Monday, August 25, 2008
QBQ Rant
NEWS:
www.UPositive.com is up and running! YAY! Come on by and visit---you can connect to the goal attainment and creativity challenge videos, the eBook (see below), the relaxation CD, merchandise in the shop, and all sorts of information from UPositive Creativity and Life Coaching as well as Passion-for-Life Psychotherapy (and the difference). Thanks for your patience!
The UPositive Guide to Goal Attainment for Creative People is now up and available in eBook format!!! It’s fully copyrighted, with an ISBN number all its own and registered at the Library of Congress! Even better, it’s illustrated by Shirley Geier, and some of the merchandise matches up with some of the information in the eBook!
The second eBook in the series, The UPositive Guide to Time Management for Creative People is due out in September.
The UPositive Relaxation and Visualization Technique audio CD is available from the website at http://www.upositive.com/. Great background music by Tom Roady helps you follow the gentle instructions to relax and see your dreams!
Mark Friday evening, September 19, from 6 to 9 pm in your calendars for the official opening celebration of UPositive Creativity and Life Coaching! More information is coming here and through the first newsletter, which should be going out sometime next week. (If you’d like an evite and the info, or to be on the mailing list in general, please email me at Batya@UPositive.com or UPositive55@aol.com).
The first 9 sayings from UPositive’s Batya Sez… shop are now available for purchase through http://www.cafepress.com/UPositive. The next nine are in the works---I’ll let you know through this blog and the newsletter when they’re ready! It’s never too early to shop for Christmas and Hanukah and Kwanzaa, and it’s never the wrong day to buy yourself a gift!
The Passion-for-Life Psychotherapy practice has a few openings for new clients in Nashville; please email UPositive55@aol.com for more information. We can talk about depression, anxiety, mood swings, ADD, and family and relationship issues.
UPositive’s Creativity and Life Coaching practice is available locally, but also through telephone and Internet-based services. Please visit the website http://www.upositive.com/ or contact me Batya@UPositive.com for more information.
QBQ Rant
My friend and one of my business mentors, Tim Cummings, mentioned the best-selling book, QBQ, The question behind the question to me last week. Like a good mentoree, I rushed out to get it. And read it in one sitting. It’s a great book.
But I wonder---why do we even need this book? It’s all about the “right” and “wrong” questions people ask in business and other life situations. The “wrong” questions are those that place blame on others, that look outside the self for cause and excuses.
The “right” questions are those that take personal responsibility for problems and mishaps in our lives. The questions that lead us to personal accountability, especially in businesses, organizations, and families.
Here’s my rant: This is about as much “news” as “The Secret” is a secret.
Hasn’t life and personal growth always been about personal responsibility? Of course, we don’t create the world around us. We’re not responsible for every starving child or raped elder on the planet. But if these things bother us, we are responsible to do something about it---even if that’s as simple as donating a few dollars to a related cause.
We’re here to participate in life. To learn and grow. And to reach the best potential of our own selves.
We can’t do that if we’re constantly looking to others for the “whys” and the “how comes” and the “who did thats”: we can only grow and fulfill our personal potential by participating in the world around us with “how can I help” and “how can I change things for the better” and “what can I do?”
This is a wonderful little book for a reminder of this more positive attitude.
And at UPositive, we’re all about positive attitude! And about people reaching their own potential! And about participating to the best extent we can in the present moment. And helping others to do the same, without judgment, without blame; with love and care and concern and inspiration.
Read the book! It’ll fill your heart with determination and energy! QBQ: The Question Behind the Question, by John G. Miller.
As always, I invite your comments, questions, thoughts on this or other topics!
--Batya
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Expect the Unexpected
NEWS:
The website, www.UPositive.com, is up and running, except for the newsletter signup and refer to a friend links. If you’d like either of these, please email me directly at Batya@UPositive.com from outside the website. Thanks for your patience.
The second set of Creativity Challenge and Goal Attainment Tip videos are up on www.YouTube.com/UPositive, or through www.UPositive.com. Take a look! Let me know what you think!
The first eBook in the series, The UPositive Guide to Goal Attainment for Creative People, should be available by the end of this weekend…August 17. The second eBook, The UPositive Guide to Time Management for Creative People is due out in September.
The UPositive Relaxation and Visualization audio CD is available from the website at www.UPositive.com.
Mark Friday evening, September 19, from 6 to 9 pm in your calendars for the official opening celebration of UPositive Creativity and Life Coaching! More information is coming here and through the first newsletter, which should be going out sometime next week. (If you’d like an evite and the info, or to be on the mailing list in general, please email me at Batya@UPositive.com or UPositive55@aol.com).
The first 9 sayings from UPositive’s Batya Sez… shop are now available for purchase through http://www.cafepress.com/UPositive. The next nine are in the works---I’ll let you know through this blog and the newsletter when they’re ready! It’s never to early to shop for Christmas and Hanukah and Kwanzaa, and it’s never the wrong day to buy yourself a gift!
The Passion-for-Life Psychotherapy practice has a few openings for new clients in Nashville; please email UPositive55@aol.com for more information. We can talk about depression, anxiety, mood swings, ADD, and family and relationship issues.
UPositive’s Creativity and Life Coaching practice is available locally, but also through telephone and Internet-based services. Please visit the website www.UPositive.com or contact me Batya@UPositive.com for more information.
EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
Sorry this blog is late again this week, but I didn’t expect the unexpected and have been preoccupied with positive but time-consuming emergencies. So I thought I’d address the issue head-on.
In goal setting, establishing to-do lists, setting today-ables into planners, managing time, business planning, and pretty much everything else, we tend to work with linear, clock time. It should take 20 minutes to go to and from the corner grocery for a gallon of milk and some eggs, so we schedule 20 minutes. I can write for 15 minutes every morning---no problem! Creating a CD should require about two week’s worth of work, then about two hours in a studio.
And then life happens.
Life happening is not a problem: we want life to happen. If everything we did came in fifteen- and twenty-minute, or even two-hour, tick-tocking segments, we’d bore ourselves to death. So life happening---meeting an old colleague at the grocery store and stopping for a cup of coffee to catch up; finally getting into the secondary character’s head and heart and typing a pivotal scene for an hour and a half without taking a breath; getting to the studio and being treated to a half-hour tour and demonstration of fascinating drums of the world---these are the joys of life. But we hadn’t scheduled them.
Life doesn’t happen in linear time. It scoffs at linear time. Thunder isn’t the Norse gods bowling---it’s the deep belly laughs of the Universe at all the linear-time planning we do. There’s that old adage: If you want to make God laugh, make a plan.
For creative people, getting in the zone is the goal to get to the goal of doing our creative work. The Zone is clockless.
So do we make a big bonfire and through all the DayTimers, DayRunners, calendars, pdas, and Palm Pilots in it? No. Not at all.
We expect the unexpected (sorry for the cliché, Heather, but it’s a cliché because it holds truth). We plan for the unplannable.
The best way to sew a button on something is to stick a pin under where your thread loops go, then take the pin out when you’re done. Why? Because it provides just enough give so that your taut stitches won’t rip at the first tug on the button. The tree that bends in the wind lives through the storm. (ok, old, used, but gets my point across)
When you do schedule your to-doables from your goals list, when you apply time management to your activities, add in some extra time---an hour or two a day.
I can feel the panic. Yours. Mine. But…but…I have so much to do. I already can’t get to it all. Take an hour or two a day to do nothing?
Not at all. Take an hour or two a day to participate in life. To have some breathing space. To take the tension out of things. To talk to a friend you meet on the street. To let a character have her way on the page. To explore a new combination of dance movements inspired by the piece you must get choreographed. To flip through a magazine that catches your eye as you rush to get your research on green insulation for new structures finished.
And if, at the end of the day, you haven’t used up your extra time, take a bubble bath, read a book, put your feet up and just breathe…that’s right…get the air into your body and feed yourself some extra oxygen! Catch up on sleep (the way to do that properly is to get to bed earlier, not to sleep late in the morning), if nothing else. You’ll have more energy and clarity the next day, so you’ll be more productive in the time you do schedule your work and creative endeavors.
--Batya
The website, www.UPositive.com, is up and running, except for the newsletter signup and refer to a friend links. If you’d like either of these, please email me directly at Batya@UPositive.com from outside the website. Thanks for your patience.
The second set of Creativity Challenge and Goal Attainment Tip videos are up on www.YouTube.com/UPositive, or through www.UPositive.com. Take a look! Let me know what you think!
The first eBook in the series, The UPositive Guide to Goal Attainment for Creative People, should be available by the end of this weekend…August 17. The second eBook, The UPositive Guide to Time Management for Creative People is due out in September.
The UPositive Relaxation and Visualization audio CD is available from the website at www.UPositive.com.
Mark Friday evening, September 19, from 6 to 9 pm in your calendars for the official opening celebration of UPositive Creativity and Life Coaching! More information is coming here and through the first newsletter, which should be going out sometime next week. (If you’d like an evite and the info, or to be on the mailing list in general, please email me at Batya@UPositive.com or UPositive55@aol.com).
The first 9 sayings from UPositive’s Batya Sez… shop are now available for purchase through http://www.cafepress.com/UPositive. The next nine are in the works---I’ll let you know through this blog and the newsletter when they’re ready! It’s never to early to shop for Christmas and Hanukah and Kwanzaa, and it’s never the wrong day to buy yourself a gift!
The Passion-for-Life Psychotherapy practice has a few openings for new clients in Nashville; please email UPositive55@aol.com for more information. We can talk about depression, anxiety, mood swings, ADD, and family and relationship issues.
UPositive’s Creativity and Life Coaching practice is available locally, but also through telephone and Internet-based services. Please visit the website www.UPositive.com or contact me Batya@UPositive.com for more information.
EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
Sorry this blog is late again this week, but I didn’t expect the unexpected and have been preoccupied with positive but time-consuming emergencies. So I thought I’d address the issue head-on.
In goal setting, establishing to-do lists, setting today-ables into planners, managing time, business planning, and pretty much everything else, we tend to work with linear, clock time. It should take 20 minutes to go to and from the corner grocery for a gallon of milk and some eggs, so we schedule 20 minutes. I can write for 15 minutes every morning---no problem! Creating a CD should require about two week’s worth of work, then about two hours in a studio.
And then life happens.
Life happening is not a problem: we want life to happen. If everything we did came in fifteen- and twenty-minute, or even two-hour, tick-tocking segments, we’d bore ourselves to death. So life happening---meeting an old colleague at the grocery store and stopping for a cup of coffee to catch up; finally getting into the secondary character’s head and heart and typing a pivotal scene for an hour and a half without taking a breath; getting to the studio and being treated to a half-hour tour and demonstration of fascinating drums of the world---these are the joys of life. But we hadn’t scheduled them.
Life doesn’t happen in linear time. It scoffs at linear time. Thunder isn’t the Norse gods bowling---it’s the deep belly laughs of the Universe at all the linear-time planning we do. There’s that old adage: If you want to make God laugh, make a plan.
For creative people, getting in the zone is the goal to get to the goal of doing our creative work. The Zone is clockless.
So do we make a big bonfire and through all the DayTimers, DayRunners, calendars, pdas, and Palm Pilots in it? No. Not at all.
We expect the unexpected (sorry for the cliché, Heather, but it’s a cliché because it holds truth). We plan for the unplannable.
The best way to sew a button on something is to stick a pin under where your thread loops go, then take the pin out when you’re done. Why? Because it provides just enough give so that your taut stitches won’t rip at the first tug on the button. The tree that bends in the wind lives through the storm. (ok, old, used, but gets my point across)
When you do schedule your to-doables from your goals list, when you apply time management to your activities, add in some extra time---an hour or two a day.
I can feel the panic. Yours. Mine. But…but…I have so much to do. I already can’t get to it all. Take an hour or two a day to do nothing?
Not at all. Take an hour or two a day to participate in life. To have some breathing space. To take the tension out of things. To talk to a friend you meet on the street. To let a character have her way on the page. To explore a new combination of dance movements inspired by the piece you must get choreographed. To flip through a magazine that catches your eye as you rush to get your research on green insulation for new structures finished.
And if, at the end of the day, you haven’t used up your extra time, take a bubble bath, read a book, put your feet up and just breathe…that’s right…get the air into your body and feed yourself some extra oxygen! Catch up on sleep (the way to do that properly is to get to bed earlier, not to sleep late in the morning), if nothing else. You’ll have more energy and clarity the next day, so you’ll be more productive in the time you do schedule your work and creative endeavors.
--Batya
Monday, August 4, 2008
Permission Granted
News!
Website is almost fully functioning---please visit it at www.UPositive.com. I’d love feedback. The email link isn’t quite working yet, but we’re getting the kinks out. Email remains UPositive55@aol.com for the time being.
Products are halfway there! Nine of the first 18 sayings are available on T-shirts, mugs, coasters, mousepads, magnets, caps, and bumper stickers! Check them out at http://www.cafepress.com/UPositive. Remember---Christmas decorations are out in some stores already, so it’s about time to stock up on stocking stuffers and gifts for yourself and others! If you see a saying you like but would prefer it on a different product, drop me an email and I’ll see what I can do.
SEPTEMBER 19—BIG OFFICIAL UPositive OPENING PARTY!! If you’re in Nashville, TN, drop me an email at UPositive55@aol.com and I’ll send you an invite. Door prizes, fun, great networking opportunity for everyone! Food and wine and creative people everywhere!
PERMISSION GRANTED
One of the joys of my career is to watch people as they realize that going for their personal and professional goals really is ‘okay.’ So many people learn (from parents, teachers, religious leaders, etc.) that working toward their heart’s and soul’s desire is ‘selfish,’ or ‘impossible,’ or ‘just a pipe dream.’
It isn’t. Those things that excite you, that impassion you, that fire up the light in your eyes and the energy in your face---those are goals to go for!
There are clients who come to me hoping it’s okay to say aloud the dreams they’ve carried around silently. That tense up when we start describing and outlining those dreams, taking the first steps toward changing them into goals. As they see the steps emerge on paper…actual actions they can take to live the life they really want…a transformation occurs.
I love watching it.
The anxiety drops and their faces clear. The hazy dullness of their eyes clears and sparks fly. Their backs straighten and their shoulders drop and open. Their voices shift, soften yet become stronger. They breathe deeper. Sometimes they cry.
They become their selves---their centered, empowered selves.
I’m blessed to be present during their transformation, and very thankful that they allow me to see it and experience it with them.
So let me give you all permission---right here and right now---to turn your dreams into goals, your goals into steps, your actions into success!
(Really, you need no one’s permission, except your inner self: but, sometimes, hearing it from someone else helps.)
(One caveat: this applies to dreams and goals that do no harm to others---of course.)
Have any of you experienced this? The moment when you have permission---from yourself or someone else---to claim your dreams? What did it feel like? What changed for you?
---Batya
Website is almost fully functioning---please visit it at www.UPositive.com. I’d love feedback. The email link isn’t quite working yet, but we’re getting the kinks out. Email remains UPositive55@aol.com for the time being.
Products are halfway there! Nine of the first 18 sayings are available on T-shirts, mugs, coasters, mousepads, magnets, caps, and bumper stickers! Check them out at http://www.cafepress.com/UPositive. Remember---Christmas decorations are out in some stores already, so it’s about time to stock up on stocking stuffers and gifts for yourself and others! If you see a saying you like but would prefer it on a different product, drop me an email and I’ll see what I can do.
SEPTEMBER 19—BIG OFFICIAL UPositive OPENING PARTY!! If you’re in Nashville, TN, drop me an email at UPositive55@aol.com and I’ll send you an invite. Door prizes, fun, great networking opportunity for everyone! Food and wine and creative people everywhere!
PERMISSION GRANTED
One of the joys of my career is to watch people as they realize that going for their personal and professional goals really is ‘okay.’ So many people learn (from parents, teachers, religious leaders, etc.) that working toward their heart’s and soul’s desire is ‘selfish,’ or ‘impossible,’ or ‘just a pipe dream.’
It isn’t. Those things that excite you, that impassion you, that fire up the light in your eyes and the energy in your face---those are goals to go for!
There are clients who come to me hoping it’s okay to say aloud the dreams they’ve carried around silently. That tense up when we start describing and outlining those dreams, taking the first steps toward changing them into goals. As they see the steps emerge on paper…actual actions they can take to live the life they really want…a transformation occurs.
I love watching it.
The anxiety drops and their faces clear. The hazy dullness of their eyes clears and sparks fly. Their backs straighten and their shoulders drop and open. Their voices shift, soften yet become stronger. They breathe deeper. Sometimes they cry.
They become their selves---their centered, empowered selves.
I’m blessed to be present during their transformation, and very thankful that they allow me to see it and experience it with them.
So let me give you all permission---right here and right now---to turn your dreams into goals, your goals into steps, your actions into success!
(Really, you need no one’s permission, except your inner self: but, sometimes, hearing it from someone else helps.)
(One caveat: this applies to dreams and goals that do no harm to others---of course.)
Have any of you experienced this? The moment when you have permission---from yourself or someone else---to claim your dreams? What did it feel like? What changed for you?
---Batya
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