How’s it going? I wonder if you’re as surprised as I am that we are well into the month of November and staring right into the face of the holidays? Well, it’s true. Here we are. As we enter the holiday season (and any moment) I think this writing from Hafiz could support us all. I hope you enjoy it. This poem inspired me to resume my private dance lessons. I’m so glad I did!
If this writing wakes something up in you, I’d love to hear about it. Lemme’ know!
Just the presence of her boss would set her off like a firecracker. With every interaction, she suffered a litany of “feeling criticized,” “getting hooked into her bad feeling,” or “watching my self-esteem erode under my feet.” Working in such an overwhelmingly toxic environment painted the picture to her that this is just the way it is when you work for someone else. She could only see two options: suck it up or quit. And she had tried sucking it up for long enough; there was no space left to stuff the stress. She was mentally and physically exhausted from dealing with the dissatisfaction in her work life – that had annoyingly wormed its way into her home life as well.
Jean came to me because she was at the end of her rope. Wearing an unyielding scowl on her face and with her hands frequently thrown into the air in frustration, she didn’t know how to maneuver her only apparent choices. She was not at her magical retirement age, nor was she financially prepared to stop working altogether. But Jean just couldn’t imagine sludging along, ticking the days off her calendar until it was finally time to cue up Johnny Paycheck’s glorious song, “Take this Job and Shove it” as she went a-walkin’ out the door.
When Jean and I began working together, I invited her to temporarily shelve the idea of quitting. We knocked around the idea of using her present situation as a laboratory for her learning. This was a challenging and problematic task because Jean wanted to feel “100% happier,” which she was certain could only happen if she exited her current circumstance. She reluctantly agreed to give it six months.
Our next conversation began with Jean declaring, “I quit. I couldn’t take it anymore.” With a glimmer of hope, she wondered what was next. Was there another way to eliminate the stresses and struggles she was up against?
Through our work together, Jean achieved results that are out of this world! She negotiated a re-hire with a 30k annual pay increase. She added 300k – minimum – to her retirement bucket by staying in the workforce longer. She had previously wasted 80% of her day distracted by the office culture, which only allowed a small portion of her time to be spent performing her duties. Today, efficient work blissfully dominates her workday – only 20% is distraction!
Jean is now leading a satisfying, centered, successful life and career. This is exactly why my clients come to me. Bringing a deep understanding of the way people universally operate and a keen capability to transform complex mountains into simple molehills, I offer creative solutions and fresh perspectives to eliminate struggle and inspire true living!
How are you? I hope this newsletter greets you with a fresh excitement for Spring. The clock did its jump forward so fresh newness can’t be far behind. Here in Texas, this is the time when the wildflowers start to introduce brilliant colors on the highways and fields with the presence of bluebonnets. I love this time of year because Mother Nature pulls out all the stops and starts to re-colorize the landscape.
Seeing the natural cycles of freshness and new growth in the landscape is a very outward sign of what’s happening inside you, all of the time. Luckily, you are designed to have fresh ideas, insights, and inspirations come to you all year long and not just in the spring. These new ideas and inspirations colorize your personal world.
Just recently I had a few fresh insights come to me that were not ‘topic specific’ but the truth and wisdom that dropped in will serve all areas of my life. I smile and chuckle when this happens because the depth and breadth of an insight of any size can shift how I see the world, effortlessly. It’s like getting a free upgrade for a higher functioning life. I’m both amused and very appreciative when this happens.
The best news of all? This system works the same in every human being on the planet! This includes YOU.
I’d love to support you in understanding more about eliminating struggle from your life and receiving the solutions you’re looking for. Let’s connect for an exploratory conversation, Cherie@CherieRay.com.
I’d love to connect with you and catch up. Sending smiles, Cherie
Can you believe it’s March? It was one year ago that I was volunteering with the Horticulture Committee at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo when one of the rodeo’s directors walked up to the team and asked us to quietly collect our things and leave the rodeo complex. I remember thinking it felt just like an old-school fire drill but there would be no returning in 15 minutes! The rodeo was officially cancelled for the remaining 3 weeks! This was the day when COVID-19 started making its impact in Houston. What a packed 12 months it has been.
With all the changes in the world and workplace, I felt a very strong desire to invite my friend and colleague, Gina Anastasi, to do a webinar with me. I thought it would be beneficial to learn what puts you in a leveraged position to never look for work again and to learn what qualities are needed to take a leadership role your career and personal life. The qualities are the same for both!
Gina is the founder of Gina Anastasi, Inc., (GinaAnastasi.com) which provides advisory and coaching services to executives and companies at all stages of development. Her passion is to provide guidance to maximize financial results and reach strategic goals through leadership support and operational efficiency.
Gina’s most well-known company is Rent.com, for 6 years through launch date through acquisition, she led the company as COO through a major internal restructuring and growth increasing revenue from $2MMto $60MM. Rent.com became the #1 rental site in the U.S. and was acquired by eBay in 2005 for $435MM. This is just one achievement in Gina’s phenomenally successful career.
Having been an employee and an employer, I’ve always been a witness to success in the workplace. As a coach, I want my clients to experience the richest experience possible in both their careers and their personal lives. If your desire is to move ahead or be sought out, we will share what it takes to be advanceable, invaluable, and desirable.
Invite your friends, loved ones, and colleagues to join the conversation. Bring your questions! Complete webinar information is below. Advance registration is necessary.
Let’s have some fun and connect! I look forward to seeing you Friday.
Smiles,
Cherie
I teach people how to eliminate struggle from their lives. Let’s have a free exploratory conversation, cherie@cherieray.com.
What are you hungering for? Community, connection, creativity, fresh aliveness? Well all of that can be done safely and virtually. During this time of Covid we’ve discovered that a fun, welcoming community is created when people come together to explore. It’s been wonderful to get together with you for webinars and for workshops. I appreciate all the comments you’ve shared on how virtual participation has supported you through these quarantine times. Thank YOU for participating in making community where community can happen these days!
I want to share this fresh conversation I had with Michele Cassou.
A Candid Conversation with Michele Cassou on Point Zero Intuitive Painting and her life of exploring creativity.
Michele Cassou has authored 10+ books on creativity, as well as numerous audio and video recordings. She has explored the operating principles of creativity for over 50 years as well as being the first art workshop offered at Esalen over 45 years ago. Her work continues to grow and evolve, which is the nature of creativity.
LINK to PODCAST here:
Podcast: Connected Living with Cherie Ray
Truths and Understandings for the Business of Life
This conversation is available on my podcast. Please share this link with anyone you know that is interested in creativity or living life more creatively.
I love hearing from you. Let’s connect for a conversation!
How is your quarantine going? Are you discovering new things about yourself, your home, your work, your family? I hope your discoveries are opening your world.
I wanted to write a message to all the moms out there. You are so integral and special to how this world thrives. You offer your heart not knowing what will be shared between you and the ones you bring into this world, foster, adopt, and those you love like your own. I heard someone say once, that moms are THE ones in the world that are always happy to hear from you and to share in your news.
On this Mother’s Day I hope you feel the love that surrounds you. Matters not if you are a mom to a person. fur person, reptile! I want to say THANK YOU for you.
A desire for connection seems to be something we all share. People want to feel more connection in their lives, loves, families, and friends. Another form of connection, often discussed in coaching conversations, is a desire to feel more connection to potential and possibility.
This is a natural feeling of hopefulness, in the core of our being, that anything is available to us in life: new LOVE, new health, new inspirations both personally and professionally, new opportunities, and new invitations to explore life.
Connection and what separates us from feeling connected is in my wheelhouse. This is where I like to play. The kryptonite to connection is the same for everyone! I find that truth amazing. That’s why I’m so excited about this Saturday’s workshop being offered at The Jung Center of Houston, “Listening for Understanding.”
This workshop offers a fresh way of connecting while teaching you how to have more productive conversations. Stop having the same base conversation again and again, never making progress or gaining resolution. By learning to listen in a new way, with a desire to understand, connection is possible in the most challenging situations, in both your personal and professional lives. What if how you listen is more essential than how you speak?
When we gain understanding, our natural ability to connect organically happens. From this point potential and possibility are present and obvious to us where it was once invisible.
It’s fall! It was very exciting to step outside this morning and feel a hint of fall. With the change of weather it occurred to me how that seems to stimulate an awakeness to life. All of a sudden any feeling of stuckness goes to the back and aliveness comes to the fore front. Aliveness is a topic that fascinates me and seems to show up in the majority of my coaching client’s desires for seeking support.
My curiosity about about aliveness brings me many insights. Why? Because I’m looking in the direction to see more. When we give our mind an assignment it seems to put in the coordinates, like GPS, and begins to serve up fresh information.
What has appeared true for me recently is that aliveness exists in engaging in life at the speed of life. Not living in my thinking about living, but about showing up in life and engaging with what’s next for me to do. It fascinates me on how our thinking can stall us from living. This may be common in most human beings but it’s not helpful.
My invitation to you is to engage, regardless of what seems to be stopping you. ENGAGE! Let it be simple. Let it be easy. The engaging will bring a new perspective, not what’s accomplished and acceptable to the mind. I promise. It’s in the engaging that aliveness and fresh perspective appears.
Have you ever wondered where limitation exists in your life? This has became so obvious to me lateley that I felt the need to share.
Recently, I have been surprised by the notion of just showing up in life regardless of my preferences and perceived capabilities. It occurred to me, to move with the flow of life and to not micro manage its unfoldment.
Participating in life this way has found me in situations I would never have chosen, even avoided, because I knew I ‘didn’t have it in me’. What I’m seeing is that I have no clue what I’m capable of.
Secondly, showing up in situations I would have avoided at all costs has brought opportunities for a very rich feeling.
What I’m trying to explain is that I see how my thinking has held a formula for meaningful experiences, what I was capable of, and where good feelings come from. In this formula there was a correlation between ‘pleasant’ and my desired good feeling. I’m surprised how an unexperienced rich feeling can come from engaging in life, not the situations I prefer.
It has also become screamingly apparent that any notion of who or what I am and limitations in my life only exist in my mind.
Lately, in my coaching practice, I’ve heard many clients talk about feeling overwhelmed. They believe it’s from their current life circumstances, or from the amount of ideas that are coming into them. Oftentimes, when you open yourself to the truth that all things are possible, yes even for you, the flood gates seem to open. When this happens, it all appears chaotic or too much to deal with.
So, what can you do about it? First, recognize that overwhelm is a concept. Granted, a concept that people have bought into for a long time but one that often trips them up. For some people this concept doesn’t even exist in their lives. Secondly, that ‘too much’ feeling is not coming from the circumstances or ideas. It’s coming from the volume of mental chatter you have around what you’re seeing or the ideas you’re receiving. For instance, a new inspiration comes in, and it’s often followed, by the mind, offering a big laundry list of reality questions such as how, why, when, etc. Your head space starts filling up? This marathon of examination fills your head with a sense of it’s all too much. Hopefully, at this point, you’re seeing it’s not what’s happening in your life that’s too much. It’s what you’re making up about what’s happening in your life that’s creating this saturated feeling.
I feel very confident that the intelligence that brought you these situations or new ideas will bring you the how, why, when, and what to do about it. There’s no need to fill your head with logistical data that hasn’t arrived yet. What to do instead? In order for the saturated sponge to do what it does best, you have to lessen the amount of liquid in it. This allows space for the sponge to operate more effectively.
This is exactly what I invite you to do. I invite you to empty your mind of all that busyness. When more space is available inside you, you will operate more effectively. You will have space available to receive, hear, or notice the next piece this same intelligence is sending your way. Take a walk, tear paper, collage, watch a movie, listen to music, paint, or soak in the tub. You pick what does it for you. Then relax. You’re never given a situation without the information to execute your ideas. It’s that simple. It’s that easy.
