How many times have you experienced this scenario:

Sunday night:  “I am going to pack my lunch every single day this week!”

Monday at lunch: “I forgot to pack my lunch… how about Chipotle?”

Tuesday morning, en route to work:  “Oh, I didn’t pack a lunch! Oh well, I’ll just grab a quick salad.”

Friday night: “I didn’t pack a lunch at all this week. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I do what I say I will do?!”

There are a lot of ways to interpret this kind of (very common!) failure.  Some will point out that you didn’t really have a process or a plan.  Others may argue that you need systems and structures to support you in your lunch making.  I whole-heartedly agree with both of them… but when I hear a story like that, an alarm bell goes off in my mind:

This person has a money mindset problem.

What’s a money mindset problem, you ask?  The money mindsets are three beliefs that we all hold about ourselves and money.

If your money mindsets are aligned to support change, you can see immediate improvement and, over time, transformative results.  If your money mindsets aren’t aligned to support change, you’ll be plagued by slow downs, emotional turmoil and false starts:

 Again and again you will realize you need to change.

Again and again you’ll fail to make any change at all.

Here are the three mindsets:

• In my heart, do I believe that if I am willing to work hard and try new strategies that I can succeed?
• Do I actually want to do this or do I simply think I should want to do this?
• Do I think that people like me do things like this?

Each of these mindsets are capable of stopping you in your tracks, or speeding you towards your goal.  If you want to learn more about all three Money Mindsets, I’ve created a quiz and mini course that will help you to identify exactly where your mindset block might be and help you shift it.  You can get it for free, here.

In this post, I want to talk about the third mindset, which is referred to as the Belonging Mindset.

People define themselves relative to others

Quick- what’s your best trait?

“I’m funny!” you say.

“Compared to who?” I say.

You’ll find that most of your traits are relative in this way.  You say you are funny, but you really mean that people laugh more around you than around others.  You say you are kind, but what you really means is that you are kinder than most.  Smarter. Nicer. More competitive. Less athletic.

It’s shocking, but before long you will discover: You aren’t objectively anything, but you are relatively lots of things.

An offshoot of this relativity is that we lump ourselves and others into categories– members of the group of “people like this.”  For example, we believe that there are “people like me, who are funny.”  And then we use this shorthand to understand ourselves and others.

The tricky part of this is that “people like me who are funny” are also understood to have other, in our mind, related traits.  Depending on your experience with other funny people, “people like me who are funny” might also be understood as:

• people who are less serious
• people who watch more tv
• people who keep up with the news

These “related” traits make it so that we feel that we pretty deeply understand people when we only know a few things about them.  This tendency makes the world feel like a much less complicated and dangerous place, so our brains like it.  In fact, our brains likes it so much that they (our brains) will keep us aligned to our groups, even when changing would be better for us.

All that stuff up there is just a description of how the brain works. It undergirds stereotype, group-think, mass-protest, etc.  But how does this affect your ability to save money (or any other change you might undertake)?

Here’s how:

If you’ve read much of my writing on change, you know that a major focus of change work is done at the level of the moment.

Your success and failure will come down to how you act in the moments of your life.

If you want to save money you will need to change the moments when you currently spend money. And it turns out that whether we believe that “people like us” spend their moments “like this” has a huge impact on what we end up doing… and not doing

One such moment is paying for food at restaurants and coffee shops.  If you’ve been trying to save money for long, you probably realize that there’s a lot to be saved by packing lunches and making your own coffee… But if you don’t think that people like you pack a lunch, you will find it very difficult to do so. It’s not usually a conscious resistance, but rather an unconscious side-stepping. An avoidance. In short, a major mental block.

Which (finally!) brings up to why you need to talk to your friends about money.  Our friends serve as our most tangible reminder of what “kind” of people we are.  If you aren’t sure whether people like you do something, it’s likely that you ponder “What would my best friend do?”  Thus, it is critically important that you broaden your knowledge of how they think and feel about money.

In my 1:1 coaching, I always encourage my clients to broach the topic of money with their friends. Without exception, every one of them has looked at me like I was crazy or dangerous.

“We don’t really talk about money… I don’t think they really need to think about it.  I would feel embarrassed. I don’t really want to. Do I have to?”

Eventually we work through it and together we pick the one friend that they believe will be supportive of them, no matter what*. We talk about exactly how to phrase it, and then off they go.  Every single time, without fail, they come back amazed.

“I didn’t realize it, but she is also worried about money!  As soon as I mentioned it she looked so relieved!  Now I feel like we can talk about how much things cost before we agree to doing it.  And I feel like our friendship got deeper… more real.”

Listen, the average american can’t come up with $400 to handle a financial emergency. This means that it is categorically true that “people like you”, whoever you are, “do things like” worry about their money.  We need to open the doors a little, and let each other admit it.

If you open this conversation with someone you care about you are likely to discover that you and your friend are both concerned.  This will shift your mindset for sure:  suddenly it will be clear that people just like you are working hard to save money and live responsibly.  Then, it’s back to packing lunches, but this time with less resistance.

*When you take the Money Mindset quiz, you’ll see that one of my suggestions for shifting the belonging mindset is to not tell people about your money goals until you are more confident.  These two suggestions are not in conflict! I DON’T think you should tell people who will make you doubt yourself, but I DO think you should tell your best, most supportive friend(s).

The post Why you should talk to your friends about money, even if you think they will judge you appeared first on Powerful Peony.

I’ve never been an athletic or active person. My entire history of sports involved one season of track in high school and a brief flirtation with what I thought was a yoga studio but turned out to be more of a cult. But then, in my mid-30s, I had two children and gained 30 pounds. I was suffering from chronic back pain, and I knew something needed to change.

There was just one problem: When it came down to it, I didn’t really want to exercise. When my husband suggested I take up running, I said I’d do it if—and only if—a bear was chasing me. And yet, last fall, I did both a half marathon and a triathlon for the first time. How did I evolve from a self-proclaimed couch potato to endurance athletics enthusiast? I learned how to change my attitude.

In my professional life, I work with schools to help struggling students re-engage with academics. One major focus is addressing students’ mindsets. According to the Chicago Consortium on School Reform (along with many other educational experts), three concepts influence whether students will persist when things get rough at school:

1. The belief that hard work can and will lead to improvement
2. Confidence that you, and people like you, belong in school and that it is a place where you can thrive
3. The belief that what you are doing is valuable and relevant to your goals

When kids lack any one of these mindsets, they’re much less willing to continue working hard when things get difficult. After all, it is not rational to work hard when there’s no hope for improvement, for people who don’t seem to like you, to do things you don’t care about.

Looking back, my problem with exercise was that I lacked all three of these requirements. These main beliefs were holding me back:

1. I hadn’t ever successfully sustained a workout routine, so clearly I just wasn’t an “exercise person.”
2. I didn’t like gyms and didn’t feel like I belonged in them. Running on treadmills seemed pointless. And I couldn’t conceive of any need for so many mirrors in one place.
3. I associated exercise with a lot of negative things. I hate the weight-loss industrial complex and the way it makes women feel ashamed of their perfectly good bodies. I also hate the elitism and exclusion that seems to permeate many sports. Basically, I didn’t value what exercise seemed to be offering.

It’s no wonder I wasn’t getting into a good routine: I didn’t believe that I would ever succeed, and I didn’t value that success anyway. In order to change, I used a series of techniques that are actually applicable to any number of areas—from becoming a better student to learning how to play a musical instrument. So no matter what aspect of your life you’re trying to improve, here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Learn to be kind to yourself

We live in a world obsessed with the exceptional. We admire prodigies and geniuses and multimillionaires, and we believe that some people are fundamentally capable of greatness while others are not. If you aren’t already exceptional (or very likely to become so), the theory goes, than it isn’t worth the effort to try. Stanford University psychology professor Carol Dweck calls this attitude a “fixed mindset.” By contrast, Dweck calls the belief that everyone’s intelligence and ability is developed over time a “growth mindset.” People with a “growth mindset” are much more likely to succeed in their goals.

The best way to rewire a fixed mindset is to get cozy with science. Research shows that when we work to master a new skill—whether it’s calculus or kickboxing—we grow synaptic connections and increase our brains’ ability to master other new things. Working out builds a foundation for greater athleticism. We grow new blood vessels that help us get oxygen more effectively and build muscles that are better able to withstand exertion. That’s part of the process of getting physically stronger.

We can help ourselves adopt a growth mindset—and it’s particularly important to do so when beginning something new. If you go out for a run and find that you can’t jog for longer than a minute (like me!), resist the instinct to say, “See, I knew I wasn’t meant to do this!” and head back inside to sprawl on the couch. Instead, use a growth-mindset response. Tell yourself, “I’m on day one of getting stronger and faster. Go me!” It’s important that you’re patient and kind to yourself. You’ll be making serious progress before you know it.

2. Find a community

People don’t do things if they feel uncomfortable or out of place. A feeling of awkwardness and alienation is why truants don’t come to school, why I never shop at Aeropostale and why many middle-aged people would rather die than attend a Justin Bieber concert.

One way that schools help disengaged students reconnect with their academic environment is by assigning each student a counselor. It’s that counselor’s job to know the student’s name and life story, pester them when they don’t come to school, and cheer them on as they make progress. This technique works because it really doesn’t take much to turn the tide and make a person feel like they belong. With just one friend to wave to in the hallways or one adult figure checking up on how things are at home, school can feel a lot less alienating.

The same was true for me with exercise. Everything changed when I found a group of like-minded cyclists to ride with once a week. With the “Joy Ride” group, I found an alternative athletic culture where I could finally fit in. My fellow cyclists just wanted to have fun and get some fresh air. There was no sense of competition, and the goal wasn’t to be skinny or super buff. Since I felt comfortable and looked forward to hanging out with the group, I had a much easier time getting out the door.

So if you’re looking for a way to commit to exercise, think about the kind of people you like to hang out with and the atmospheres where you thrive. If you like a calm, focused environment, you might succeed with yoga or ballet. If you’re often in the mood to hang out with a bunch of fun-loving feminists, check out roller derby. When you’ve found your tribe, it be a lot easier to stay engaged when the going gets rough.

3. Think about your future self

Daphna Oyserman, a psychologist and professor of education and communication at the University of Southern California, has a theoryabout the link between academic success and the way adolescents envision their future selves. Oyserman writes that if kids’ visions of their future selves (or “possible selves”) are untethered to their academic achievements, they typically don’t see much value in doing school work. So schools need to help students get personally invested in careers and accomplishments that are directly tied to the work they do in class.

There was a moment just after my second child was born when I began to envision how exercising could make a meaningful difference to my future self. I was too unstable and too weak to pick up my older child without sending my back into spasms. I began to dream of a life where I was strong. Where I could hike and row a boat. Where I could encourage my children to be active by modeling that behavior myself. And then I hit upon the idea of doing a triathlon. Could I become a triathlete?

The second step of the “possible self” intervention is to set a related but much shorter-term goal. For example, if you aren’t exercising at all, you could decide that in the next eight weeks you will complete a Couch to 5K training program. You must then immediately set a goal for the week ahead: “I’ll buy the app and run at least once this week.” When you are tying your day-to-day efforts into a loftier, aspirational dream, it’s easier to stay motivated.

I work with a lot of people who are trying to change their lives for the better in any number of ways. When people describe a situation where they want to meet new people or eat healthier or pursue a new career but they never, ever do it, my first thought is that they need a change in mindset. Remember, we can change the way we visualize and attack our goals—there’s a triathlete of some kind lurking in all of us.

Follow Amanda on Twitter @aj_crowell. We welcome your comments at *protected email*.

The post Psychology has identified three mindsets shared by people who actually follow through on their goals appeared first on Powerful Peony.

During my 20s, I didn’t give much thought to money. I was in grad school for a long time—seven years total between my masters and PhD—and I assumed my finances would straighten out once I graduated and got a job in the real world.

But shortly after I settled into my new job, my student loans came due, and I realized that I was really no less broke then I’d been in grad school. It was a wake-up call. My family needed a budget, and we needed one now.

Fortunately, I’ve been working as a change consultant for a few years, helping to manage school reform effectively—so I knew that at the heart of big changes are small experiments. Whenever you see difficult changes handled well, whether in health care, manufacturing, or education, it’s because the overhaul was managed through very small changes that were carefully monitored. Along with other insights from design thinking, improvement science, and psychological research, this helped me tackle my personal budgeting. The same tips can help you make a positive change, whether it’s exercising more, embarking on a new career path, or finally organizing your apartment.

The challenge

My husband and I decided to follow the budgeting program outlined in Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. The first step in the program is to save $1,000 as fast as you can. But there wasn’t much guidance on exactly how we were going to get there. He couldn’t tell me exactly how to save that money, because the same change doesn’t unfold in the same way for everyone. In order for a change to really take root, it has to grow along the contours of your particular life.

As I looked at my buying patterns, it was clear to me that I was spending too much money in restaurants and coffee shops. I knew I had to cut down in those areas, but I had to figure out exactly how to do that myself—which required embarking on a series of small experiments.

To tackle your personal improvement efforts through small experiments, you need to understand a few things:

1. Remember that change happens in moments.

Sometimes we think that big problems—like being deep in credit-card debt or struggling in a romantic relationship—require a sweeping, singular solution. This is the wrong way to think about change. Even the biggest problems are the accumulated effect of many small decisions and moments that have gone the wrong way. To fix the problem, you need to focus on the seemingly minor, everyday choices that are creating your current reality.

For example, when I decided to adopt a budget, I had to address lots of little moments in everyday life when I could either spend or save. The first step was to identify those moments—say, a crazy morning when making lunch was the last thing on my mind—and find ways to handle them.

Even the biggest problems are the accumulated effect of many small decisions and moments that have gone the wrong way.

Since I knew that I was most tempted to forego a packed lunch when I was rushing to get out the door in the morning, I experimented with different ways to pack my lunch ahead of time. I tried making them the night before, but I found that I was too exhausted at the end of a long day. Then I tried getting up at 5 am to give myself plenty of extra time in the morning, but found that wakeup time grueling. I tried eating only frozen meals and pre-packaged food (gross). Eventually, I settled on making a specific lunch plan for the week ahead of time and trying to prepare the basics on Sundays. Each of these experiments allowed me to try handling a specific, challenging moment in a different way. Which brings me to my second point:

2. Keep your experiments very small.

By experimenting with different possible solutions, we can discover the best ways to change our habits. So it’s important not to overcommit to a new idea until you know that it works.

For example, I was very sure that taking my coffee to work with me in disposable cups was going to be the solution to my caffeine-spending problem. In fact, I was so sure that I bought roughly a metric ton of disposable cups at Costco—a strong commitment if ever there was one.

But the disposable cups did not work. First of all, my coffee got cold really quickly, especially in the winter. Then I felt really guilty throwing the disposable cups away—it would have made a lot more sense for me to give the idea a test run before purchasing a lifetime supply of guilt-inducing cups. I also tried inexpensive, reusable cups, but they leaked in my bag and weren’t much better at keeping the coffee hot.

When you are getting started on a goal, don’t make a huge commitment. Find a way to try it out first.

The eureka moment came when I found what I call my “Hot-Shot Thermos.” A friend of mine had one of these thermoses—the sturdy kind that construction workers use—and lent it to me to try out. It turns out that it keeps coffee amazingly hot and delicious seven hours later, even in the freezing cold. And the lid screwed on so tightly that I could carry it inside my bag with zero worry about leaking. Victory!

Learn from my mistakes: When you are getting started on a goal, don’t make a huge commitment. Find a way to try it out first. If you want to start exercising more, definitely ask for a guest pass at a gym before you decide to spend $100 a month. If you’re thinking about pursuing a graduate degree, drop in on a few classes at a local school before you spend a lot of time and money on applications—just in case it turns out that, say, landscape architecture isn’t as glamorous as you’d hoped.

3. Expect failure.

It’s not possible to adopt a new habit or achieve a goal without encountering a healthy dose of failure along the way. If you can do something perfectly, you already know how to do it, right? But don’t forget—there are two kinds of failure: the productive kind and the defensive kind.

Defensive failure is what’s happening when you vow to go on a diet or start job hunting week after week and never, ever make any progress. In your heart of hearts, you don’t really think you can do it, or you just think you should do it, or you don’t believe that “people like you” do things like this. If you find that you just can’t get started on a particular project or making a certain change, even though you really want to, you should read this article about getting in the right mindset.

Productive failure, by contrast, is what we all encounter when we are committed to a given goal and are taking action to try to achieve it. Whether you’re attempting to wake up early to exercise three times a week or working hard to make more friends in a new city, every attempt is going to have elements of both success and failure.

The critical work is to identify what you’re doing that’s leading to success and stick with it, while also continuing to experiment with the pieces that aren’t working yet. The scientists among you will recognize this as the essential core of the scientific method.

When you are learning your way into a new way of being, don’t be discouraged when things go sideways.

I had my own bout of productive failure on the second step of Dave’s program—the debt snowball, where the goal is to spend every dime you can on paying off your debt. I’d always justified credit cards as important tools for handling emergencies. By looking at my credit card usage, I’d come to realize that debt was actually creating the emergency, not getting me out of it.

But even though I was very committed to paying off my credit cards, I still slipped. One month, things got out of hand and I fell back into my old “emergency” habits and ran my almost-paid-off credit card back up. I was so disappointed that I might have cried. Ok, I did cry. But then I got back to my small experiments. It was a lot easier to keep things on track the second (and third, and fourth) time.

When you are learning your way into a new way of being, don’t be discouraged when things go sideways. That’s to be expected. Successfully transforming your life in small and large ways will require that you see failure for what it is—the stepping stone to sustainable success.

We’ve been working our way through the Dave Ramsey program now for a couple of years. We are spending less money than we make, are down from four credit cards to just one, and have begun to contribute 10% to both of our 401(k)s. It has been a bumpy ride; bad habits are hard to break. But by finding the moments at the root of the problem, keeping changes really small, and expecting to make a ton of rookie mistakes, we’ve been able to keep with it and make real progress.

The post Psychology suggests the best way to change your life is through a series of small experiments appeared first on Powerful Peony.

Between 2000 (when I graduated from college) and 2011 (when I earned my PhD) I was on a clear, well-trodden path.  As long as I was getting closer to a PhD, I felt I could relax.  There weren’t any major cross-roads; so long as I stayed the course I would inevitably end up where I wanted to be.  Or so I thought.

Once I had a PhD, I got accepted to a post-doctoral fellowship and began to look around. It was time to find that professorship!

Right away it became clear that there were very few jobs… and the jobs that did exist combined really high teaching loads with really low pay.

Part of this was because I was looking for a professorship at the end of the Great Recession and there was a HUGE backlog of PhDs who hadn’t been able to get the job they wanted for the past 5 years. People who would normally have been in Research University jobs were in teaching jobs and people who should have been in those teaching jobs were waiting around in post-docs.  EVERYONE wanted the very few available jobs.

Combine that with the fact that I wanted to get back to the East Coast where PhDs flood the market and my odds were very, very slim.

My advisors told me to stay the course.  I had a strong research agenda and great letters of recommendation, they argued, and I would be able to find a professorship if I could be patient.  But some realities had begun to dawn on me…

• I didn’t want a low paying job, I had huge student loans.
• I didn’t want to live in Nebraska (where the most relevant and interesting job was), I wanted to live in New York City.
• I didn’t want to get caught up in the turmoil of a publish or perish industry with heavy pressure to bring in grants.

It began to dawn on me… did I even WANT to be a tenure track professor right now?

I had been on this path for more than a decade. I had a PhD and a family and massive (MASSIVE) student loans.  What do I say when people ask “What’s next for you, Amanda?”

This was a major, tumultuous cross-road for me.  The well worn path was headed to Nebraska and I was staring at a wilderness, looking for clues.  “What do I really want?”

I began to ask myself hard questions like:

• “To what do I want to contribute?”
• “How do I want to spend my time?”
• “How important is flexibility?”
• “What kind of work could I do that is marketable?”
• “How much money do I really need to make?”
• “What makes me feel passionate and alive?”

I had spent so much time following a prescribed path that these questions were very uncomfortable at first. I’ve found this is particularly true for people on a competitive and grueling path (i.e. PhD, law school, medical school)… there’s a certain amount of mandatory brain washing necessary if you’ve managed to complete something like this. You’ve worked so hard for so long… it MUST have been worth it.  You MUST have known what you were doing.  It’s terrifying to admit that you might have been wrong about any part of it.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to discover but it seemed clear that I needed to find out. I dug deep and questioned assumptions.

• Do I love reading journal articles? No?!?!
• Could I help actual teachers help actual kids? Maybe??
• And how awesome would that be???  So awesome.

As I dug deep into what I actually wanted to do, a new path began to clear away in front of me, bit by bit.

I found a job in New York City working with the schools that serve the City’s most vulnerable students.  Everyone I knew in academia told me it was a mistake to take it.  “You won’t be able to get back into academia,” they said.  “You’ll miss having the freedom to pursue your own interests” they predicted.  “Industry jobs are really shallow and far less value driven than  you’re used to,” they warned.

I took it anyway, and I’m so glad I did.

In my three years as a consultant with New York City schools I learned about the real struggles involved in educating urban youth. By partnering with passionate educators, I became informed and savvy about working within a painfully complex system. By working alongside committed people in the DOE, I moved beyond the “us versus them” rhetoric that characterizes so much of the educational policy realm. It was AMAZING.

Ironically, it was this experience working directly with schools and the District in an “industry” role that got me the academic job I recently got as a professor at a School of Education in New York City.  It was this hugely risky role on the “path less taken” that I’m told made me such an unusually qualified candidate.

So many of the people I meet in my workshops are at their own major cross roads.  They’re looking around at their lives and realizing that the “path” they’ve been following just isn’t working for them.  They often have degrees and experience and people all around them are telling them that they are crazy to think about trying something new. They feel drawn in a new direction, but feel pressure from everyone around them telling them to be safe and stay put.

Here’s what I say to that:  It’s YOUR life, not theirs.

If you follow everyone else down the well-lit, paved road you’re not going to stand out.  Going to where your passion lives and working as hard as you can is much more likely to deliver the opportunities that will fuel  your success.  Dig deep, figure out what you want and go after it.  Make your own place.

The post Success lives off the beaten path appeared first on Powerful Peony.

The prevailing cultural belief about change is that it comes when people are “ready” or it comes only to those who are “worthy” or “special.”

That’s bullshit, and it’s time to let it go.

You can be better tomorrow, even if you’re weak, imperfect and only partially (if at all) “ready.”  No one is ever ready to change- you become ready by doing and the only thing special about people who change is that they are willing to change.

You can be special like that, too.

Change is hard, that’s a given.  It’s categorically, biologically true. We are hard-wired for sameness and monotony-  for safety (I’ve seen this thing before!  It doesn’t kill me! Let’s keep it around.).

But in the same way we learn that our biological tendencies can be overcome through vaccines, 12-step programs and habit stacking, we can overcome our biological preference for sameness and craft a life that supports transformation.

It won’t be easy, but what’s the point of easy, anyway?

People often start thinking about personal improvement around the turn of the year.  This practice of making resolutions for change in January goes back to ancient times.  The month of January is named of the god Janus, who is two faced. He looks back in time with one face and forward in time with the other face.  You can gain favor with Janus by reflecting on your prior year and resolving to be better in the future.  The tradition stuck, and almost half of American  make a resolutions each year.

It’s trendy to cite the statistic that “only 8% of resolutions succeed.”  It’s less trendy, but no less true that “people who make an explicit resolution are 10x more likely to change than those who don’t.”   So… people who actually give it a shot are more likely to succeed than those who sit on the sidelines citing statistics?

Time to get busy.  Here are some tips to get you started!

Any time you are resolving to change, it’s helpful to get clear on these three things:

1. Why are you doing this?
2. What do you think you can do in 90 days?
3.  What do you plan to do THIS WEEK?

For illustration, I’ll share one of my own New Year Resolution: I resolve to read more in 2017!

Why are you doing this?

It really, really helps to reflect on exactly why you would like to make this change.  It isn’t enough to assume that the virtues of a change are foregone or obvious. Sometimes you don’t share the conventional reasons and it’s helpful to be clear about that.

For example, lot’s of people want to read more because they want to be seen by others as knowledgeable, and “up to speed.”  They want to join in conversations about the New York Times Bestseller list and declare books as “over-rated” or “derivative.”

Some people resolve to read because they feel like they missed out on the classics.  They want to get the jokes about King Lear and understand who this “romantic” Heathcliff fellow is.

I don’t care about those things.

I want to read more because it used to be a cornerstone of my identity to read a LOT of books. I had to stop when I was getting my PhD (because I had to read a lifetime supply of journal articles) and then I had kids, which is time consuming to say the least.  But the kids are starting to become more independent and I feel like I could begin to read again!

I don’t need to be reading classics or even worthwhile books (though I’m not against it). I just want to read again!  It’s a change that’s seeded in giving myself space to ponder and dream; I want that time with my thoughts back.

It doesn’t matter what your reasons are, what matters is that YOU know what your reasons are. This kind of clarity gives you two critical gifts:

• It allows you to feel the tension of the change you want to make. You feel the difference between where you are and where you want to be more fully. This tension creates motivation and no change is happening without motivation.
• It helps you prioritize.  If your change remains vague then you don’t quite know how to make choices.  Should I read King Lear or 50 Shades of Grey?  If wanted to be “in the know” so I can declare things over-rated maybe I’d read 50 Shades. If I’d missed out on the classics, I’d read King Lear.  Since I just want to enjoy reading, I’d read Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? instead.  See how that works?

What do you think you can do in 90 days?

As we know, big change comes by way of small changes accumulating over time. But how much time?  At first it seems like a great idea to set a goal for an entire year but it turns out that humans are really bad at anticipating what they can do in a year. This is one of the root causes (in my opinion) of why New Year’s Resolutions are hard to keep.

On the other hand, we are pretty good at anticipating what is possible in 90 days.  We have a decent sense of what life will be like for the next 90 days and we have a realistic understanding of the rate of change that is possible given those realities.  That is why I always suggest people focus on what goal they want to accomplish in the next 90 days.

As I look at the next 90 days of my life I see a WHOLE LOT OF WRITING. I am writing a budget handbook and I’ve committed to writing twice a month for Quartz.

Given that, I want to ease into my reading goal.  I’ve decided to read 2 books a month for the next three months. One non-fiction book and one book for fun.  I know this is doable because I did it in December without too much trouble (Nonfiction: Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us; Fiction: Shopaholic to the Rescue: A Novel).

What can you do this week?

It wasn’t until I got involved professionally in change management that I truly came to to understand the Lao Tzu quote:

True transformational change begins anew all the time- each day, each week.  What you do today and tomorrow accumulates over time into the life you love.  What can you do today?  What is possible given the realities of tomorrow?  When, THIS WEEK, can you take your dreams seriously?

For my own resolution, I have to pick and get the books I’m going to read this month.

• I’ve been pondering it and I plan to re-read The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization, which is one of the books that really changed the way I think about change.  It’s super dense and academic and it wold benefit me to read it again.  I already have it on my nook, so I’m good there. Check!
• I’m not at all sure what to read for fun… Do you have any suggestions? In the next 90 days I’m hoping to read across genres- I could go for a mystery or science fiction?  Nothing depressing but otherwise, I’m pretty open. If there’s a book you love, shoot me an email or leave a comment- I would really appreciate it!!

If you feel overwhelmed by all three steps, you can skip the 90 day goal and maybe even the vision exercise at the beginning (she says, grudgingly). You cannot succeed if you don’t get started, though.  What are you going to do this week?

When you send me the book recommendation, also tell me your resolution and your plan for this week. I’m dying to cheer you on!

The post It’s time to believe that you can change appeared first on Powerful Peony.

Congratulations!  Confetti!

Opportunities to rest are so rare in our overbooked, overstimulated world that I hope you seize on this opportunity and really go for it.

Here are my 5 best tips for going whole hog on rest:

1. Put your phone away.  Or, if you need it to take pictures, just commit deep in your heart to stay OFF Facebook, Twitter, Quartz, the New York Times, Huffington Post… pretty much anything that will shove the realities of the world in your face when YOU are trying to rest.
2. Plan a way to take a nap. I have two small kids so this might mean that I allow them to watch television so I can have an hour to catch some shut eye. WORTH IT.
3. Let done be done... don’t go for perfect. Inevitably, you will have a lot of opportunities to obsess today and over the next few days- Christmas dinner, wrapping presents, the state of the guest room… don’t give in to it!  Do your best, get it done, and let it go… if someone else judges you, that’s for them to deal with.
4. Eat something delicious and nutritious that makes you happy in your heart (you can accuse me of eating my emotions in 2017… today I accept me for who I am!!!!).  Cheese comes to mind.
5. Spend the entire day being grateful. If someone gives you a cup of coffee thank them as earnestly as you can.  If you take a shower, send up a happy thought for the hot water. If you kid tells a hilarious (nonsensical) joke, laugh uproariously and then say “I love when you tell me jokes.”  All that gratitude will create warmth in your heart and in your home and there’s nothing more restorative than that.

The post 5 tips for the best holiday break ever appeared first on Powerful Peony.

“I’m being generous and thoughtful towards the people I love,” you think, “so really, in this case, its actually better to overspend than to be overly frugal and risk seeming ungrateful.”

I hear you.  I was the queen of over-giving.  I wanted to be sure that the people I love knew that I valued them more than my money.  It took a long time before I recognized this comparison was fundamentally false.

As I’ve mentioned, my husband and I have  been working really hard in the past 5  years or so to pay down our debt and get our money in order.  A few years ago, after a year of making great progress, Christmas came along and CRUSHED us.  We spent more than twice what we had budgeted and much of the progress we had made that whole year was lost. It was tragic… and it was a massive wake-up call.

Since then I’ve been working to critically evaluate my assumptions and expectations to re-set my gift-buying mindset.  One such mindset is the strong belief that children, in order to experience the magic of Christmas, need to receive multiple, amazing gifts.

When we’re thinking about it, we all know that this isn’t true, right?  We know that Christmas is about the birth of Christ and/or time with our families expressing gratitude?  I mean, the Dr Seus cleared this up years ago, didn’t he?

But the lure of being the BEST. GIFT GIVER. EVER. is super strong.

But what if I told you that giving more gifts actually diminishes the impact of the gifts you give?  It turns out that giving a single (or very few) gifts actually makes more of an impact on the gift-receiver than receiving multiple gifts.  I wrote a whole article about this for Quartz, which I’m summarizing here for efficiency:

1. If you give people multiple gifts they average the experience of all the gifts together. So if you give them an amazing gift alongside a mediocre gift, their memory of the amazing gift takes a hit from the less awesome gift.
2. When we are presented with many, many gifts our expectations rise sharply.  We suddenly believe that we can get the perfect gift!  But we don’t actually buy the perfect gift, because that’s not a real thing, and so people are disappointed. Which is the opposite of the point, right?
3. Over-giving (giving a really expensive gift when the expectation is for a much less expensive gift) seems like a guarantee for positive results… but actually people really, really dislike receiving an inappropriately large gift. Rather than feeling extra appreciated ,they feel bad about themselves and a little weirded out by you.

Again, you can see all the research and further explanation on Quartz but the takeaway is reassuringly clear: Though the desire to buy multiple, expensive gifts for our loved ones is honorable, the best option is to actually to buy a single, thoughtful, reasonably priced gift. This means that you and I can take comfort that our shopping lists need not double or triple in size.  Good luck getting everything finished up!

The post Why less is more when it comes to gifts appeared first on Powerful Peony.

Maybe you can relate? I feel like the Holidays are full of these kinds of questions and people generally treat them as though they have “right” and “wrong” answers.  But the truth, in my opinion, is that most decisions have the same answer.

Here it is:

Depends. What are you trying to accomplish?

If you don’t know what you are trying to accomplish, you don’t have any criteria upon which to base a decision.  Then, typically, you make decisions based on knee jerk defensive responses or your most salient desires.  For example:

• If you are generally introverted, you opt out of the Holiday Party.
• If you are generally extroverted, you opt in to the Holiday Party.

Contrast that to the richer, more useful decision making that comes from thinking about what you hope to accomplish:

I’m new to my role and it wold be good to make some personal connections that will help me feel more at home.  I’m also finishing up my first semester and I’m very tired what with all the grading and administrative duties required to wrap the semester up and get student grades posted.

A simple look at what I could accomplish with the Holiday party (by attending or abstaining) helps me to see a conflicting commitment. I know its important to make connection to ensure longer term happiness at the job, but I’m also feeling overwhelmed.  I generally try to make decisions with a longer view, so if the only reason to abstain is that I’m tired (and introverted and so generally afraid of parties) then I’d better go.

But wait!  If my purpose for going to the holiday party is to make connections, perhaps a bigger commitment is worthwhile?  If I’m going to overcome my introversion and exhaustion to attend a Holiday Party I should plan have personal conversations with at least four people before I leave.

Depending on the specifics of what you hope to accomplish, you could take this further by specifying the actual people you want to connect with (if you hope to accomplish a promotion, then you may make a plan to NOT DRINK and approach your boss’s boss).

If, on the other hand, you do opt out of the Holiday Party, I think a bigger commitment is useful there too- because you’re aware of the opportunity cost, you want to optimize the time you regain. Make a plan- during the holiday party, I’m going to take a nap (or meditate, get a massage, etc) so that the time is actually rejuvenate.

The point here is two-fold:

1. Making decisions is always easier and more fruitful with some criteria. Ask yourself this simple question the next time you are on the fence about something and you’ll see what I mean.
2. I’m going to the Holiday Party and I’m going to have personal conversations with at least 4 people in my department before I leave.

The post Is it worth it to go to the holiday party? appeared first on Powerful Peony.

1. I think of something awesome to buy someone but when I’m ready to shop, I’ve forgotten it.  So I get something convenient only to remember the awesome thing later… then I either buy both, which is a waste of money or feel cranky about my gift of convenience.
2. I buy things on impulse for people that I don’t really need to buy for.  This can be awkward for everyone- there I am with a gift, but they don’t have something for me. Then next year they have a gift for me but I don’t have one for them. This tendency of mine can cause a multi-year debacle and it costs money we don’t really have.
3. I buy something for someone, my niece let’s say, and then forget that I’ve already gotten something… and then I buy something else.  Which, obviously, costs us twice as much!
4. My husband buys something for our niece and I buy something for our niece and then we’ve double bought and paid twice as much.
5. I set a budget for all the gifts I want to get my kids and then buy stuff… but between buying moments I’ve forgotten some of the things I’ve bought. Then my husband buys things. Then it’s Christmas eve and we’re wrapping presents only to discover that we have WAY more presents than we planned… and we’ve spent much, much more money.

The past three years my husband and I have been furiously paying off our debt and so we’ve developed a plan to handle some of these pitfalls and because we’re such good friends I thought I would share it with you.  It’s the Holiday Shopping Planner and it has been A LIFESAVER for me (you can download it down below!)

The planner consists of three sheets:

1. The Holiday Brainstorming List:

This page is my solution to the problem where I have a lot of great ideas but forget them when it’s time to shop. I try to carry this one around with me so that as new ideas occur I can jot them down right then!  Since I do most of my shopping online, this also helps me cut down on the time I spend shopping- I just find the items I’ve brainstormed and compare prices.  This keeps me out of the “people who looked at this also looked at this!” vortex, which saves both time and money!

2. The Multiple Gifts Purchase List

This is the page that we use for the kids.  Because we are going to get them a few gifts (I’m really, really, really trying to cut the number way, way down. More about that next week.) we need a way to track the ongoing expenses against an overall budget.

Confession time: A few Christmases ago, we spent $1200 more than we budgeted for Christmas and most of that went towards gifts for the kids… who were 2 and 4 and in no way benefitted!

It took us ALL YEAR to pay that Christmas off and every time I had to pay into that hole,I was mad. NO MORE!  Now we have a strict budget for the kids and every time we buy something for them we put it on the Multiple Gifts Purchase List.  We’ve created this as a shared google spreadsheet so that the remaining budget gets calculated automatically and we can each update the sheet when we are apart.  I suggest you do the same if you’ve got someone else also buying Holiday gifts for your list.

3. The Holiday Purchase List

As our kids get older, the list of people we have to buy a single gift continues to grow. We started with just the kids of our most important friends and family- you know, nieces and nephews or best friends’ kids. Now we add to that list teachers, babysitters, and tutors, my editors and partners, and my husband’s team.

I used to spend $20 a person on these “little gifts” but math finally caught up with me.  15 people at $20=300. We do not have that money!

All of this is to say please, please consider handmade gifts for these people. I am the least crafty person in history, so I know its possible to find something that you can do.  Cookies in a little clear bag with a ribbon- BAM.  Half the list is DONE!  

Here’s my secret weapon- people hoard these cookies. They are unreasonably good.

If you can’t find the time to do handmade gifts for anyone (I feel you, I really do), just please, please set a budget and stick to it.

That’s what you do with this page of the planner- you give each person a row and a budget and then as you choose gifts you check it against the budget before you buy.  For us, this one is also a shared google spreadsheet so that we can see what the other is up to.

That’s it!  This list has created a system that works really well for us- let me know if it works for you!

The post The power of the simple list to cut your Holiday spending significantly appeared first on Powerful Peony.

Switch: How to change things when change is hard.

This is my favorite book on change.  I had been studying change for about a year when I finally came across this book and it becomes my favorite right away. The metaphor introduced in the book is still how I categorize change ideas!  Even though this is a “business book” about “organizational change” it’s still the book I recommend most to those in pursuit of personal change. The explanations are really accessible. I find most of the really complex stuff of change is explained clearly and supported with many good examples. My favorite!

Pivot: The only move that matters is your next one.

This one is brand new on the scene, released in September of 2016.  Where Switch is a “business book” Pivot is a “Career” book.  The ideas are the same, though.  This one is strong because the voice of the writer is very personal. She shares a number of personal stories that helps the reader feel less alone as they worry about how they are going to gain a career that feels meaningful.

The writer does a bit of a disservice by making unreasonable suggestions early in the book, such as “Get rid of all your vices when you’re going through change.”  For a book from a “change expert,” that’s a bit of a rookie mistake.

Nonetheless, the meat of her method aligns with all the best books on change: gain empathy, get vision, make small changes that lower the stakes and learn your way into big changes.  I met the author (Jenny Blake) and I think she’s a very accessible coach who clearly believes in the potential of her clients and that comes through in the book as well.

The 5th Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization.

This recommendation comes with a HUGE caveat. I LOVED it; for me, this was one of those books that changed the way I see the world.  It was the beginning of my understanding of how important vision is for any change, big or small. Peter Senge is the source of my whole Theory on Vision (i.e., Vision isn’t commitment, it’s a tool that changes over time as the needs change. Vision is working if it helps you stay motivated and helps you prioritize).  I LOVE IT.  On the other hand, its pretty dense. He’s a serious expert and isn’t always able to create that bridge to the less expert audience.  I appreciate that at this stage of my game, but I think I would have found it overwhelming and inaccessible earlier on. If you’re up for a game changer that require some patience- go for it!  If you’re unsure, start with Switch! Actually, no matter who you are- start with switch!

I’d love to hear what you think of these books if (and as) you read them!  Leave a comment below!

The post 3 books that changed the way I think about change appeared first on Powerful Peony.