Balance Goal Setting With Just Being
Each spring I ask my coaching clients to take some time imagining their desired futures before writing down their spring goals. I have them picture an ideal day, what they’re wearing, and where they’re having lunch. I ask them to embrace the feeling of success. Sometimes, traditional goalsetting can feel too structured. So, it’s important to also focus on our inner images of the lives we desire. We might then choose to write down seasonal intentions rather than fleshed out goals. If you’ve had trouble with setting incredibly specific seasonal goals in the past, I suggest trying out this practice of setting intentions in the areas of health, wealth, and relationships instead. Let your imagination drive you! Add Some Pizzazz to Your Future If your goals or intentions are boring, though, you won’t be very motivated to stick with them. I’ve seen perfectly written, measurable, attainable goals sit there with no progress made all season […]
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Military Spouses Aim for Success
As the winter melts away, our minds and bodies get ready to spring into action. That makes now a great time to begin moving toward our visions in a way that makes us feel joyful and excited. However, it can be easy to confuse being busy with being productive—so be sure to differentiate between working hard versus working purposefully toward your vision. Imagine a person carrying stones across a lawn. We can tell they’re working hard, right? But we don’t admire that person as much as the person who says they’re carrying stones to build a fence or well. Just doing work, aiming randomly and letting the arrows of our efforts fly, isn’t enough—we’ll end up exhausted without making any progress! Instead, really focus on your goals this month. Take that extra moment to get your aim just right before releasing those arrows toward success. Keep Your Eye on the Target I see so many […]
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5 Ways Military Spouses Can Get Stuff (That Isn’t Fun) Done
As a military spouse and a mom of four active kids and an entrepreneur that works with other busy military spouses, there are plenty of non-urgent tasks that don’t make my to do list but still need to get done. I recently spent a whole hour talking to my life coach Amy about how to make myself do these dreaded tasks. For example, I am a creative person so sitting down to do a techy task is boring. I know I need to renew my passports but I don’t have an upcoming trip so it gets put in the later pile. But what if I need to go visit family in Sweden? Or a military spouse invites me to speak on a military base in Germany? Somehow my “someday” pile that isn’t due tomorrow must be taking a mental toll because I felt the need to get some coaching regarding why I put certain tasks […]
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Determine Your Ideal Career Even When You Are A Military Spouse
During this month’s coaching webinar, we are going to talk about how to find the ideal career even if you can’t pursue it right now because you are supporting your military service member. Military life is so hard. Sometimes we give up on a career because we are following our military member, but that doesn’t mean you can’t recreate your ideal work life and still engage in some version of what makes you tick. Is there a version of your ideal career that you can pursue right now, and then position yourself for an amazing career down the road? And even keep your career skills fresh until your spouse retires from the military? I have seen spouses make all kinds of mistakes in my 15 years of career counseling, and I want to help you avoid them. So join me for this free webinar and position yourself for career success! We will talk about: my […]
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5 Tips for a Successful Military Marriage – Part 3
Tip #4: Laugh at Your Differences In most military marriages there is a tidier partner, a more frugal partner, a more spontaneous partner, a more health-conscious partner, and so on. Whatever the reason, it truly does seem that opposites somehow attract! However, the more I work with couples, the more I find that it isn’t the differences that divide us, but not respecting those differences. Sometimes, it’s hard to remind ourselves that, just because someone has a different approach or mindset than us doesn’t mean that they’re wrong. I try to help clients learn to laugh at each other’s differences. Lovingly teasing can be fun in a relationship, as well as acknowledging when you’re doing something you know your partner doesn’t approve of. Find a Middle Ground I have a client who is trying to save money and whose husband keeps buying things in bulk and on sale. While these are essential items, like extra […]
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5 Tips for a Successful Military Marriage – Part 2
Tip # 2: Make Decisions as a Team The other day, I admit that I was rolling my eyes as a read a military friend’s post on Facebook: “I still get butterflies when I wake up next to my husband, my best friend, soul mate…Happy anniversary!” It just felt so corny and over the top at the time! Looking back, however, I can admit that maybe I was a little jealous because I wasn’t really feeling any of those sentiments toward my husband at the moment. I was actually in the middle of a “discussion” with my husband of eighteen years at the time. While I know that arguing is perfectly normal for all married couples, this particular disagreement reminded me the importance of tip #2 in this series: in a military marriage, it’s important to make important decisions as a team. See Both Sides Recently, I was super excited to tell my husband of […]
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5 Tips for a Successful Military Marriage – Part 1
Military life is often filled to the brim with stressors, and a military marriage is no easier. This includes anxiety associated with finances, moving, deployment, and even reintegration into civilian life. And, to put it lightly, none of these factors make a marriage any simpler! However, some military couples combat these life stressors with surefire strategies that allow them to not only survive, but actually thrive in their relationships. From their stories, I’ve created a list of the things that happy couples have told me are key ingredients in their fulfilling partnerships. As with any goal, we need to define what we want in our marriage. Only then can we focus on the things that are going well. What we focus on grows, so if we can stop focusing on being competitive and instead try to create more intimacy, laughter, and compromise, we’ll begin moving in the right direction. Envisioning the Military Marriage We Want […]
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Balancing Health, Relationships, and a Career You Love
Oftentimes, I work with clients who are all jazzed about a new work-from-home gig. However, a few months later, they realize that they’re struggling in other areas of their lives. They may be having trouble maintaining friendships, feeling unfulfilled in their marriages, or even letting their health goals lapse. For many of us, it can end up feeling like whenever we take two steps forward with our careers, we then take one step back in another area of our lives. This is natural! Whenever our career roles change, even for the better, it’s common for some chaos to follow. That’s when it’s time to take a deep breath and realize that you are far from alone. When taking on a new career goal, task, or entirely new job, take some time to share with your spouse, friends, and other loved ones that you could use their support as you advance your profession while learning how […]
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February Webinar: Create your Relationship Vision Board
This month’s free Community Coaching webinar is all about how to to create a vision for your marriage and other relationships. I really hope that you will join me on this free webinar. I am going to walk you through why having a relationship vision board is different than having a regular vision board and why it is so powerful to create one. This vision board isn’t just about the law of attraction; it’s about setting your mind to focus on the aspects of your relationship that you want to see grow and improve and stop focusing on what you don’t like. It’s about having something to work towards and strive for just like you do with other goals in your life. Its about gaining clarity regarding your priorities and defining what an ideal marriage, home life, and friendships look like. We’ll talk about: how to create the level of intimacy you desire, the type […]
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OMG, I Had Coffee With Ellie Kay!
Financial guru Ellie Kay has been a long-time mentor of mine—so, I was SUPER excited when she asked me to be a guest on her new podcast, The Money Millhouse (thus the name of this post!). Ellie and her podcast partner, Bethany, invited me to their virtual kitchen to chat about money. I had so much fun connecting with them! Not only do I love that Ellie Kay is a hardworking entrepreneur who turned her passion into a business—but I’m amazed that she did all of this while raising five children, being a fabulous grandmother, publishing dozens of books, becoming the top expert on financial literacy, excelling as a motivational speaker, and working with the most amazing millennial ever, Bethany Bayless! Plus, she manages it all with grace, making her such a mentor to me as well as a genuine leader in the military spouse community. I hope that you will take a minute to […]
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Give Your Goals Some Tender Loving Care
New Year’s often helps us clarify our life visions. We’re naturally energized to clean our closets, declutter our kitchens, and create routines that serve us. We may use this energy to put a word or phrase of self-support on a sticky note posted on our mirrors. We may finally feel ready to commit to getting up 15 minutes earlier and journaling or having a coffee with our spouses before the kids get up. We may finally be able to pat ourselves on the back and appreciate all we do as military spouses—possibly the hardest task for many of us! As you embark on creating new seasonal goals, setting intentions for the months to come, and planning for a fabulous new year, remember to offer yourself some TLC. Just as important as it is to find out what drives you, it’s important to determine your why. Follow Your Why Rather than writing down what you want […]
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Embrace a Simple System for 2018
I love this time of year and the rejuvenating energy that’s in the air. I often have my military spouse clients create vision boards in January and set some new intentions, thinking about all the things they want to attract into their lives over the next year. I especially enjoy completing the life wheel as a free tool for considering what I would like to accomplish in each area for the year to come. The difference between this year and years past is that I am NOT going to bully myself into taking action steps in each area. I am going to focus on 1% change instead—baby steps toward success. Small 1% changes in each area of our lives can feel much more doable, and I think this is even more important for busy military spouses. The Baby Steps Approach to Success – Perfect for Military Spouses! Between deployments, relocations, and maintaining the home front, […]
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