Category Archives: Motivation

Achieve Your Goals With Two Brilliant (and Slightly Insane) Tricks to Boost Self Control

Posted on by
Reply

Call me paranoid, but I suspect the comfy couch, TV and high-speed internet access in our living rooms are deliberate safeguards of the status quo. Why worry about changing anything when you can sink into the cushions and ignore your true desires?

The downside is that when you think a goal is worth pursuing or a bad habit is worth changing, then you feel guilty and wistful when you ignore it. You find yourself wondering, “What if I could beat myself into submission long enough to achieve this? How would my life be better, and what am I missing?”

Bottom line: It’s frustrating to lust after a goal when the willpower to persevere doesn’t materialize.

Let’s stop wishing and get down to business. I use my own weight loss efforts as the main example in this article, but you can have any goal whatsoever in mind, and the rules still apply.

Introducing the Motivating Tricks and Tools

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the steely willpower of a robot. If you’re reading this, then you’re not a robot either. To change a habit or achieve a goal, it requires the self discipline and motivation to make tough decisions consistently over time. Tricks and tools keep me motivated when forever stretches ahead of me and I just want to sink back into that couch.

To stick to your goal, all you have to do is 1) focus on “four day wins” and 2) track your long-term progress.

I’ve read about both of these concepts before, and separately, I couldn’t get them to work for me. Combined simultaneously, operating together, they do. It worked for me this week, and as a result, I’ve lost four pounds.

Let me be clear – for me to stick to a healthy diet for a full week is a miracle. Once I can get over that hump, I feel the benefits and I don’t want to go back to eating and feeling like garbage. Don’t discount the value of a full week on your plan towards your goal, whatever it may be. I you do slip up (and you will) you’ll have a weeklong model of success you can turn to and make repeatable.

My Torture This Week

I was only a smidge into my diet this past week, but it felt like I had been dieting fooooorrrreeeeever. All of those minute-by-minute decisions were making me crazy and wearing me down. From my cup of coffee in the morning (you can’t have the vanilla creamer, there’s sugar in that) to my lunch (no, you can’t have a tortilla the size of your torso) to snack landmines and dinner booby traps, I felt like I’d been saying “no” to myself constantly. It was exhausting.

I won’t lie. I was eyeballing the Ben & Jerry’s. I didn’t touch it, but I certainly considered it. I thought to myself, “This is hopeless. I’ll never lose the weight. I’ve been dieting for a million years with no results! I might as well give up. I have no self control anyway.”  How many times do we choose that as a self-fulfilling prophecy?

I was ready to give up, but tracking my progress combined with four day wins saved my heinie.

Step One: Decide What to Track

In Tim Ferris’ book The Four Hour Body, he gets pretty excited about how tracking weight loss results over time works wonders for a lot of people. So I figured, what the heck. I have OCD. This is right up my alley. I am going to track myself out the wazoo with several tracking methods.

Tim’s excitement got me to download this Excel spreadsheet that a man used to track his own weight loss that I customized to use for myself, which I keep open on my computer. I also track inches lost and my body fat percentage.

Of course, depending on your goal, you can track whatever you want. It could be how many days in a row you stuck to a habit, or a weekly or monthly representation depending on what it is you want to achieve and how often you need to take steps to get there.

Step Two: Decide How to Track it, and Make it Fun

I followed Tim’s advice and took my measurements. I made a graph so that I can measure myself each week and ooh and aah over a graphical representation of the inches melting away. I printed out the chart and taped it to my bathroom mirror.

Then I made another chart to track my weight and body fat percentage and taped that up next to my inches chart. I pulled out some pretty pink and green markers so that each day I can fill in the square that represents my current weight and body fat percentage.

Choose any physical representation of the steps you’ll take to reach your goal, but make it something fun that you’ll look forward to playing with. Once I made a paper chain out of construction paper – the kind that kids use to count down the days until a special event. I wrote one step on each part of the chain and got a thrill out of removing each link when I completed a step. When my goal was completed, the chain was gone. It was an amusing way to watch my progress.

I’ve heard of people using charm bracelets and adding a charm for each milestone. You can take two vases and move poker chips, coins or wads of colorful tissue paper from one to the other to mark achieved objectives. Try more than one method to see what’s more entertaining.

Step Three: Decide How and Where to Display it

This part is key: Display your tracking method so that you will see it and be reminded of your goal throughout the day. Exhibiting your tracking in a visible location will not only make other people afraid of your serial killer behavior, it will help you stay on track for longer, and help you get back on track after slip-ups.  Being able to see my progress at a glance keeps me feeling in charge, even after I make a mistake. A mistake becomes a mere blip on the big picture, rather than a reason to trash the whole project.

How Did all this Freaky-Deaky Tracking Come in Handy?

When I was going to lose my mind this week and attack the ice cream like a comet was heading for Earth, I was able to pull back for a moment when I caught sight of my crazy charts in the bathroom. I noticed two things upon witnessing my madness. First of all, yes, my weight was headed in a downward trajectory … and second, I had only been dieting for two days. TWO DAYS!? Why did I think it was an eternity? Why was I being such a wimp?

When I saw that I’d hardly put myself through the ringer with a mere two days of restraint, and that I was actually making progress, my mindset changed. I thought, “I can do this. I just have to get to four days, and it will get easier.”

Why Four Days? What the Heck Is a Four Day Win?

In Martha Beck’s book The Four Day Win: End Your Diet War and Achieve Thinner Peace, she writes that people who have lost a ton of weight and kept it off said the hardest part for them lasted about four days. Beck says four days is about the length of time it takes for the body to adjust to new habits that affect circadian rhythms (such as sleeping and eating. Logically, this four-day theory could extend to caffeine intake, sweets and exercise.)

Beck urges that four days of victory can break a barrier for any type of goal whatsoever, not just dieting. After four days, changes stop feeling torturous. If you can stick with a habit that long, it will begin to feel natural and the momentum will pull you forward, if you let it.

If you’re white knuckling it past four days or you fail completely, then you might need to take a step back and commit to a smaller change for your first four day win. If you continue to flounder, then keep committing to smaller goals until you achieve a four day win. Then proceed with a slightly larger goal for the next win, and so on.

The Four Day Win and the Lure of Short-Term Focus

The four day win strategy by itself in the absence of long-term tracking didn’t work for me in past. The smallness of four days didn’t thrill me. I loooooove to focus on the big picture, the finish line, the major triumph. Focusing on the big picture is fun because that’s where the juiciest payoff lies. The smaller butt, the pile of money, the fancy ladies or whatever the heck your goal is.

However, while we’re focused on the end zone, we’re not present in the moment-to-moment to decide how to tackle the very next obstacle that’s right in front of us. When we’re staring so far ahead into the future, it’s easy to ignore the impact of the small decisions that are right in front of us.

It’s those small decisions, strung together moment to moment and day after day, that actually make a difference and pave the road to our success or failure. A four day win helps bring the short-term into focus so that we can take pleasure in the smaller accomplishments.

Using a four day win, I resisted the Ben & Jerry’s, which confirms once and for all that I actually do possess self control after all. Success begets success. If I resisted the ice cream, that means I can also resist the chocolate. If I can beat that craving, then I sure as heck can pass on the mashed potatoes at dinner.  And so on and so forth. I’m not even thinking about the size of my butt in a month. I’m thinking about the unfortunate size of my butt right now when I’m good at the very next meal.

Combine Long-Term Tracking With Four Day Wins for Max Effect

Even though I appreciate the benefits of focusing on the short-term, still, there’s a delicious allure for me to daydream about my final goal of weighing less than 120 pounds. The energy I have, the way my clothes fit, how much better I feel about myself…there’s no doubt that my final goal holds a certain sway over me. It’s why I decided to diet in the first place.

However, I don’t want to start thinking about how far away my goal is or how much work I have to do to get there. That’s not productive. Besides, I want my diet and exercise routine to be sustainable forever. This isn’t a crash diet or some crazy race to get skinny. This is a lifestyle I’m after, so bemoaning the time it will take to lose weight is counterproductive. All I need to know is that I will get there eventually, as long as I continue to be consistent.

So that’s where my four day wins come in, although they aren’t always four days long. This week, as I gleefully stepped across my first four day win finish line, it occurred to me that I only needed to go three more days to get to my cheat day. Every Saturday is a free day where I get to indulge all of the cravings I’ve had all week, should I choose to do so. I consider it the pressure release valve. I don’t have to think, “I can never have ice cream again.” I can just think, “No biggie. I can’t have ice cream on Saturday, if I still want it.”

Small Choices Over Time Add up to Big Results

Motivation to achieve a goal involves constant focusing and refocusing between the long-term payoff and short-term decisions. When you look at your tracking method, you will be able to see the long-term trajectory of your big picture, and the minutiae of your day-to-day and how that’s affecting your outcome.

At the end of the day, all I ever need to do is to make smart choices at the next meal. That’s all I need to think about. In moments of weakness, at times of mental conflict, when I refer to my nutty tracking documents, I’m clearly reminded where I’ve been and where I’m going so that I don’t lose the plot.

When I wonder why I’m avoiding vanilla creamer, I can think of my long-term goal for inspiration. And I can also think about how Saturday, my cheat day, is never more than a week away.

The Weight Loss Advice That Is Finally Working for Me (Video)

Posted on by
7

Click here to watch the video.

When I was pregnant, I was a total animal in the gym. Several days a week I attended a high intensity bootcamp that was a big ole ass whoopin’ no matter what kind of shape you’re in. The instructor, Raquel, who I totally fell girl-crush in love with, is the hardest trainer in these here parts.

Last summer, I had the baby. Even though I was taking it easy and I was no longer working out, I got back into great shape super fast. I was back into my pre-pregnancy clothes within a few weeks. But it didn’t last.

Now I’m Fat

Fast forward to a year later. The toll of sleep deprivation and new-baby-overwhelm meant that my diet went to crap. Over the last several months, I put on 15 pounds.

In an effort to lose weight, I went back to this bootcamp class, but at a different gym with a different trainer. I wasn’t losing any weight. I wasn’t getting enough sleep and my diet was terrible. I wasn’t treating myself well, and as a direct result, I’m looking more like trash and less like royalty.

I walked into my bootcamp class last Tuesday and who should I see there, but Raquel, who was subbing that day for the usual guy. Her class was on a whole ‘nother level from what I’m currently used to. It was HAAARD. The warm up alone had me beat.

Diet Advice, Please?

After the class, I approached Raquel to seek some advice. You know how sometimes you just want someone to tell you what to eat? That was my intention when I went up to her.

Raquel didn’t recognize me. I jogged her memory, you know, the really pregnant lady who used to take this class at the other gym? She remembered: “Oooooohhhh yeaaahhhhh. Wow. Huh. You look really … different,” she said.

Watch the video reenactment of THE FACE she made. Priceless, funny … and painful for me.

Different indeed. I explained that I’ve actually put on weight since having the baby because I’m not taking great care of myself.

Lose Weight by Shifting Your Priorities

Raquel looked me in the eye and said, “It’s hard. It’s hard taking care of a one-year-old. It’s hard taking care of a two-year-old. A friend of mine is a mother of 13-year-old triplets, and she’s still recovering. I’m not sure when it gets better. But here’s the thing. The earlier you make yourself a priority in your own life, the easier it is. You have to make yourself a priority if you expect to make any progress.”

There was something about how she grabbed me by the lapels with her gaze while she spoke; her words knocked me upside the head. It was clear that her message was super important for my well being, and I needed to hear it.

My Weight Loss Plan

Raquel was right. This is it. This is the week I’m making a huge lifestyle change. I’ve been more consistent this week than I’ve been in forever. I finally feel the momentum carrying me, and I’ve lost a pound or two.

I’m using Tim Ferris’ Slow Carb Diet to overhaul my eating habits, with the modification of cutting back on dairy instead of eliminating it entirely. Continuing to eat dairy will slow down my weight loss, but I will be more likely to stick to the plan long-term that way. The slow carb diet is healthy, balanced and gives me energy throughout the day. Tim has been eating this way for eight years, so it’s a sustainable lifestyle.

Plus I’m following Raquel’s recommendation to attend a BODYPUMP™ class twice a week. I’m still taking my daughter for walks every day — briskly for 30 minutes if I carry her in the Bjorn, or a long slow walk if we use the stroller.

Unlike in the past when I’ve lost a little weight, I’m not getting too comfortable – and I’m also not getting discouraged at the amount of work ahead of me. As long as I continue to make myself a priority, I know I will lose the weight. This is the inspiration I’ve been waiting for.

Click here to watch the video! :)

Why Making Your Bed Every Day Can Be a Waste of Time

Posted on by
Reply

Don’t make that face or it will freeze that way. If you touch yourself, you’ll grow hair on your palms. That old tin can on the counter labeled “pineapple juice” actually contains the grease from the roast. (Sadly for me, it turns out the last one was true.)

When we’re kids, we’re told all sorts of things to keep us in line. When we become adults, we hang onto some of these mental artifacts and feel guilty or slightly “off” when we don’t do things our mother’s way. There are times when our mother’s way feels right, and there are times when we need to forge our own path, sans guilt.

How You Spend the Moments Is How You Spend Your Life

Let’s say it takes you one minute to make your bed every morning. That translates to more than 6 hours per year used on bed making. If you live until you’re 80 years old, that’s two or three weeks of your life spent on straightening and fluffing sheets and pillows.

I don’t know about you, but if I were on my deathbed and somebody handed me the gift of a sprightly three additional weeks to live (preferably in Hawaii), then I’d take it.

Sometimes Mom Is Right

When you live in a bedroom with all the size and charm of a meat locker in New York City, your bed equals your living space. An unmade bed is essentially your home, and that can feel yucky and chaotic. I was beyond thrilled to have a made bed when I lived that way, so my motivation was high to keep up the habit. There are times in your life that having a made bed enhances the quality of your experience, so that single minute each day is time well spent.

Some people just looooove themselves the sight of a neat and straightened bed. There have been times that I’ve gotten all googly-eyed over my pristine bedroom and I just want to sit and stare at the sexy serenity. This is all about swell easy living after all, and if a made bed feel so good – while a messy bed appears so dreadful – then do it! Make the bed! Drink in the view and feel superior to all the non-bed-makers out there. You deserve it.

Sometimes Mom Only Thinks She’s Right

If you find yourself, day after day, admonishing yourself for the unmade bed but you aren’t motivated to change it, then I absolve you. You have my permission to throw off the yoke of your guilt and skip happily through the tulips. Rest easy knowing that you’ll simply unmake your bed at the end of the day anyway, so you don’t need to bother. Feel superior to all those suckers out there wasting their lives feeling smug over their made beds. You deserve it.

Now that I don’t lay eyes on my bed until I’m tearing off the covers to climb in at night, I’ll save myself that one minute per day, thank-you-very-much. These days, with a one-year-old underfoot and career strides in sight, each minute is priceless and my priorities are a little different. And so I’ve chosen to bump bed-making off my list.

Listen to Your Mother (Sometimes)

I promise you won’t grow hair on your palms. Your face might actually freeze that way, in which case I hear Botox is an option. There is one thing I know for sure: you shouldn’t snatch that tin can off the kitchen counter because you want pineapple juice when your mother warned you not to drink the fat.

An easy way to get alerted to postings is to subscribe to email updates in the top-right box. I promise NO SPAM EVER. Just post notifications, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Get Motivated, Get Happy! 3 Posts About How to Live a Richer and More Satisfying Life

Posted on by
Reply

Here are the latest Parentables.com posts I wrote to fill our brains with positive mojo.

Click to Read :: How Focusing on Mundane Household Tasks Can Make You Happy

Surprisingly, it’s the act of wishing ourselves away to another time and place that makes us unhappy, not the chores themselves.

Click to Read :: 12 Ways to Take a Small, Daily Vacation This Summer to Let Your Soul Sing

The pathetic tale of how I went from being a feral ice-cream sandwich scarfing, sun-soaking, free-living beast to being a domesticated, prune-nibbling indoor cat, and what I plan to do about it.

Click to Read :: What I Learned From Oprah: Stop Wasting My Life

Time is slipping by. Are you doing what you’re meant to do with your life?

If you like these posts, then please “like” me on Facebook.

I like you, too!

How Taking My Daughter for Walks Changed My Life

Posted on by
2

I’m now blogging for TLC’s Parentables! I will blog the post introductions here at swell easy living so you can keep updated on new content as it becomes available. Just click through to read the full post on parentables.

baby bjorn

Picture it: You show up to a party. The room is dim and a disco ball throws annoying splashes of festive color at the walls. You would rather be home in bed, but people have been telling you that you need to get out more. You see people socializing and having fun. You want to join them, but you are too hesitant to approach.

You feel unsure of your rusty conversation skills. You marvel at that one. You were never so keenly aware before that conversation required skill, let alone the whole possibility of a “rusty” factor. Your clothes are 24-hour clothes, meaning they involve a stretch fabric or perhaps a drawstring, and they can be worn day or night.

You can’t recall the last time your body felt shower spray. Your hair has been falling out, and you didn’t brush it today. You press your butt, your inflated butt, which doesn’t even feel like it belongs to you — it’s someone else’s butt, yet distinctly your butt — you press that butt up against the wall so you can try to make yourself appear smaller in an effort to hide.

You are a wallflower. A smelly, fat wallflower. Such is the experience of some new moms showing up at the party of life.

Why Bother Leaving the House? :: keep reading …

For new post notifications, subscribe to email updates in the top-right box below my photo.
I promise NO SPAM EVER. You can unsubscribe quickly and easily at any time.

How I’m Losing the Baby Weight: Making Friends With My Inner Rock Star

Posted on by
Reply

I’m now blogging for TLC’s Parentables! I will blog the post introductions here at swell easy living so you can keep updated on new content as it becomes available. Just click through to read the full post on parentables.

stars

Following dinner last night, I was tempted by the aroma of fresh, buttered popcorn wafting through the kitchen. As I loaded the dishwasher, I absent-mindedly said, “I wish I could have some of that.”

My husband, Steve, said, “What do you mean? Of course you can have some.”

I answered, “They don’t serve popcorn on The Fat Farm.”

“Say what? The Fat Farm?”

“Yes, I’ve gone and put myself on The Fat Farm. It’s time for me to play some serious mind games with myself to lose weight. I’ve been starting and stopping for so long now, it’s ridiculous.”

Then the difference between men and women made a dramatic appearance as Steve told me, “You don’t need to play mind games; you just need to eat less and exercise more.” Insert eye roll, which could have come from either one of us.

I argued with him on that point. I’ve been exercising daily like a complete maniac. Steve countered with evidence of pizza and ice cream indulgences. I don’t remember my answer to that, but I’m sure it was a very well-thought-out and careful treatise that went something like, “BOOGA BOOGA! Look over there!”

Knowing Is a Quarter of the Battle :: keep reading …

 

Snap Out of It! 3 Steps to Pull Yourself Back Together When Things Fall Apart

Posted on by
15

The day before my daughter was born, I sat in the delivery room waiting for my contractions to get a little more exciting while I used my Blackberry to do some work. That day a colleague emailed to tell me that I was INSANE and that I needed to put my Blackberry down and go have the baby.

I did put the Blackberry down, but that exchange didn’t get the point across that maybe I was doing something unhealthy. Maybe I was compulsive. Maybe I was a workaholic.

When I came home from the hospital, I spent many loving moments with my beautiful new baby daughter. Common wisdom says, “Sleep when the baby sleeps.” While the baby slept, I kept up with my work email.

Wishing I Were Blogging
In the first two months after Alexandra was born, I also felt a lot of internal pressure to blog. I felt I should announce where I had gone, to show photos of the baby and say that mom and baby are doing okay. But I was exhausted and consumed with sleeplessness, taking care of the baby and checking work email.

I obsessed about blogging almost every day – what photo I would use, what to write – but I was running on fumes, I was irritable and I wasn’t thinking clearly. I eventually drove myself to new heights of lunacy due to sleep deprivation.

Losing It
Yes, motherhood is beautiful, blah blah blah, but you hear enough women proclaiming how beautiful it is. I’m here to be honest – it’s also messy and demanding and fraught with emotional peril. There are highs that come with the love and the satisfaction of soothing a crying baby, and there are the lows that come with the stress when nothing seems to soothe the baby (or mom), the lack of sleep and the wacky hormonal mood swings.

I couldn’t control everything, but at least I knew that my job wasn’t spiraling out of control while I was off smelling the roses. Hence, checking work email when I should have been sleeping or blogging.

I guess I was hanging onto the structure and productivity of my old life, because my new life was frenzied and chaotic. I was lost in the lack of organization of my days and activities, constantly reacting to what the baby required and struggling to meet my own basic needs.

Father Time was abusive, paying no mind to the nuances of a.m. and p.m., let alone to the days, weeks or months that swept past me with little sleep. I would remark to my husband that prisoners of war are tortured with sleep deprivation, and that now I knew why. It was physically and emotionally excruciating.

The “Aha” Moment
Then I read an article in the September issue of Oprah Magazine called “Lying Low.” The tagline reads, “When things fall apart, your urge is to do something – anything – to put them back together. But what if you can’t do that right now? Martha Beck on the hidden blessings of life’s little low points.”

Martha Beck made some excellent points for those times when we suffer a break up, a job loss, or maybe you’re stuck in the slow lane at the grocery store and you are totally losing your mind:

1.       Do Nothing: When nothing seems to work, do nothing. Stop resisting, stop struggling and stop planning. Just be in the moment and chill out.

I stopped checking work email. I also stopped obsessing about blogging and told myself that it’s okay to let the web site lie fallow while I adapted to this huge life change of having my first child. I scaled down my expectations to be kinder to myself, and my daily task list included things like “shower” and “empty the dishwasher” – and if I failed at completing my to do list, I didn’t beat myself up.

2.       Focus on Hope: Rather than being focused on just how difficult everything is, instead make a list of all the things you appreciate. Think of everything that offers comfort, support and hope. When you lose your cool, repeat the exercise as often as necessary.

It was easy for me to put things in perspective using this exercise. I have a healthy, happy baby girl, a loving husband and a comfortable home. The newborn stage doesn’t last forever, and I began to appreciate those unique new-baby moments like sniffing her delicious little head while she sleeps peacefully in my lap.

3.       Rest Like You Mean it: Ms. Beck learned the practice of intentional resting from Dan Howard’s web site, Intentional Resting.

To loosely sum up the steps of how to rest:

  • Focus on where you’re feeling discomfort or tension, whether that’s in your body or your mind.
  • Think the word “relax.” Take some moments to enjoy the new sensation.
  • Think the word “rest.” Breathe rest into the spaces of your body that are holding onto tension. Encourage each anxious space of your body and mind to rest.

Following these steps helped me fall asleep at night on more than one occasion when I was feeling overwhelmed and panicked about taking care of a tiny, helpless new person. I will still occasionally think to myself, “Relax … rest” and I will immediately feel calmer and more collected.

Things Fall Apart
Then I went back to work, and the game changed again. New baby exhaustion combined with getting up early for the daily commute, plus all the added tasks of packing up both myself and the baby every day made me feel new levels of panic and fatigue.

My days went something like this: Get up at the crack of dawn, get myself and Alex out of the house, work, then endure the long commute home, usually while the baby screamed the whole time. Then I would eat dinner and fall into bed, until Alex would wake to be fed in the middle of the night.

My nerves were shot. I kept thinking, “People actually do this? This is supposed to be normal?” In short, I felt trapped on a treadmill set at a ridiculous pace with no way to hop off.

Things Fall Apart Again, but for Real This Time
Suddenly, I was shoved off that treadmill when I was laid off from my job last week. The first sensation to wash over me was despair. The next was indignation. How could they terminate a new mom?

For the first few days, I was in shock; I continued to robotically haul myself out of bed soon after sunrise. But then the lessons I had learned came back to me, and I felt an emotion akin to relief. I went through the exercises once more.

1.       Do Nothing: It would be crazy not to take advantage of an event like unemployment to catch up on zzz’s. Yet my innate inclination is to continue to punish myself and start the day early for no apparent reason other than some vague sense of guilt or wish for productivity that can’t be fulfilled while I’m chronically sleep deprived.

I’m making it a priority to sleep during Alex’s first nap of the morning instead of hopping up and showering and eating breakfast. It’s less than an extra hour of sleep, but it makes a major difference in how I feel physically and emotionally.

2.       Focus on Hope: I’m gaining three priceless experiences out of losing my job. The first I already mentioned: the chance to rest and get more sleep for the sake of my wellbeing. The second is the opportunity to blog again, which is extremely important to me.

As for the third benefit of unemployment … It’s only natural to think that getting laid off with all the expenses of a brand new baby make it the worst timing possible. But what a great point in our lives to spend more time with my baby before heading back to an office and leaving her in daycare. She’s still tiny and fragile and so entirely dependent; it feels good that I’ll get to care for her myself for a little while longer.

Lastly, I know I’m employable, even in this job market. I have a broad set of skills that are in high demand. My worst case scenario is that I wind up in a job that’s a step back in my career for less pay than I want. No big whoop.

3.       Rest Like You Mean it: So I’m resting. But I’m also blogging and taking care of my baby while I begin the hunt for a new job. Life is pretty sweet.

What I Learned From Getting Laid Off: How Ditching Technology Helped Me Get Things Done

An easy way to get alerted to postings is to subscribe to email updates in the top-right box below my photo. I promise NO SPAM EVER. Just post notifications, and you can unsubscribe at any time.