After having the same job for 5 years, I realized I wanted out. The direction I thought I was moving in was coming to a grinding halt because of external circumstances and I noticed that I just didn’t like myself all that much anymore. The burden of the overly demanding work schedule with little to no balance in favor of my personal life was beginning to wear on me in such a way that I wasn’t happy anymore…and it was evident. I needed out.

I left to start a career in something completely new. Left that, started something else, got laid off three months later. Last year was a year of interviews, and I was constantly being asked what I wanted to do. The problem was that I didn’t know.

Being unemployed and subsequently desperate taught me something extremely important in the way of learning about yourself: saying no to new opportunities can close yourself off to finding your true and undiscovered passions in life.

I’d always been fascinated with people who decided to say “yes” to every opportunity that came their way. I’d read Maria Dahvana Headley’s book “The Year of Yes” and had fallen in love with the idea but never thought I would have the fortitude to do something similar. It wasn’t until very recently that I realized I’ve been inadvertently doing that very thing pretty consistently since I’d lost my job.

I’ve been saying “yes” to so many things since last year:

Danielle, do you want to come sell for my start-up? Do you want to help me found a start-up? Have you ever thought about trying social media management? What about copywriting? I think you should host trivia nights for my company. I would love it if you could volunteer with our organization. You should start your own business. So, what about starting a networking group? Can I take you on a date?

Each one of these experiences has taught me something I didn’t previously know about myself–all of them have come together in an amalgamation that has shown me what I want to do and who I want to be as I grow up. Patricia Volk has this to say about her own “year of yes”:

“There isn’t one thing I said yes to I’m sorry I said yes to. And look what I would have missed. “No” means safety and the numbing stasis that implies. I’m changed.”

Tina Fey also weighs in:

“There are limits of reason to this idea of saying yes to everything, but when I meet someone whose first instinct is “No, how can we do that? That doesn’t seem possible,” I’m always kind of taken aback. Almost anyone would say, “It’s Friday at two in the morning. We don’t have an opening political sketch. We can’t do it.” Yeah, of course you can. There’s no choice. And even if you abandon one idea for another one, saying yes allows you to move forward.”

As you look back on your own year, what have you said “no” to because you were afraid? Didn’t think you’d like it? Felt it was too far out of your comfort zone? Didn’t seem relevant? Felt like it would take up too much time? As Fey points out, there are definitely times when saying “no” means not stretching yourself too thin…but I personally haven’t yet found my limits seriously challenged. If anything, this concept of saying yes to the things that come my way have given me new limits and new levels of “can.” 

Even if you are scared, do things afraid. I teach acting classes and have been acting for over 20 years and make a point to tell all of my students that I still have the worst stage fright of anyone I know. My body will go into fight-or-flight mode and I will panic and look for a way out so I don’t have to go through with it…but I force myself off the ledge, do battle, and come out a stronger and much more capable woman than I was when I went in.

It’s time to start thinking seriously about a time or period of time where you have been less than receptive to saying “yes,” to yourself, to others, and ask yourself why. Set aside some time–a day, week, month, year maybe?–that you will begin to say yes and let the wave of opportunity rush over you. You may be surprised at what kind of mileage you get out of a simple three letter word.

The post Say “Yes” to Everything…Opportunity Is Waiting! appeared first on Career Girl Network.

By now you’ve probably heard the catchy Justin Timberlake song “Mirrors” (Which I think sounds oddly like ‘Cry me a River’ but Justin isn’t asking me) and the premise of the song is “It’s like you’re a mirror, a mirror looking back at me.” It’s about the idea of the reflection we receive when we’re in relationships.  The contents of the song are romantic and while that’s certainly one person in our circle of people, I want to expand my conversation to include the people with whom we choose to spend the most time and how they reflect us.

Have you ever been to a fun house at a carnival? Inside there are tons of mirrors.  Some of them make us look taller, some shorter, some blur our faces or stretch them out or squish them up.  This is also what’s happening when you’re looking for your reflection in unintentionally chosen people.  These can be people who are naturally around in your life, like your sister or your friend who has been around for ages or that inspirational boss.  I’m not saying they’re not amazing.  They totally could be.  And they might not be reflecting the true you.

We talked about mindset last week.  I hope through examination you started identifying that like most career girls, yours is a growth mindset. Are you spending time with people who are in the fixed mindset? As you’re talking about your risks, learning and your great revolutionizing ideas, what people in the fixed mindset are reflecting is usually fear.  Have you been talking about your fitness goals with people who are really struggling with their own level of fitness?  Again what they might be reflecting is fear.

Be mindful.  Choose your relationships intentionally.  Choose your conversations intentionally.  As you begin to do this, you start to see yourself clearly.  Instead of seeing someone else’s fear in your reflection and making it yours, you begin to see your own fear.  Can you feel the difference? It’s so different.  It feels distinctly different.  You can be with your fear.  You can take action with your fear.

You start to see yourself in people who are self-aware.  You start to see yourself in people who take action. You start to see yourself in people who exude kindness and act with kindness.

Who are you spending time with this week? Choose wisely.

The post Who Are You Spending Time With This Week? appeared first on Career Girl Network.

She’s one of my favorite experts, and her new concept literally blew my mind! Gretchen Rubin from “The Happiness Project” is talking about what she calls “decoy habits,” and boy oh boy do we know there are a lot of women out there who need to hear this!

What is a Decoy Habit?

Gretchen Rubin says on her website:

A decoy habit is a habit that a person claims to want to adopt—but really doesn’t intend to do. Often, decoy habits reflect other people’s values or priorities. “I want to cook dinner every night.” “I want to finish my Ph.D. thesis by the end of the year.” “I want to give up coffee.” The decoy provides cover—we don’t have to acknowledge the habits that we actually follow, because there’s this other, better habit that we intend to adopt.

Traditional Decoy Habits You Might Be Doing

There are definitely some “traditional” decoy habits many of us are guilty of. Try some of these on for size:

• Health & Fitness
  If you’ve ever said, “I’ll start on Monday,” you’ve got yourself a decoy habit! The same goes for anyone who has ever written out a “Couch to 5K” or a half marathon training plan but never actually strapped on the shoes and taken that first run. Perhaps you tell your spouse, “I’m going to start meal planning so we’re taking our lunches and eating better.” You’re talking about it, but you aren’t doing it. That’s a decoy.
• Job Searching
  Especially if you’re in a job you hate, chances are you’ve threatened to leave at some point. “I swear, I’m going to quit” might have come out of your mouth or, “I’m going to spend this weekend applying for jobs.” When you say things like this, you create decoys that set you up for failure. You’re setting a decoy habit and therefore never getting through your decoy goal to your real one.
• Relationships
  Perhaps it’s a bad relationship with a parent or sibling. You say something like, “The next time s/he says X to me, I’m going to finally say something.” Or you say, “I’m going to make more of an effort to create a better relationship.” Where is the action? Hidden in the decoy.

Gretchen is still developing her language around decoy habits, and so are we. But it’s so worth considering in your own life. Are you missing out on actually achieving goals and creating great habits because you’re filling your life with decoys? Ask the hard questions, and you might just find it’s time to get rid of the decoy and play in reality!

The post Are You Being Sabotaged with “Decoy Habits”? appeared first on Career Girl Network.

We all have them – the kind of days where you get out of bed and you just know it’s going to be a bad day. You’re not alone. Bad days plague us all. But just because you’re having a bad day doesn’t mean all is lost until you go to bed tonight. You can salvage a bad day. In fact, productivity expert Jason Womack says your bad day can be “rescued” pretty easily.

Here are two of my favorites of Jason’s tips in “5 Steps to Rescue Your Productivity When Days Go Bad.“

Keep quick tasks close at hand.
When time opens up in your schedule, like your lunch appointment not showing up, you suddenly have time to handle other opportunities if you’re prepared. For example, I carry notecards, envelopes and stamps in my bag. When I find “lost time” in short unexpected moments throughout my busy day, this allows me to write a few thank you notes, birthday cards and other hand-written messages to clients, staff and others in my network. Getting something done in place of what fell through keeps me feeling productive and the unexpected gesture makes me stand out from the masses.

Use cancellations as time to think about the big picture.
What’s the first thing you do when you’re notified that a meeting has been canceled? Check email or go for coffee, right? Most people go back to what they were working on. What if you didn’t? Instead of chipping away at your never-ending mountain of emails, take that one-hour time slot that you were scheduled to be away from your desk to actually move a big, long term project forward. When was the last time you had a fully uninterrupted hour to think? Now is your time to make significant progress on something big.

It’s similar to the “15 minute block” notion we talked about recently. What can you do with an extra 15 minutes? Can you have tasks on hand? Or can you take time to strategize? Either way, doing so can immediately rescue a bad day and make it a productive one.

The post Rescue Your Bad Day with Productivity appeared first on Career Girl Network.

This tragic disease strikes 1 out of every 3.8 women between the ages of 11 and 67 in America. On any given day, 10,982,120,596 trillion women and girls are plagued with this debilitating disease. And, the saddest part? No real statistics exist on it! I had to make these up!

Hell, the syndrome doesn’t even show up in a Google search!

Go ahead, Google “FOYOC Syndrome” and see what happens. See — told you! Nada, Nothing, ZIP.

Why the cover-up? Because most of us don’t realize FOYOC afflicts us until it’s too late. When we finally piece together the symptoms, we’re left with a painful secret that silences us. Simply put, embarrassment floods us and we refuse to tell anyone else, so we live in silence.

It’s time for the syndrome to come out in the open and reveal itself for every guilt-provoking, please-don’t-let-it-get-warm-yet,  how-the-hell-did-I-ever-fit-into-this, thought we’ve had. Ladies, your read it here first! A CGN exclusive just for you, FOYOC Syndrome defined:

Fear Of Your Own Clothes (FOYOC) Syndrome

Sound bone-chillingly familiar? Read on to learn the 4 ways to diagnose yourself:

1. Unusual fear of the warm weather — While others are donning short sleeves and shorts, you relentlessly hold on to your sweater dress/ tights/ boots ensemble insisting that it’s not that WARM OUT YET!
2. Your pulse races and you break-out in a sweat when you walk near your closet — A classic symptom that manifests when you contemplate trying on something from last summer.
3. You refuse to send any of your ‘current’ outfits to the cleaners — If you do that, an outfit comes out of the rotation leaving you with a gap. A gap which must be filled by a visit to your closet. (See #2 for further information.)
4. You start to isolate yourself — Social invitations overwhelm you. A simple lunch invitation reduces you to a babbling idiot. I’d love to, but I can’t possibly accept any invitations until we get our national debt straighten out! What you’re really thinking is, Are you insane? Then I not only have to deal with what to wear, but I need to order food! Are you some sort of freaking lunatic? Is this some sort of sick joke? You bitch!

Suffer no more! I finally admitted my FOYOC syndrome a few weeks ago at a networking lunch for the SBAC. I just blurted it out! I‘m currently afraid of my own clothes. And, then I waited for the inevitable backlash.

To my surprise and delight my friend answered, Me too!

Since then, I’ve been sharing my experience with everyone! It’s so freeing to come out of the closet….no pun intended!

The post 4 Ways to Know if You Have FOYOC Syndrome appeared first on Career Girl Network.

Last year, I trained for and ran two half marathons. This year, while I’ve taken a break from running, I’m just starting to get my running motivation back (maybe it’s the beautiful weather). So naturally, I started to think about my favorite running products. I dug out my favorite running shoes, socks, water bottle, etc. and I also started looking at new ways to enhance my run. That’s why I was so excited when our friends at Klutch Club posted “Fitness Essentials for Your Marathon Season.“

My favorite of their recommendations is a product I’ve seen recently but never tried. It might just alleviate that Friday night “can’t sleep because I’m thinking about tomorrow’s long run” anxiety.

Dream Water.

I would be lying if I told you that the long runs on the weekend didn’t give me anxiety. I would also be lying if I told you that increasing my mileage didn’t take a toll on my body. Dream Water helped with both! Increased sleep is recommended for marathon training to assist with recovery, so getting to bed early was essential. I also had to fit my running into my busy schedule, which made early AM wake up calls the standard. Downing a Dream Water helped me fall asleep naturally and wake up feeling ready to run. Since I used it in my training, I was able to confidently use it the night before the marathon to get a solid night of sleep before the big day.

Check out Klutch Club’s recommendation for Dream Water and other great training products for runners here. And tell us in the comments below – what are your favorite running (or just health and fitness in general) products?

The post Training for a Run? These Are Your “Must Haves” appeared first on Career Girl Network.

I wanted to become a certified personal trainer to help me break into the active lifestyle industry, so I signed up for courses and material to get certified last fall. It went well around the holidays and then I realized that I have no time in my normal schedule to do anything extra. I beat myself up about it for about four months, and stressed about the time I was not spending on the commitment. After a hard talk with myself, I realized that I had to quit.

Junctures like this are always terrible and make me feel like a failure, but it’s bound to happen to busy Career Girls and there’s no reason to feel awful forever. It’s okay to stop holding on if it’s making you miserable. Here are five steps for knowing when it’s time to give up, and what to do next.

• You’ve been overwhelmed and there’s no end in sight. Sometimes we’re involved in activities that have an end, so we put up with the stress because they’re temporary. Are you stressed because of something temporary, or do you have an unmanageable permanent work load? If you just need a day off or vacation, schedule that time for yourself. But if you realize it’s constant and not sustainable, then it’s time to decide what to give up.
• You’ve already started giving up, but you won’t let go. When I knew I didn’t have nearly enough time to read an epic per week, I kept going to my world literature class for weeks. Why? I thought maybe something would change, and I felt really guilty about giving up. Nothing changed, and I missed out on getting a partial refund because I waited too long. If you know you need to throw in the towel and there’s no way to save it, make the decision to end it today. You don’t need to hang on longer to sufficiently punish yourself.

Once you’ve decided that it’s time, take a deep breath and remember that you’re not a failure. You’ve probably done far more than someone else could have done, and no one is going to hate you forever. Now, how do you let go?

• Say it out loud. Once I said I wasn’t going to finish my certification, it was a huge weight off my shoulders because I was finally being honest about it and didn’t have to feel guilty any more. I knew it was the end because I said it out loud.
• Talk to someone. Invite some Career Girls out for a drink and tell them that you feel crappy about having to quit something you thought you could do. Everyone can sympathize with that, and you’ll feel a lot better getting it off your chest (and having a drink).
• Get it over with and move on. There’s no point in waiting. You need to move on to things that are more important. Inform the people that need to know. Tell them clearly that you’ve been trying to make it work, but you’re not able to do a good job and you’re not happy, so you’re done. People are surprisingly understanding when the reason is simply, “I’m not happy.” Don’t try to draw it out. Own it, end it, and walk away.

If you can make things work by asking for help, coming up with a new arrangement, or better organizing your time, then you don’t have to give up. Your friends, family, or co-workers might be able to take some pressure off of you if you ask for help. It’s hard and we all want to be a super-person, but remember that people like to help. Weigh your options, be honest with yourself and others, and look at your priorities. Don’t feel like a failure if you have to give something up to keep your energy going toward the other parts of your life that really deserve your attention (and to keep from going bananas).

The post Get Better at Giving Up appeared first on Career Girl Network.

What does cutting out pictures have to do with your health?

Vision boards are a mainstay in life coaching and popular self-help circles. The theory behind vision boards is that if you can see or visualize what it is you want or the outcomes you want to achieve in your life, business, or career, you are more likely to achieve them.

To make a vision board, different methods are employed. You can flip through old magazines (yard sales are a great source, as are services like Freecycle.org), cutting out photos and phrases that represent your greatest dreams, goals, and desires and pasting them on a big piece of poster board. Pinterest offers an easy way to create a vision board using the myriad images and ideas stored online, and you can access your board anywhere there is an internet connection. Or you can get creative with crayons, markers, or colored pencils and let your inner artist run wild as you spill your dreams and goals onto draft paper in colors of your choosing.

Whatever your method, your vision board, when complete, should make your heart scream YES! when you look at it. It should be a true statement of what you most want from life.

As a wellness coach, I have used vision boards to help clients get clear about what it is they want to achieve from their coaching or fitness training sessions. What is it that they really signed up to achieve in the long run? What is the big driver behind their decision to pay for an expert’s help to improve their health? Is it really losing weight, or is it much more than that? (Hint: It’s usually much more than, and very different from, what they originally thought.)

But there’s a huge, gaping hole in the theory behind vision boards. In my next post, I’ll alert you to that gap and let you know how to bridge it with a complementary tool that no vision can be achieved without.

The post A Vision Board for Your Health appeared first on Career Girl Network.

A few years ago, when I was still running a business, I made the naive assumption that nothing in it could function without me. I worked days, nights, weekends, and any other time you could make up in between. My work weekend was also split, making it difficult to take any time off for myself since Saturdays were a pretty crucial work day of the week. It became almost a game (one that made me sickeningly proud) to see how many days in a row I had worked without taking even one day off. I think the eventual tally stopped somewhere around 90…making it almost one-third of that year one where I had not taken a break.

“It’s fine,” I would say. “It’s business. This is how people get ahead. Sometimes you have to work harder than everyone else and that means not taking time off. Plus, I love my job. That’s what makes it easier to do!”

Except I was lying. Or I at least found out later that working so much and so hard would lead one to eventually despise/disdain/loathe/eternally hate one’s job.

Yes, when you are starting out in business or trying to build an empire, you will need to put in more time than just the standard 40 hour workweek. But make no mistake: working 7 days a week, 365 a year does not make you a stronger or smarter person. It does not provide you with battle scars to show off–at least not the kind you want to show off, anyway. Things it could eventually do instead: Ruin your immune system, deprive you of a normal social life, make you hate your job and everyone in your office, throw you into a deep depression, etc etc etc. Time off is important, and most of us have it built in with two consecutive days every week.

So what do you do with that time? Jacquelyn Smith over at Forbes examines in detail 14 activities that successful people make it a point to engage in on the weekends. Here is one of my favorites:

3. Pursue a passion. “There’s a creative director of a greeting card company who went back to school to pursue an MFA because of her love of art,” Kurow says. “Pursuing this passion turned into a love of poetry that she now writes on weekends.”

“Successful people make time for what is important or fun,” Egan adds. “They make space for activities that add to their life balance.”

I had often said of myself during this way-too-busy time in my life that I don’t even know what my hobbies are anymore…they were something I think I sacrificed when I also decided to offer up sleep and social life on the altar of careerism. Once I found a new job and started taking my weekends seriously, I realized that there still were passions in me to be had, including yoga and professional football. It may not be anything crafty, but it makes me a person I enjoy that feels like I have something to experience in this world besides work. And every weekend during the football season, anyone who knows me knows that I take that time pretty seriously (early game on Sunday? Early to bed on a Saturday–I don’t care what kind of party we are at.)

When Richard Eisenberg interviewed Stephen Pollan, he had this to say about career and personal fulfillment:

You should focus on a career only as a stream of income. Your employer is not concerned about your fulfillment. Anyone looking for career fulfillment is going to be frustrated because employers are not out there to make us happy.

Look for fulfillment through your romantic life, through travel, through personal relationships, not on the job. It ain’t there.

Realizing quickly that your job is not what defines your life is likely one of the biggest keys to maintaining success as the years go on. Taking your weekends to focus on self-reflection, personal fulfillment, and rejuvenation (check out our Saturday Stay In Bed Stimulus for great ways to help with that!) means that you are treating yourself well holistically. Anyone that does that knows that they are able to approach their work week with a clearer head and a lighter heart.

I joked with a co-worker on Friday that I always make plans to be productive with my weekends, but then brunch and mimosas happen on Saturday morning and it’s all downhill from there. I know now that I may not be as productive as I’d like on the weekends…but I have them now. And I gotta tell you, I enjoy my job and my personal life a whole lot more as a result.

The post What Are You Doing This Weekend? (Hint: Don’t Say “Work.”) appeared first on Career Girl Network.

I don’t know about you, Career Girls, but when I’m planning a vacation, I’m less concerned about the destination itself, and more concerned with two very specific things: the experience I’ll have there, and what it’s going to cost me. Last fall, when our family simply couldn’t decide between Portugal and Spain, we were informed by price more than anything. The same went for my husband and I planning our honeymoon. Sure, we ended up sweating like crazy during summer in New Orleans, but it was quiet and serene and inexpensive as well.

Now, there’s a website that will make those “either or” decisions even easier….GetGoing.com. Here are illustrations of GetGoing.com’s two main services:

• Flight Finder allows you to select a region and search for the cheapest flights in it. Want to go to Europe on the cheap and don’t care where, this is the right service for you.
• Pick Two, Get One lets you choose two destinations and go with the one that ends up being cheaper. GetGoing.com is able to get even better prices based on this algorithm. It’s genius.

So if you’re feeling a little adventurous in your travel planning, check out GetGoing.com and spin the wheel!

The post Get Going with the Coolest New Travel Site: Get Going! appeared first on Career Girl Network.