Margie Warrell

Apparently Thomas Jefferson and George Washington experienced a blizzard of similar magnitude to the one we did in Washinton D.C. area last weekend but certainly, it was the biggest recorded dump of snow since official records began.  Having come from a place where even a thin layer of ice on a puddle mid-winter was cause for great excitement, I find having the landscape transformed to pure white quite magnificent.

What I have not found quite as magnificent is having my life interrupted. My four children have been home from school since Thursday and, alas, with another snow storm due to arrive tomorrow, they may well be off all week.  Ukurumba…there goes those plans of mine!

Yet as I sit here with my homemade latte beside my keyboard (the esspresso machine I gave Andrew for Christmas has been worth its weight in gold these last few housebound days!), I can’t help but think about how this storm, with all the interruptions and inconveniences it has brought with it, is a valuable analogy for the bigger storms that come our way through life.

The problem isn’t that things happen in life that completely throw us off our plans, it is that we expect anything otherwise.  Many years ago, midway through the second trimester of pregnancy with my first child, I discovered that it had died. It was New Year’s Eve 1996. To me that baby was already born. I was already a proud mother. But then, in the span of several minutes, without any signs to warn me, I discovered I wasn’t pregnant. I wasn’t going to have that cherished baby. That this new little life inside me [...]

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There are currently more Americans who have been unemployed for more than 6 months than any other time in U.S. history (6.1 million according to the latest figures). And while we hear reports that things are looking up for job seekers, we also have leading economists predicting that the job market may not improve much until 2012.

For those who have find themselves out of work, staying positive and proactive in their job hunt can be a lot easier said than done. Rejection after rejection can take a toll on self-confidence, and with that, the motivation needed to keep trying to find work.  But does being unemployed have to mean being miserable? Of course not.

Last week, I appeared on Let’s Talk Live here in D.C. to share some thoughts on how to stay positive when looking for work.

If you’re out of work (or fear you may be soon), here are six strategies that will help you differentiate yourself from other job seekers, build your resume outside the workplace and land work despite the odds. [...]

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Of course it doesn’t take the beginning of a new year to make a decision to start something new, make changes in how we are living our life or turn over a new leaf. We can do that any day of the year. But there is something about January 1st that makes it feel like a good time for new beginnings.

While reflecting on what I wanted to do in the year ahead, I found myself feeling a bit anxious. As someone who writes and speaks on living courageously, I wanted to come up with some really big, bold and audacious goals. Yet as I began to do so, I found myself feeling simultaneously overwhelmed by the thought that it was very likely I would fail to achieve them.

Which is when it occurred to me how important it is to make the distinction between a commitment (which any resolution or goal is) and an attachment.

Hopefully you are committed to achieving something(s) that is meaningful to you in 2010. Some of your goals may be very do-able (like my goal to try one new recipe each week). Others may be more of a stretch. What matters most though is not whether or not you achieve each of your goals (or resolutions), but that you give them your very best shot.

As I’m sure you well know, often life can get in the way of following through on what you’ve set out to do. Job loss, illness, market crashes, relocation, children… stuff like that. 2009 was a hard year for many, a cautious year for most, and an unpredictable year for all. And frankly I’m not sure that 2010 will offer any respite when it comes to living with uncertainty. But that doesn’t mean we should hang up the towel and declare 2010 the year of “getting by.” It just means that we need to be willing to adapt them to new circumstances as they arise and let go of our attachment that everything should happen just as we think it should.

So, let me ask you, if you weren’t afraid of failing at achieving your goal and instead threw caution to the wind, what is one thing you would dearly love to accomplish (change, do, create…) between now and the clock striking midnight next New Year’s Eve? What one thing would give you [...]

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On the eve of Christmas I just wanted to remind you to take a moment to reflect on what the Christmas holiday represents. It is a time to deepen the connection you share with family (near and far); to experience gratitude for your many blessings; to remember the precious lessons you’ve learned in the year just past (however disguised they were at the time); to laugh at yourself as you wonder why it took you so long to learn some of them; and most of all, to think about how you can use your hard-earned wisdom to create a more meaningful and rewarding future… in 2010 and beyond.

Let go your attachment to having everything be ‘just perfect’ this Christmas. Rather, go with the flow and savor the unique experience of this festive season — for all that it is and for all that it isn’t. Life, with all its ups and downs, its joy and its sorrow is a precious gift.

Time to celebrate!

Photo courtesy of kugelfish

By the way, as you read this if you’re struggling with how to ease the stress, then watch this interview from yesterday on how to experience more joy this Christmas season.

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As I try to move down my big, long to-do list this week in preparation for all the merrymaking I will be doing in the weeks ahead, I’ve found myself feeling a bit overwhelmed. Okay, more than a bit. So I have stopped. Stopped to take a big deep breath, to look out the window at the sun streaming in and to ask myself “Why the hurry?”

As I’m sure you’ve experienced yourself, it’s very easy to get caught up on the “do it all” and “be it all” merry-go-round this time of year. They call it the silly season for a reason.  Which is why I’ve stopped mid-flight and am writing to you right now. Because most of the time I find that if there’s something I’m struggling with, someone else is too.

So, what to do? First up, is to breathe. It may sound foolish or overly simplistic but pausing and just focusing on the very simple act of breathing can be quite transforming. So how about you do it. Yes…right now. Just follow your breath…in…and out…and as you exhale, imagine all the stressful thoughts leaving your body, your psyche, your spirit and in their place leaving a peaceful quiet and a deep knowing that all is well.

It will only take you one minute right now to breathe in 10 big deep breaths but it will make a difference for many hours to come. I know you have lots on your plate but I also know that you, like me, can spare one minute.

Next up is to ask yourself what really matters to you this Christmas season? Is it to have the best wrapped presents, the most decorated home, the hippest holiday party or is it to truly connect with the people you love most in the world, to deepen the bonds you share and celebrate all the wonderful things that life has brought you? [...]

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Growing up in Australia, my only experience of Thanksgiving was through American television. Somehow it seemed a lot like Christmas. . . except of course without Santa. Having lived in America now over eight years I’ve come to really love the Thanksgiving holiday. The idea that the last Thursday of November each year is put aside so that people can come together and share thanks for their blessings is, I believe, an incredibly special and valuable tradition.

Of course Thanksgiving, and the festive season it kicks off, can be a very stressful time for many people. The Martha Stewart-like images of happy families, dressed in the lastest holiday fashion, sitting around a decadently decorated table feasting joyfully on gourmet delights, create expectations that can never measure up to reality. Then again, can reality ever measure up to glossy magazine covers? The impact it can have is to leave people feeling like something is missing from their lives. Instead of feeling gratitude for all the goodness present in our lives, many of us find ourselves feeling sad and resentful for all that is missing. . . whether it be someone else to host Thanksgiving lunch, relatives who don’t drive us crazy or a lack of resources to recreate that magazine cover in reality.

So my challenge to you this Thanksgiving holiday (and for those of you not in the US, this festive season in general) is to let go all your expectations about how it “should be” and instead to embrace the circumstances you find yourself in for all that they are, and for all that they aren’t. [...]

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I’m heading to Florida tomorrow for a few days of sunshine. Friends who have a home in Key Largo have invited us down and we figured it would be a fun place to spend Halloween! The last time I was in the Florida Keys was nearly twenty years ago. I was backpacking around the US and hired a rental car with a friend in Miami. We drove down to Key West and then slept in the car overnight to avoid paying for accommodations. We showered in the public showers. We ate cheap food and saved our money for the bar. It wasn’t comfortable but it was a hell of a lot of fun. Looking back over the ensuing twenty years I’m hit with the amount of change I’ve experienced since then. If you’d told me back in 1990 that 19 years later I’d be living in Virginia with four kids I don’t know if I’d have believed you. Ahhh, what an adventure life has been. Which is why today’s post is going to be a reflection on change.

Change is a constant in our lives and yet so often we resist it. As human beings we are wired to avoid change because any type of change, even change for the better, involves a level of discomfort in some shape or form. The whole concept of comfort zones evolved to explain the hedonistic psychological drive in all of us to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Comfort zones — characterized by the familiar, the known, the predictable — are where we risk little except, of course, our spirit’s deepest fulfillment. Change, by its very nature, requires us to step beyond our comfort zone and let go of something we’ve become familiar with — whether it be a the structure of our company, a relationship, a routine, a neighborhood or a physical environment in which we’ve lived or worked — and adapt to something new, something unfamiliar.

As someone who has moved around a lot over the last decade and had four children along the way, I know all too well that change can not only be uncomfortable but it can be inconvenient and, at times, quite overwhelming (as every new mother will tell you). However I also know that unless you are willing to embrace change in your life, you will miss the opportunities your ever-changing environment presents and will be unable to create for yourself a life you really enjoy living.

Perhaps you are someone who feels very averse to change. A creature of habit you call yourself. That is all fine and good. But if your aversion to change has left you unwilling to address the areas of your life you don’t feel good about and fulfill your own unique potential then it is coming at a cost to you. In my experience when people choose to avoid [...]

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Life doesn’t always go to plan. Sometimes things don’t work out as we want. Sometimes people let us down. Sometimes our hopes, dreams and expectations crash to the ground with a thud. Over the years I’ve felt disappointed more times than I care to count. An opportunity that looked promising fell through. A person I thought highly of acted poorly. A job I wanted went to someone else. Just last weekend, I felt a stab of vicarious disappointment as my oldest son Lachlan missed out on making the select basketball team. He’d had his heart set on it and when my husband told him the news, I found myself struggling in vain to hold back the tears for the sharp disappointment Lachlan felt. (Oh how we parents hate to see our children in pain.) I am sure that you have had your own share of disappointments. Perhaps you are working through one (or several) right now.

Disappointment is an emotion we feel when we don’t get the outcome we want or expect. When reality fails to conform to what we think it should be, disappointment (often combined with resentment or frustration) rises up within us, sometimes with an intensity that knocks us down hard. As human beings wired to become attached to certain outcomes, we are destined to experience it throughout the course of our lives. Having just spent two days last week with the Dalai Llama, I now know that even the most enlightened among us are not immune to emotions such as disappointment. Rather they have just learnt how not to let those emotions take hold. But I believe deeply that if we only ever had things work out the way we wanted, we would never value success and we’d never develop the resilience or wisdom God (or the universe or whatever you choose to call it) intended us to.

It’s the knocks in life, the setbacks and disappointments that allow us to savor and fully appreciate the wins and successes. As I work through disappointment I am called to deepen my faith — in the belief that everything is exactly as it should be (even though that’s not always how I want it to be), in myself and in my own resourcefulness. It also calls me to listen more closely to my own intuition and to trust that within every disappointment lies the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. I just have to find it. You just have to find it. Does that lessen the blow for Lachlan as he comes to accept a reality that is different from the one he’d attached himself to? Nope. Not much. But I have great faith that his character, in his resilience and in his ability to deal with other disappointments that may line his path through life will be strengthened because of it. [...]

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Yesterday a friend emailed me to say that after years of trying to make it as a freelance writer she’s admitted defeat and is now trying to find a paying job. I replied to her that she needed to drop the ‘defeated’ talk and instead re-frame her situation more positively. That is, that she enjoys freelance writing and while she will continue to write she is pursuing work that provides a more reliable source of income. She quickly replied that she felt far better (and I’m guessing, more powerful) putting it that way.

And last week, after my interview on the TODAY SHOW, I was inundated with emails and blog comments from people saying how much my words resonated. Of the many things I said during the interview was that we each need to make a powerful choice not to be defeated, nor succumb to fear, nor to take life’s inevitable rejections and setbacks too personally. Put another way, we need to have our own unique Emotional Stimulus Plan that will enable us to ride out the bumps, weather the setbacks and rise to the challenge that comes our way.

Right now there are millions of people having to deal with significant changes and challenges in their lives due to the economic crisis that has rippled out from the burst of the housing bubble. People are needing to cut back on all sorts of things they’d previously taken for granted. Suddenly their financial security isn’t so secure and their lifestyle is being trimmed in ways they’d never foreseen. Without warning they are finding themselves wrestling with an identity crisis because so much of their identity has been tied to their job, their income, their McMansion and the list goes on.

So just as the Federal Government has taken it upon itself to launch an Economic Stimulus Plan, so too will you benefit from creating your own plan to weather whatever storms are blowing over you. Sure, many people are suffering hardship that is beyond their control, but if you take a step back from all the fear mongering and dooms-daying and look heavenward you will notice that the SKY IS NOT FALLING and that, while times are tough, times have been tough before (actually, far tougher!) and humanity has not come to a crashing halt. The reality is that in the US and other developed countries, we are living way better than any time over the course of human history. So you have to give up your spa trips for awhile? Come on! Just as losing your job or downsizing your home doesn’t mean you are a failure, neither does unmanicured feet render you unlovable (“And thank goodness for that!” cry my neglected toenails!). [...]

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Have you ever wondered why so many adults, who never learn to swim as children, never attempt to learn as adults? Often it is because they do not want to go through the same learning curve that children have to. The fact is, to become masterful at something, whether it be swimming, speaking a new language, or cooking souffle like Julia Childs, you have to perservere. There’s really no other way around it.

Too often though, when our initial attempt to do something doesn’t produce the results we’ve envisioned, we throw in the towel. “I just don’t have a green thumb,” we say. “I’m just not that musical,” “I’m just not wired that way.” In short, we come up with all sorts of excuses and justifications to spare us the possibilitiy of another failure. One thing I’ve come to know by reading about and meeting successful people over the years is that [...]

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