FireitupwithCJ

FireitupwithCJ


Enlightened New Year’s Resolutions (Jennifer Louden)

December 20, 2013

What would heart-based New Year's resolutions look like?  Would it still just be about losing weight, and accomplishing more?  What would an enlightened New Year's Resolutions look like?  Join CJ as she interviews Jennifer Louden author of " the Life Organizer" and see what a heart-based set of resolutions may look like for you.
Show SummarySegment 1: Questions to contemplate during the holiday season
Segment 2: 5 Heart-Based Steps to Expand Time and Increase Efficiency during your day.
Segment 3: What does a real life  Shero's Journey look like?  Jennifer offers an inside look at her 23 year path of ups and downs and her own heroes journey.
Segment 4: Addressing the trilogy of  time killers in our lives.  How can we move away from over doing for others, perfectionism, and people pleasing this year?Blog Post from our Guest
Stop the Cycle of Over-Providing by Jennifer LoudenI define over-providing as giving more than is sustainable for you and often for the wrong reasons. Accurate but kind of bland.  A better definition comes from my friend Jeanie, “Over-providing? That’s when you pouring everything into growing everybody else while withering yourself.”Withering yourself. That’s what you do when, instead of bringing the requested two side dishes to the family holiday dinner, you show up with five sides, a salad, two pies, gravy and a ham. Withering yourself is hosting a fund-raiser, hand-crafting the food, the decorations and handling all the details, then ending up in bed with pneumonia. Withering yourself is inviting your elderly mom to move in with you, even though she has a support system and enough money for good care, and find yourself gaining weight, neglecting your creative passions, and cultivating a big ole’ grudge.Obviously, over-providing is not in your best interests and yet we all do it, at least some of the time. Why oh why? Here are a few of our compelling reasons:You were raised in a culture that still proclaims good women give endlessly and good men provide.
Your biology –humans are hard-wired to belong. Over-providing keeps you in the tribe.
You’re empathetic. You want to help.
You may believe what you want to give isn’t worthwhile enough so you gush like a broken fire hydrant lots of other things – money, advice, time - to make up for what you perceive you lack.
You forget you’re a human with human limits of time and energy, easy to do in these uber speedy times.
You haven’t learned (yet) to trust your self, to trust your body and heart when it says, “Enough.”Also, over-providing can be very difficult to recognize. Look for signs like: A hollow feeling of never getting enough done
A jittery compulsion to fix people’s pain, to do something to make it better
Resentment – everybody else gets what they want but you
Rarely focusing on your own dreams and desires
Hearing yourself say things like “When I finish ____ then I will” and “I just had to do ____ for _____ who else would?” and “If I don’t do ______ I will be a big failure, get fired and end up homeless and…”Clearly over-providing is not the best choice for your health, your career, or your sanity. Now what to do? Sample these simple balancing antidotes:Write down everything you do for others in a 24 hour period.
Hard but so worthwhile. 
Start the day with five minutes of extravagant self-praise.
Imagine this praise in the form of hummingbirds streaming into the back of your heart.
Navigate by desire.Make a practice of asking, “What do I want?” or “What would I really love to do here?” Learning to know what you want, even if you can't have it, is a life changing practice and one I teach in more depth in my book The Life Organizer.Deputize a few beloveds to check in with before you say yes to something else.
Hearing yourself trying to talk yourself into something can be very enlightening.
Get used to saying, “Let me get back to you.”