Most of us yearn for more balance in our hectic lives. We find ourselves racing through our days, emotionally and physically exhausted. Thankfully, the wellness movement is taking hold in all corners of the country, offering concepts, tools, and strategies to reflect, refuel, and renew. The powerful strategies in this book are guaranteed to help you reduce the noise in your life and tune into your guiding values and beliefs so that your life can be everything you want it to be. Get ready to make your life more engaging, pleasant, and meaningful!

10 Critical Strategies for Finding Fulfillment in a Hectic World

By Julie O'Keeffe

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Julie O'Keeffe, ACC
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4567-5626-0

Contents

Foreword......................................................................ixPreface.......................................................................xiAcknowledgements..............................................................xviiIntroduction..................................................................xixBe Resourceful in Balancing Priorities........................................1Put Your Fears Aside..........................................................4Update Your Identity to Reflect Your Current Capabilities.....................8Develop Your Resiliency.......................................................10Do the Fun Things in Life Now.................................................13Get Real about Your Goals.....................................................16Take a Second Look at Obstacles...............................................19Put Your Values into Action...................................................22Walk Over Boundaries..........................................................26Expect Adversity in Your Adventures...........................................29Bonus Strategy: Live in a Judgment-Free Zone..................................32About Coach Julie.............................................................35

Chapter One

Be Resourceful in Balancing Priorities

Sometimes it seems like we only have time to focus on one or two priorities, so we attend to them at the expense of others. Neglecting priorities almost always catches up with us and we end up spending more time dealing with the consequences than the initial issue would have required.

Life would be better if we just had more control, right? The fact is, there are often more options than we realize. It might only take a bit of creativity and a fresh perspective to discover the choices that are actually within our control.

Outrageous brainstorming and resourcefulness

To break through your sense of being "locked up" by your life, try a technique with a friend called outrageous brainstorming. The strategy consists of two steps. First, come up with crazy, off-the-wall ways to solve a problem. The more unrealistic or impractical, the better. The point is to go so far outside reasonable boundaries that the real boundaries don't seem so immovable. Doing this breaks the tension and allows you to see your circumstances with a fresh perspective.

Say you'd like to start a running routine in the morning but it interferes with rousing your seven- and nine-year old kids from bed and helping them get breakfast. Maybe you hire Rachael Ray to cook breakfast. Or, you send your kids to the neighbor's house to steal food off the table. Or, you give the kids diet pills to suppress their appetite. You get the idea.

Secondly, take a more practical look at your present circumstances. View the situation from every angle. Consider assumptions that might be false. Remove these assumptions just for a minute and see what possibilities surface. Consider resources that might be available to you. Your new frame of mind will allow you to think more expansively and with a greater sense of empowerment.

With the example above, maybe the kids could help you cut up fruit every night to grab from the fridge in the morning. You could move the microwave within arm's reach so they can heat up their own oatmeal. You could offer the nine-year-old a movie rental once a week if she will supervise breakfast. To get the kids out of bed, perhaps they are old enough to take some responsibility for this task, too. Let them each pick out a fun alarm clock at the store and practice using it for a week. Then let them go solo.

We often overestimate our own importance and need for involvement. We can't imagine certain tasks without our presence. Well, imagine it! Imagine the freedom it brings and the healthy changes that can result, not just for you, but often for others as well. Consider how your children might grow from the new challenge and achieve a greater sense of self-sufficiency and skill mastery.

Apply it to your life

The next time you're with a friend, ask her to help you do some outrageous brainstorming around a priority that has slipped off the radar. Let go of the wrinkle-causing worry for a minute and just have fun. Break free of the tension, look at the situation with fresh eyes, and give yourself permission to solve the problem.

Then implement the solution, without guilt! Explain to individuals who might be impacted the reason for the change and the importance of trying the new approach. Explain how they might benefit.

Model the behavior of someone who wants to live their best life! And be that person!

Put Your Fears Aside

How many of life's decisions have you made based on fear and your need for certainty? You might gain peace of mind by knowing exactly what will happen but on the flip side, it's also very limiting. It's possible to squeeze more out of life and still feel some sense of safety. It's a two-step process: testing your limits and recalibrating.

Test your limits

Each of us has a natural balancing point between safety and risk. You might be willing to jump from a three-foot ledge but not a six-foot ledge. Somewhere between three feet and six feet is the tipping point, the point at which you are uncomfortable taking the risk.

So first, test your limits. It will allow you to locate the tipping point. Do you want to try jumping from four feet? Or perhaps start with three feet six inches and work your way up. You see, you can find your limits any way you want. It's usually not an "all or nothing" proposition. Just try a little of what you believe makes you nervous and test it.

By testing your limits, you might learn that you are capable of more than you think. Not surprising, right? Yet we all go through life making assumptions about our limits, forcing tight boundaries around us that are unnecessary. Loosen up these boundaries and you have more room to breathe. More room to be curious. More room to grow.

Recalibrate

Second, recalibrate. With this process, you move the tipping point. If you continue to jump just a little beyond your comfort zone each time, you will feel more and more comfortable with every jump. Before you know it, it will require a greater height to make you feel uneasy. That's recalibrating.

We recalibrate in life all the time. We change our concept of our ideal weight as we move from youth to age 20, 30, and 40. We change our concept of quality, such that the "expensive" watch we bought at age 10 with our allowance may not seem so cool at age 16. We adjust to life's changing framework.

Impact

If you've ever been around successful individuals who seem immune to problems that would be difficult for rest of us, that immunity is simply each person's recalibration in action. Their definition of what constitutes a problem has evolved over time as they've exposed themselves to more challenging situations. They can handle more, because it doesn't feel overwhelming. They have adjusted.

Your fears

What is the next big decision you want to make in your life? Look at the options available to you and identify the fears and risks that you associate with each one. You can't always jump off a ledge to test your limits, so perhaps sit down with a pencil and paper and jot down some thoughts about each option. See if...