Archive for the Coaching Midlife

You do have one don’t you? At the very least you have good intentions right? Well, not to be a drag, a pill, or a party-pooper, but if you want to enjoy the privilege of good health, you got to plan on it.

In Daniel Pink’s book called A Whole New Mind–excellent read by the way on how the world has changed from left brain thinking to a right brain driven, whole brained approach–there is a chapter on design. What I read got me thinking about how we design our lives–or leave the design to habit, chance, others. Pink quotes the renown architect Frank Nuovo as saying “Design in its simplest form is the activity of creating solutions, Design is something that everyone does every day.”

True enough. We design schedules to get in all of the most important “to dos” like work, shopping for food, personal hygiene, time with family etc. If we are following some sort of plan for our lives the design should support us getting where we want to go.

In the case of living young into an old age–I’m hoping we share that goal–without designing or including some specific lifestyle habits known to increase the chances of doing that, we leave ourselves open to a mess. Think lime green walls, orange shag carpet, deco lamps and marble top tables. I’m feeling a little sick right now, you?

Even the most outrageous interior design contrarians among you would be rearranging in no time. Liken this room to aging with no plans, no design in mind for the rooms you want to inhabit.

Sure you know the food and exercise regs, you’ve heard me and others drone on about knowing your numbers, getting your annual physical done–by a doctor you can talk to please–getting a good night’s sleep etc. So, are you? When was the last time you had your fasting blood sugar levels checked? When you get your blood work done and the doc says, “Everything is fine” but you wake up tired each day, toss and turn at night, can’t lose weight, and don’t have a bm every day, are you fine?

My answer is, “No.” You might reply that “it’s normal for me.” Guess what, none of those symptoms are things you should live with. They are not normal, they mean something is out of whack and more than likely within your control.

The sooner a problem is discovered the better off you are in terms of getting over it.

You’ll need a physician you can talk to who specializes in working with the whole body. You must educate yourself about how good it’s possible to feel, not what’s “normal.”

In order to confidently design a plan that will keep you upright, intact, able to put words together to form sentences, you’ve got to know where you are right now and that requires getting the facts that only testing can give you. “Test don’t guess” says famed nutritionist to the stars, JJ Virgin and I agree.

Then you can create a bold design of a healthy life. You can add outrageous activities, splashes of decadent delicious culinary treats, and enjoy the living rooms of your creation. Until you’re sure your foundation is firm, confidence feels risky and live is random movement towards a blurry end point.

Get help for direction, accountability, and support. Another of the designers that Daniel Pink mentioned is Paola Antonelli. To paraphrase her, “Design is giving the world something it didn’t know it was missing.” Can you design a healthy life and give yourself a few things–wonderful things–you didn’t know you were missing?

One aspect of weight loss and healthy weight maintenance is finding out what our triggers are so we can take control over them vs allowing them to have their wicked ways with us.

How to do that? Well, I’m not an expert in emotional eating but I’m having a call with someone who is.

My colleague Melissa McCreery PhD has agreed to spend an hour with us discussing emotional eating. (we will also have open Q & A)

Melissa has been working with busy, overwhelmed women since 1989 to get at the root of their frustrations surrounding emotional eating.

We start each day with the best of intentions to eat well and eat just enough to feel satisfied. The pressures of the work day, our money situations, clients—you name it, the every day stresses of life have the power to knock us off course. Add to this the hormonal fluctuations of midlife and and without some awareness of what’s going on we are bound to wake up in the middle of a pig out wondering how we got there at some point.

But why does it happen? If you think it would be powerful to know what drives us to power through a bag of chips or nuts or cookies, giving away our power to do what’s more supportive of our intentions, then sign up for the call. In combination Melissa and I are going to inform and answer questions on the things both emotional and physical that cause us to lose control around food to soothe ourselves.

There is no charge for this call and if you can’t be on the call live but want the information, sign up for the recording. Either way you can ask a question at the sign up page.

I look forward to sharing another hour with you and hope you’ll be with us on the call.

A new year means a clean slate, a chapter waiting to be written; this is how I’m feeling right now on the first official work day of this new year. I’ve got a confession about my goals for the new year. The biggest goal I have is to do what I’ve always said I want to do.

First here’s a wee story. I booked a strategy session with an excellent business coach named Shawn Driscoll. (That’s not an affiliate link) My goal was to gain some clarity around what I wanted to do with my business in 2010. Was it more coaching in the weight loss area? Did I want to run more teleseminars around the Mind and Body Tune Up concept? Speak more? And what was my core message? Anyone who stops by this blog knows it’s more midlife health and life information presented in encyclopedia format than a targeted, you-come-here-for-one-thing kind of blog. That’s not a bad thing but I don’t reach as many people as I’d like to because of that.

I expected some of what she and I discovered–such as getting more focused, offering something more compelling than tune up tips to expand my tribe, honing my message, etc. What I was a bit surprised about–but shouldn’t have been cause I’ve known this on some level for a long time–was that I don’t really want to do some of what I’m spending my time doing. I want to be on the stage motivating women to live fully expressed which often begins by helping them do the lifestyle stuff well so they feel up to their dreams.

If I’m not living fully expressed, how in the name of midlife can I inspire others to that end? What’s been holding me back? The fear of being bad at it, of not knowing how much it will take to get as good as I need to be–in other words, fear, fear, and fear.

The profound sadness that I felt knowing I was denying my own dream because I couldn’t see how I’d ever get there was the most surprising thing of all. And it kicked my butt. So did my mastermind group and I know they’ll hunt me down if I try to wiggle out of at least going for this in the biggest way possible.

Now you can hold my feet to the proverbial fire too. I’m outing myself as having played small, hidden my talents, and used all sorts of busy work to keep me from doing the thing I fear and long to do the most–living fully expressed which includes changing people’s lives, not just feeding them information.

To help me stick to what I’ve decided I must do I’ve hired a coach. It’s the only way I can be sure of playing full out and doing it with some direction. If you don’t know where to begin, find someone who has done what you want to do to whether it’s lifestyle change, personal growth, or starting a business.

What’s going to make your 2010 special, different, magnificent and delicious? Join me in making a public commitment by leaving your answer in a comment. Let’s all hold each other to the realization of our dreams. It’s what living midlife with a vengeance is really all about.

A while back the associate producer sent me an invite to watch this all-things-boomer show. I’ve never had the change as it plays locally way past my bedtime. But I continue to get the emails and the topics were fascinating enough that I had to click through to their blog site for a preview now and again.

Good news, I don’t have to stay up late–and miss my literal beauty and health sleep–you can watch all the episodes that have played, right on their site!

Last week’s was about how it feels to age–literally. A professor up in Nova Scotia created something called The Empathy Suit to give his students an experience of how it feels to move about your day in an elderly person’s body. Made me want to go to the gym. Check it out.

The half hour also covered whether or not replacement surgery should be the default for pain and quality of life and, you won’t believe this, Martha Stewart. What’s she got to do with aging? Come on, she’s as adept at extending her brand as anyone out there and she’s opened The Martha Stewart Center for Living at Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC. As the host, Robert Lipsyte says,”From the cradle to the grave with Martha.” She smiled that “It’s good to be Martha” smile of hers.

I had to laugh when she said about her book in progress, “I’ve written the book on how to take care of your home I should be the person to write a book on caring for yourself and your loved ones.” Really.

The show has covered topics like, plastic surgery, dating at midlife, spirituality and aging, Alzheimer’s, and lots more. It’s never the same old stuff and the guests are a mix of experts, medical people, authors, actors and so on.

I’ll leave you with a clip from the show when Robert Interviews Faye Wattleton, former president of Planned Parenthood turned actress, speaker, news commentator, on their plastic surgery episode.

Click this link to watch the video