Sustainable Ambition Forum - 01.25.22
Hello all!
How are you doing so far in 2022? You might be like me and are taking it slow and not letting anyone speed up your pace. I’ve resisted the refrain of, “OMG, this year is going by so fast already! Can you believe it’s already January ##?!” My first internal response: “What’s the date? Oh, it’s just the end of the first week of January. No reason to panic.” My second reminder: “That’s right. I’m taking the start of the year slow.” I encourage you to settle into your own pace and not let others’ excitement throw you into a frenzy unless you’re excited to be energized and in flow.
Along those lines, in this newsletter I’m continuing the focus on planning a more sustainable+ambitious year. Again, I invite you to join me for the 4-part podcast series, Planning a More Sustainable+Ambitious Year (details below).
With the podcast series and the workbook+planner, I focus on having you build a Life+Work Resilience Rx. Why is that? Why resilience?
The Sustainable Ambition View
We’ve all heard the call for “work-life balance,” but despite the barriers we all know exist, expecting our external world to magically produce balance is a false expectation. It is rare that we experience balance, and certainly not all of the time. It assumes we live in a static environment that allows us to always be in equilibrium. But that isn’t today’s modern, dynamic world. It also gives the impression that we have to “do it all.”
So we champion: don’t expect work-life balance—build life+work resilience instead.
At the beginning of the year, Arianna Huffington shared her agreement and how resilience+ is her word of the year and likely of the decade. She had this to say about resilience: “Resilience+ is about refueling and replenishing so we can meet whatever challenges 2022 holds with less stress, more joy and endlessly renewable stores of resilience.” Love it!
Why it matters:
Often people speak about work-life balance as if it should magically appear; that our external world should create that balance for us. But it’s a false expectation, because the outside world can’t shape that balance for us. Our world demands a lot of us. We often demand a lot of us.
Achieving life+work fulfillment requires making choices and creating a way to support ourselves in stretching and sustaining ourselves.
Think of this analogy—we’d never head out for a long-distance, multi-day hiking trek without doing some planning, thinking about the hard parts that will be demanding and thinking about our rest periods and how we will care for ourselves to be sustained and make it through the trek. We wouldn’t expect nature and the environment to magically make our trek smooth. Our lives+work are no different. We need to think about how we build our resilience to both stretch and sustain ourselves.
Behind the Thinking—here’s how I think about resilience:
Resilience is about doing those things that keep you operating at your best, that keep you sustained, and that allow you to manage demanding or challenging times or difficulties and bounce back.
That includes making time for sustaining activities guided by your values that fill up your resilience stores and taking pauses and breaks for recovery.
It includes putting you back in control, making choices on where to put your attention and where you will focus your time… making time, not finding time, for those things that are important to you. That’s why as part of the prescription, I have you set boundaries—what will you say yes to and no to?
I also have you explore what you will give yourself grace around. Where will you allow yourself to be bad at things? You may have ambitions around certain areas of your life, but where are there areas you don’t need to strive? Where can you let yourself off the hook?
A final important component is structures and support that will help you make it all a bit more sustainable, both at work and at home.
What’s next:
Write your Rx. Find a template here.
If you’d like, listen to the podcast episodes or consider getting the workbook+planner. More details below.
Use it as a guide to aim, act, assess, and adapt over the year to sharpen your Rx.
Be sure to make time for sustaining activities, make choices, give yourself grace, and ask for support.
Know that your prescription might change over time. I’ve had this experience. I enjoy music, but I’m not a music person like my husband who searches out new bands or my nephew who attends concerts all the time. But I do appreciate how music impacts me. I used to not be able to listen to music while I worked, finding it distracting. But I’ve since found Vitamin String Quartet, and their instrumental music helps me focus and lowers my anxiety in the moment. Alas, music and the band are now part of my Rx!
Finally, consider creating a circle of friends or a group at work to plan together and support each other throughout the year in finding more Sustainable Ambition. Doing this work as part of a community can support you in setting intentions, holding yourself accountable, providing encouragement, and learning together along the way. Listen to the podcast series and find the accompanying guide here. (Guides to accompany the Workbook+Planner will come out in the next week+.)
Enjoy the close of the month! I hope your month of intention setting and planning has gone well.
Warmly,
Kathy
P.S. Have any questions or comments about the Workbook+Planner and Life+Work Resilience? Send me an email here. Cheers!
P.P.S. The picture above is an example of resilience. It’s a wooded area that was burned a few years ago during one of the northern California fires. Yet, the oak trees are still standing and growing, despite the black bark, and the surrounding grounds have come back to life. An environment renewed.
Join me for a 4-part series to help you plan a more sustainable+ambitious year.
Create your own plan, learning more about yourself, setting your 2022 ambitions, defining your life+work resilience Rx, and planning your calendar to help you both stretch and sustain yourself in your life+work this year.
Episode #44, Part 3: My 12-Month Planner + 6-Month Horizon: Listen on Apple here or on our website here
Episode #45, Part 4: My Quarter 1 + Monthly Planning: Listen on Apple here or on our website here
You can also find the podcast, subscribe, and listen on Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Overcast.
Now Ready for Pre-Order!
The Sustainable Ambition 12-Month Workbook+Planner:
Your Life+Work Resilience Rx
Want to kick off your year with a better plan around how you want to stretch yourself in the coming year, while also sustaining yourself?
You can now pre-order the Workbook+Planner to help you take back control and plan a more ambitious and sustainable life+work for the 12-months ahead!
Find it on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Additional colors coming to the Sustainable Ambition website soon!
The Round-Up
Direct your pace: Learn how one person has found a way to slow down time and say yes and no to set boundaries. Some cool questions and ways of thinking to consider borrowing.
Be encouraged: As George Eliot said, “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” Let these stories encourage you to also explore what might be next.
Get inspired: Some of you have asked me about how to bring service and working with non-profits into your own Sustainable Ambition. I’m working on getting some guests to talk on the podcast about this topic. In the meantime, I found this conversation from Katie Couric’s book tour to be particularly inspiring. While you don't have to experience tragedies, as many of these guests have, hearing their stories may inspire you, too, to find a way to serve and give back.
Set your intention: I appreciate this reminder. Intention setting has been a practice of mine in the past, and I’m going to pull it back out this year. As this article shares, use the power of intention to set the tone for your year and each day.
Feed your curiosity: See what sparks in this round up of 52 interesting articles from 2021.
Laugh along: Fun to be taken over by laughter.
A Question:
What does it mean to you to be resilient in your life+work?
What does that look like for you?
What are 10 things that help you recover, recharge, refuel, rejuvenate, relax, re-engage, revive? Pull from this list regularly (each day, week, month, quarter, year) to keep you sustained while you stretch yourself.
Find Your Guide:
Find the perfect guide to match your journey.
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
— Aristotle
“If you don’t plan your time, someone else will help you waste it.”
— Zig Ziglar
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SUSTAINABLE AMBITION™ IS ABOUT CRAFTING A FULFILLING CAREER TO SUPPORT YOUR LIFE FROM DECADE TO DECADE.
It is centered around articulating your personal definition of success and achieving that without burnout while honoring your personal aspirations and ambitions as they ebb and flow over time. The end game—more fulfillment and ease in your professional and personal life, while still being ambitious.
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