Ignite Your Life Workshop – January 21, 2018

Hello everyone on Facebook watching this, as well we’re here in Santa Cruz kicking off the ignite your life workshop to help us figure out what’s really important in our lives, and how to stay on track and keep incorporating the things that are really important to us into our lives.

I want to talk a little bit about myself, and my journey to this place of actually creating Living ROI. Last month, I shared very personally about Frannie, and how she helped me realize that I was putting way too much focus on work at the expense of my own health and my relationship with my children and my husband. That was a real catalyst for me to make changes and say, why would I put all of my best energy, my fresh energy, my morning energy, my look as great as you can to some company as much as I’m grateful for the work, and then come home and give the dregs to myself and my family. That just doesn’t make sense. I have seen over the years people get sick, and it’s their family and friends who are there with them at that point. They might have some nice people at work who wish them well and are encouraging them and supporting them, but it’s your family and your friends and your own personal health that have to come first. So, this has been something that I’ve been personally committed to as part of the CEO and founder of ROI Communication, which is a communication consulting firm that I started 17 years ago. We have about 80 employees, and what I say to everyone when they start, is your first priority is your own health, and your second priority is your family and pets or people that are near and dear to you. Once those are in good shape, then you come to work. And if at any point those are out of place then you take care of that and we have your back. It works, it just works. We have been successful, people are grateful they can relax because they know that they don’t have to worry that they’re going to get fired, or miss an opportunity because they aren’t there every second.

So, it’s been a really interesting journey for me. Now I’ve hired a president at ROI communication, and so now I get to take him through that journey and really help him really understand that it really does work and he’s getting there.

For me it’s still a journey. I just want to say I am not perfect, I do not do this perfectly. I have to do this journal, and the only way I stick to the journal is by meeting regularly with my group called W3. There’s a little sort of blurb about what W3 is here. I have spent years sort of researching and going to conferences and doing practices; Tony Robbins and a whole bunch. In fact, I have them all listed in acknowledgments. There are many people listed there. I’ve tried different approaches, and one of the things that I realized is that a lot of the approaches are very masculine. I say that you know, not that it they’re male, but they’re the masculine sort of left brain, this is how you follow the road, and less intuition more competitive, be successful.

What I’ve pulled into this, what my goal is, is to sort of bridge that with the feminine, which we’re calling it. But it’s also just the intuitive part of ourselves the part of ourselves it’s not a straight line. It flows and it ebbs. Sometimes we’re on, and sometimes we’re off, and it’s a journey. I have found, and my husband just reminded me of this last night when some friend said, “oh gosh you must really have more time, as you’re hired a president”, and my husband said “she’s busier than ever”. That’s partly kicking off Living ROI. But, my life today versus 10 years ago is dramatically different, so I’m fine-tuning, but I am busy. I find that when I free myself up it gets filled up pretty quickly.

I thought of an analogy to this. We live in Santa Cruz near Delaveaga Park. There’s a big hill and then a meadow with these beautiful cows in front of our house, and then a little gully or you know trench. and the road and then our house. It goes like this right and then there’s a creek behind our house, so when it rains there’s a lot of water, and the water all heads towards our house, so there’s a lot of things that we do to divert the water. We’ve got the trench, and then my husband who’s so good at everything frankly, has built little retaining walls in this dry riverbed that gets filled up. The way I look at it is, the rain is just all the stuff that comes towards us. We have to make sure that we have the structure and the boundaries, and the practices in place so that we don’t so we don’t get flooded, so we don’t get overwhelmed, so we don’t have too much coming at us at once. We have our kind of built in system. This is this is that system you know this is that process. I kind of make sure that you stay on a path and that you’re not inundated with too much. There’s so much coming at us. Can you believe every single year there’s just more information. We’ve got our iPhones, and you know our attention spans are shrinking and it’s overwhelming. So how do we manage that and really live a peaceful happy life. That’s what this is all about.

I just thought I’d share a couple of techniques that I do now that make a difference. One is when I’m traveling. These are just like little things that I’ve adjusted my life. From a work environment, we’re just pushing. Pushing, pushing too hard, and you know traveling and coming back and having meeting after meeting after meeting. Now if I’m traveling, I give myself a day if not two to rest and recuperate and get ready. But you have to build it in, otherwise it’ll fill up. I do that now all the time and I don’t get sick as much and I’m much happier. The other thing is to obviously book time in my schedule. I create space between meetings, and between travel and events, and that’s a huge tool and it’s very it’s really the only way. You’ve got to block it out and make it happen, and that’s what I do on a weekly basis.

One other analogy that I loved that you might have heard of is that container and rocks. You’ve got three big rocks that represent your goals, and you’ve got a whole bunch of pebbles which are important things that need to get done. And then there’s sand, which are all the little things that happen every day that aren’t important really but you know we have to deal with them. If you have a container, and you pour the sand in first and then the pebbles, and you try to fit those three rocks in they won’t fit. So the only way they fit is if you put the rocks in first, and then the pebbles and then the sand, and the sand just fits around the pebbles and the boulders. Those big rocks represent what’s really important to us, and that’s what we’re going to get into in the first part of this journal. Some of you have already done it which is awesome, but then as you go on for weekly planning you’re reminding yourself every single week, what are those big boulders and am I paying attention to them and do I have them incorporated into my week. It’s also just practical. I’m amazed that I’ll find on Sunday as I’m doing this work that I’m double booked on it for something, or I haven’t thought of something I need to prepare. So it’s even just a practicality of looking at what do I have coming up the next week. So that’s sort of an overview today some thoughts for today.

I’m gonna say goodbye to my facebook group, except let me just say that you guys can download if you haven’t already and I’ll let all of you guys know you can tell your friends you can download the journal for free on Living ROI.com. Or you can buy it on Amazon. When you come here you get like a 50% discount for the journal. Come to a future event. The next one’s going to be February 25^th, we’re actually going to be doing vision boards so that’ll be fun. We are going to say goodbye to Facebook and we’re going to start doing our group work.