by Carol deLaski | Jun 10, 2017 | Happiness, Laura Hall, Personal Development, Self-Care
On May 3, 2017, I turned 50! When I was a little girl, this number seemed big and very far away. Now that I’m here, this number feels normal. It’s where I am supposed to be. It is part of the truth of who I am and is a testament to how far I’ve come. I’ve learned a lot in my first 50 years! I am happy with myself and the growth I’ve experienced.
As I reflected back on how far I have come and what I have learned along the way, I thought it might be fun to come up with 50 things I’ve learned over 50 years. What you will find below is the list. 🙂
My 50 things are listed in no particular order. They represent many teachers from which I have learned from through the years. Some of my teachers have been authors, some have been spiritual leaders, some have been friends. I have also learned from the “mistakes” I’ve made…I put mistakes in quotations because I believe if I learn something then it is not really a mistake but rather a lesson.
My initial thought was to just share this list with my two girls who are also living through significant milestones. My daughter Kayla has just graduated from nursing school and is entering the world of “adulting” for the first time. She is both excited and scared. My daughter Helena has just completed her Associates degree and will be heading away to college in the fall. She too is both excited and scared. This list was first conceived as a gift to them. It was meant to be a place they could go to when they were feeling lost or scared. You see, I remember what it was like to be at the places they are now and yes, at times it felt scary! My hope is this list will be something they use to remind them of where and who they come from. My hope is that they will take this list and make it their own. That they will question me about what I mean for the entries they don’t understand…that they will reject the ones that don’t work for them…that they will add to the list with things they have learned…that they will share with me their thoughts about the list. My hope is that they will see this list as a gift.
The more I thought about it though, the more I wanted to share this with you, too. You being the supporters of the Wholistic Woman Community. You have been such a gift to me. You have helped shape me into the woman I am today. So, this list is also my gift to you. I hope you enjoy it. I also invite you to do all the things I have invited my girls to do. Please share with me which parts of the list you relate to, as well as which parts you don’t. And, if you are really up to a challenge, write your own list! I’d love to see it!
50 Things I’ve Learned Over 50 Years
- It’s OK to not know…Be brave enough to ask.
- Kindness rules! Practice it with yourself and others.
- You are a leader.
- The book The Four Agreements is a must read.
- Take regular trips outside your comfort zone.
- Your first thoughts will always come automatically but your next thought is one you have control over. Choosing the best second thought changes EVERYTHING!
- Make generous assumptions.
- Emotions are your teacher.
- Emotions are meant to be felt, not buried.
- Find a spiritual practice and practice it.
- Arguing with reality won’t change things but will be extremely frustrating.
- Don’t put anything in writing that you wouldn’t feel comfortable having publicly announced.
- Know when a conversation would be better than a text – tone and the energy behind your words can often be misinterpreted in the written word.
- Seek first to understand.
- Practice choosing courage over comfort.
- Pain is inevitable but suffering is not.
- Trust your gut.
- Don’t forget how to play and have fun!
- Not everybody sees the world the same way you do.
- When somebody shows you who they are, believe them.
- Worrying is a waste of time and creative energy.
- What is meant for you will always find away.
- Make sleep and rest a priority.
- Nurture the relationships that are important to you.
- Fear is normal and learning how to move forward in the face of it is imperative.
- There are only three kinds of business: your business, their business, and God’s business. Anytime you are not in your business you are in the wrong place.
- Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
- Too much is too much.
- The most important time ever is now.
- You’ll never hit a target you don’t aim for.
- Soul food is real….Watch what you feed your spirit.
- Nurture your creativity.
- Practice letting go of things you have no control over.
- Journal! Getting your thoughts and feeling out and on paper is very good for you.
- Dogs and three-year-olds are great teachers.
- No one is a mind reader.
- You were born worthy and enough.
- We are all perfectly imperfect.
- FORGIVE.
- Happiness is an inside job.
- Be the change you want to see in the world.
- The Little Soul and the Sun is an amazing book, please read it at least once a year.
- We are meant to change and grow.
- You can’t out train a poor diet.
- There is never only one right way.
- Byron Katie and Brené Brown are wise women – reading their books has changed the way I see the world.
- You eat an elephant one bite at a time.
- The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the next best time is now.
- If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
- Never let your age stop you.
Today’s author: Laura Hall, CPC, CDWF: As a certified professional coach since 2009, Laura Hall, Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator has been helping people just like you make changes in. As a mother of 2 girls, Laura has a special interest in coaching parents, so if you still have children living at home, ask Laura about her Wholehearted Parenting programs. Laura can be reached via email at [email protected] or feel free to visit her website HallCoaching.com
by Carol deLaski | May 12, 2017 | Laura Hall
Did you catch us in the Frederick News-Post earlier this week? Coach Laura was interviewed at our Be Clear event at the end of April and the article came out on May 8! In it, she and some of our fabulous event participants talk about setting healthy boundaries in their personal and professional lives. If you missed it in print, you can still read it online: https://home/wholisu6/dev.wholisticwomanretreats.com.fredericknewspost.com/news/health/healthy-boundaries-seminar-discusses-why-we-don-t-say-no/article_4fdf7333-9de1-5bf8-a17f-41516a3b9fa5.html
Thank you to Allison, Donna, and Becky for giving interviews, and great job Coach Laura!
by Carol deLaski | Apr 14, 2017 | Laura Hall
“We teach best what we most need to learn.” ~ Richard Bach, Illusions:The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
I am getting ready to facilitate a workshop on boundaries at the end of this month for Wholistic Woman Retreats. I became interested in leading this topic after 2016’s overnight retreat, which was based on the book “Rising Strong” by Dr. Brené Brown. During that retreat we did a very small segment on boundaries, and afterward one of our participants asked me if I’d consider expanding that topic. That was when the idea for ‘Be Clear’, my mini-retreat on boundaries, was born.
What the research shows is that boundaries and compassion go hand in hand. People who have clear boundaries ask for what they need. They say no when they need to, and when they say yes, they mean it. Their clear boundaries keep them out of resentment and as a result they tend to be more compassionate people. I believe the world could use more compassion and less resentment and if having clearer boundaries is the way then I’m all in!
Recently, I was talking to a close friend who is recovering from a major surgery. She started telling me a story about how the pastor of her church came to visit her and stayed for the entire afternoon…much longer than my friend would have liked. While she enjoyed the visit, the duration was too long and left her completely exhausted. When I asked my friend why she didn’t feel comfortable asking her pastor to leave so she could take a nap, her response was, “I didn’t want to hurt her feelings”.
I don’t know about you, but I can definitely relate to my friends experience. I too have found myself in similar situations where I didn’t feel comfortable asking for what I needed or setting a clear boundary. Why is this?!?
Is it because, like my friend, we don’t want to make the other person feel uncomfortable?
Is it because we were never taught or never got to practice how to define limits?
Is it because we don’t want to be perceived a certain way…rude, rigid, selfish, etc?
If you too aren’t as clear on your boundaries as you’d like to be, what do you think contributes to your struggle?
During ‘Be Clear’ we will be defining healthy boundaries as well as looking at the things that get in the way to our setting them. You will be asked to think of an area in your life where having clearer boundaries would be helpful and you will walk away with at least one action step that you can put implement in that area.
Setting healthy boundaries and attaching appropriate consequences takes practice. If you’d like to be clearer in your life, then please consider this your personal invitation to join me and the Wholistic Woman Retreats community on April 26. You can click here for more details.
Today’s author: Laura Hall, CPC, CDWF: As a certified professional coach since 2009, Laura Hall, Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator has been helping people just like you make changes in. As a mother of 2 girls, Laura has a special interest in coaching parents, so if you still have children living at home, ask Laura about her Wholehearted Parenting programs. Laura can be reached via email at [email protected] or feel free to visit her website HallCoaching.com
by Carol deLaski | Feb 20, 2017 | Laura Hall, Retreats
It’s Saturday morning. I am the only one awake in my house and I’m so grateful to have this quiet time to sit down and get the thoughts swirling around in my head down on paper.
I am a big believer in journaling. I started this practice about eight years ago when I was experiencing some anxiety issues. Even though I’m a reluctant writer, I found it extremely liberating to take the time to get the inner rumblings of my mind and soul out where I could look at them with self-compassion and a level of objectivity. It saved me and if you haven’t tried journaling, I highly recommend it, especially during times when life feels overwhelming.
I’ve had an overwhelming week! At home, we are about two weeks away from putting our house on the market and the to-do list feels endless. At work (if you didn’t already know this about me, about a year ago I began working at my husband’s office as his dental assistant), our office manager is out on a two-week vacation and juggling both her responsibilities as well as my own has left me feeling frazzled! And the Wholistic Woman Retreats is busy creating the programming for our upcoming retreat and there is a lot to do when you put on an event like this. The cumulative effect of everything that is going on in my life right now has left me feeling overwhelmed at times.
Yesterday, I had a planning meeting with the two other founding coaches of Wholistic Woman Retreats to work on our Wholehearted Living Retreat. On the way to the meeting, my mind was telling me how unprepared I was for the meeting and how I wasn’t carrying my weight. But because I am a coach and I practice what I teach, I started questioning these thoughts and worked on practicing self-compassion and talking to myself like I would talk to my best friend instead.
As we gathered, we did a check in with one another based on the question, ‘Where are you right now in mind, body, and heart?’. As I was checking in, the tears just started flowing. The emotional stress of the last week came spilling out and I realized that the reason I was crying was because I felt safe and loved and comfortable enough to be completely vulnerable with my two friends.
If you know Kelye and Carol, then you can probably guess how they responded to my tears…they wrapped me in a group hug, told me I was enough, and offered me grace and love. It was in that moment that I realized what quality friends they were. There was no judgement, no “What were you thinking, listing your home so close to our retreat?” and no trying to fix it for me. There was just compassion, warmth, and love.
Today I am counting my blessings! I am surrounded by wonderful, supportive, nurturing friends who accept me where I am at any given moment. I have quality friends!
Quality friends can sometimes feel hard to come by, but not here at Wholistic Woman Retreats. We are growing a community of quality women through our monthly and special retreats. If you could use some more quality friends in your life, then please join us at our February event, which we are calling “Be Connected”. It is your opportunity to really get to know some quality women in a fun, creative kind of way. We’ve designed it to be similar to a speed dating kind of event, so over the course of the evening you will get to meet and get to know better a variety of women. One of them may just turn out to be one of your quality friends!
For more information on this event, click here. Hope to see you there!
Today’s author: Laura Hall, CPC, CDWF: As a certified professional coach since 2009, Laura Hall, Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator has been helping people just like you make changes in. As a mother of 2 girls, Laura has a special interest in coaching parents, so if you still have children living at home, ask Laura about her Wholehearted Parenting programs. Laura can be reached via email at [email protected] or feel free to visit her website: HallCoaching.com
by Carol deLaski | Dec 9, 2016 | Laura Hall
The other day I heard a country music song on the radio titled “Kill a Word” by Eric Church. In it he talks about all the words he’d like to get rid of in his life. He lists words like “never”, “regret”, “fear” and “hate”. While I don’t resonate with the word “Kill”, I do resonate with the idea of struggling with a word, and for me that word is “Perfection”. Ugh!!!! Just writing the word triggers me. Why is that!?!
If you know me, you know I sometimes teasingly refer to myself as “a recovering perfectionist”. In my younger years, I actually believed perfection was something that was attainable and I would exhaust myself working toward it. I wanted to be the perfect student, the perfect daughter, the perfect friend, the perfect wife, the perfect mother, the perfect employee, the perfect…the list could go on and on. If I didn’t think I could be perfect, I often wouldn’t try. This was no way to live.
I call myself a “recovering perfectionist” because by the time I was entering my late 30’s/early 40’s it dawned on me that either perfection was a myth or I needed to redefine it, because my definition at that time was definitely not working. So I started questioning everything that had to do with my definition of perfection. My daily mantra became “good enough is good enough” and the impact that adopting this had on my life was amazing! Now, I imagine that some of you are cringing at this mantra because to you it may sound like a slackers way of thinking, but to me, it was a life saver. It gave me permission to move the bar down to a level that was within my reach, one that I could achieve versus one that just made me feel bad about myself because I wasn’t measuring up. In the words of one of my favorite authors, Dr. Brené Brown, I was learning how to put down my measuring stick so I could operate from a place that felt right for me. In a sense, I had to give myself permission to be imperfect.
In my recovery process I became a better friend because I was having people over even when there were dishes in my sink or my toilet hadn’t been cleaned in two weeks. I became a better mother because I could really listen to my kids when they were struggling instead of blaming myself and thinking I was the source of their struggle. I became a better wife because I was willing to try things I knew I wasn’t going to be perfect at (think windsurfing and golf here) but that I knew were going to lead to quality time with my husband. But, most importantly I became a better me because I stopped letting other people tell me what perfect was supposed to look like and started redefining perfect based on what resonated with my soul, and as it turns out, perfect for me is all about connecting with others.
But what I’ve recognized to be true for me over time is that when I forget to remember (yes, I just said forget to remember!) that good enough really can be good enough, my old perfectionist tendencies tend to creep back in, sometimes without me even realizing it at first. As a matter of fact this happened to me just two weeks ago. I wonder if you can guess what the triggering event was!?! I am writing this on December 6th. What happened about two weeks ago?
Yep, you guessed it…Thanksgiving!
For the past 10 years, Bill and I have hosted Thanksgiving for our families. This number adds up to 17 people for us. I love Thanksgiving, but there is something about the expectations I set up for myself and wanting it to be “perfect” that often causes me to relapse and it usually has to do with the condition my house will be in on the day of the wonderful event.
I’d like to ask you to take a moment and watch this short video I found when one of my daughters tagged me on Facebook saying it reminded her of me, because it is an over the top version of what I can look and feel like when perfectionism sets in.
Click here to watch video
Can anyone relate?
I know from talking to other women that I am not alone in this. The holidays are often a time where we want things to be perfect. But, what is perfect? Is it a perfect holiday if my house is spotless, but my family is frazzled and irritated at me because I went into setting the bar too high mode? This year I so appreciated it when one of my daughters lovingly said to me, “Mom, no one is going to care if our grout is perfectly clean or not. Thanksgiving is about us being together. We are not planning on eating off the floor.” She was so right and that was all I needed to remember to focus on connection.
And the beauty of this time of year is that in a little over 2 weeks I’ll be hosting Christmas Eve festivities at my home. It’s like I get a do-over! And, this time, I am committed to remembering to remember that it’s not about perfect by Martha Stewart’s standards but rather it is about the love and belonging that happen when I get together with my family and close friends. I am still learning how to redefine perfect.
If you too would like to redefine perfect, then I invite you to join me and the other Wholistic Woman Retreats coaches in March at the Wholehearted Living Retreat which is based on the book “The Gifts of Imperfection” by Dr. Brené Brown. Click here for details and registration information.
Today’s author: Laura Hall, CPC, CDWF: As a certified professional coach since 2009, Laura Hall, Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator has been helping people just like you make changes in. As a mother of 2 girls, Laura has a special interest in coaching parents, so if you still have children living at home, ask Laura about her Wholehearted Parenting programs. Laura can be reached via email at [email protected] or feel free to visit her website HallCoaching.com
by Carol deLaski | Sep 2, 2016 | Laura Hall
What is enough? Who gets to define it? And, how do I know when I have enough… When I am enough?
As I prepare for September’s Wholistic Woman Retreats ‘Be Enough’ event, I’ve been thinking a lot about these questions. Here is what I’ve come up with so far…
Enough is really difficult for me to define and I’m not sure I know what enough really looks like.
I think this comes from growing up middle class in the United States where somewhere along the way I learned enough isn’t enough. Without realizing it, I bought into the idea that, for the most part, more is better.
This ‘never enough’ attitude spilled over into my thoughts about myself too and led me to spend a good deal of my first 30+ years of life pleasing, performing and perfecting. There was always more to do, more to be and more to have. And, like many of us, I thought my value and my worthiness was connected to doing more, being more and having more. This was exhausting!!!
What is enough? I think the answer to this question is probably different for everyone. For me, enough is not a quantity but rather a feeling of contentment that is free of fear.
Who gets to define it? We each get to define it for ourselves.
How do I know when I have enough? Sometimes I feel a little bit like Goldilocks in this area. First something is too big…then it is too small…then it is just right. For me it is often about finding the edges of too much and not enough and realizing that neither extreme brings me contentment that is free of fear and then settling in between those two edges.
I recently read the book, “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo and her idea of physically holding something that you own and asking the question, “Does this bring me joy?” has been very helpful in helping me find the balance of enough when it comes to things.
Intangibles are another story! Is there something as enough joy…enough love…enough peace? Is it selfish of me to want to believe that there is no limit or edge to things like this? Can you have enough of something, yet still want more? I do think I have enough of these things in my life. If you know me personally, then you know I am happy and content with where I am in life right now. However, that doesn’t stop me from wanting more. Maybe I am a joy, love and peace junkie, but I’m OK with that!
How do I know when I am enough? If you ever spend time observing 2-3 year olds, you know that they inherently know they are enough. They don’t worry about what other people think about them. I’m sure when I was that age I too knew I was enough. I didn’t worry about if I was doing things perfectly or how my crayon drawings compared to those of my peers. I just did my thing without worrying what other people thought. Unfortunately, life stepped in and again, somewhere along the line slowly and gradually I began to question my self worth. This process happened so slowly, I didn’t even notice it happening.
In 2010 I stumbled upon a TED talk give by Dr. Brené Brown (Click here to watch) and watching this 20 minute presentation changed my life! I look back now and realize that watching this video was the first step in my journey toward returning to that place I came from before the world taught me to question my “enoughness”.
In the introduction of her book, “The Gifts of Imperfection”, Brené writes…”Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging”. I LOVE THIS!!!!
I am definitely a work in progress here. I am on my way back to really knowing I am enough but some days are definitely better than others. Breaking old habits of pleasing, performing and perfecting takes focus and determination, and if I’m not mindful, I can easily slip back into these old patterns. As a student of A Course in Miracles, I believe that every day, every moment I have the choice to listen to one of two voices…One voice speaks of fear and the other voice speaks of love. I know I am enough when I remember to listen to the voice that speaks of love.
Now it’s your turn! What is enough? Who gets to define it? And, how do you know when you have enough… When you are enough? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!
On September 28th I will be leading a workshop on this topic. I hope you’ll consider joining me! Click here for details and registration information.
Today’s author: Laura Hall, CPC, CDWF: As a certified professional coach since 2009, Laura Hall, Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator has been helping people just like you make changes in. As a mother of 2 girls, Laura has a special interest in coaching parents, so if you still have children living at home, ask Laura about her Wholehearted Parenting programs. Laura can be reached via email at [email protected] or feel free to visit her website HallCoaching.com
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