. Working on my novel is a lot more productive than worrying it will never get published. Attending a networking event is going to get me a lot more new coaching clients than pulling out the worry beads. A quick visit to The Daily Show to see Jon Stewart's take on our political scene puts it in perspective, all through the use of a little laughter.

Laughter breaks up all that negative energy. It makes me see how silly I am being and how unproductive my worry has caused me to be. Worry doesn't make fear go away. Laughing won't either. But it gets me pointed in a much better direction. A new chapter. Finding a new coaching client. A new blog.

Hanging Out At The Genius Bar

When I think of genius the first thing that comes to mind is the Genius Bar at the Apple Store. That delightful marketing tool where one of those Apple geniuses will tell you what is wrong with your Iphone.

I think Genius and I think of people like DaVinci, Einstein and Mozart. I think of exceptionally high IQs and strokes of brilliance that change the face of the earth.

I don't think of it as an aspect of a person's character and I certainly don't think of me.

According to Merriam Webster there are five different definitions for genius. Number 5 is the only one I have paid attention to. That genius is someone of extraordinary intellect and mental superiority with a very high IQ.

Now I have a decent IQ, howevered I have pretty much ignored the other four definitions.

Especially the one that refers to a marked capacity or aptitude for something. A distinctive identifying spirit. A personal genius. The genius within. My genius.

I've been engaged in reading and discussing this word alot lately. Steve Pressfield in The War of Art writes that genius is our unique gift that we were born to be. Whether it is art or writing or designing the next great computer software program. Seth Godin in Linchpin writes of the lizard, aka our personal resistance and how it hates our genius, trying to quiet it at any cost.

Both suggest we all have a genius. The thing is to first find what it is and then decide what to do about it.

In The Big Leap Gay Hendricks talks about living in our Zone of Genius, how few of us identify what that is and settle instead for our Zone of Excellence. I've lived in my Zone of Excellence for a long time. I've had two successful careers. But neither played fully to my genius.

This time I'm turning up the volume on my genius. Care to join me at the Genius Bar?

Is Reinvention A Necessity?

I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Christiane Northrup a couple of weeks ago speaking on the Art of Reinvention. She said something about this being the time of year when the sap starts to turn around the trees in preparation for spring. Being the urban girl that I tend to be I will not profess to fully comprehend what that means. But I know enough to understand that winter is naturally a time of rest for the earth, a time of preparation for rebirth in the Spring.

She said something else that made me think. That our bodies are living examples of reinvention. The exhaling of a breath is allowing toxins to leave our system so we can breathe in clean, fresh air to replenish ourselves. Every seven years every cell of our body reinvents itself. It is necessary to our survival.

Our bodies have no choice but to reinvent. It is a natural process. The trees have no choice but to rest now, prepare for spring, blossom with new growth, flourish until that point the leaves start to turn and the process starts all over. If they stop they die.

Nothing has been created to stay static. If reinvention is not a choice for our bodies and the trees, but a necessary and natural process of what it means to survive and be fully alive, than why do we think the same does not hold true for our work?

Maybe we don't choose to reinvent our jobs. Maybe it is necessary. Maybe we reinvent because there is no other choice if we want to continue as vibrant, healthy beings.