The truth about truth telling

As I mentioned last week, for several years now, I've been kicking off my year with a word or a theme that will drive me forward.

The first couple of years of this practice, I would choose a word, then get swept back into the reactive way I was living my life. So by the time December rolled around, I completely forgot my word.

In the past few years I’ve found my word in a new way. I get quiet. I don’t settle on one too quickly. I check in with my body. And I only set my intention when it feels right from within. This simple shift amped the power all the way up on this practice.

My 2023 theme was truth telling. If you’ve been with me for a while, you may remember me announcing it to every corner of the earth last January.

I believed it to be the intention and driver that would glue my butt into a seat to write my story. The book…my book that seems to be rolling around in my head instead of on the page.

In Q1, I talked to book coaches. I wrote outlines. I added blocks of time into my calendar for writing. And I did not write. I didn’t want to.

I wanted to rest. Think. Play in my business and in my life.

I told myself the truth about what I wanted and didn’t want and I felt a wave of freedom. I knew I was onto something. I wondered where else I could be truth telling.

I spent time thinking about the types of clients and companies that feel most energizing for me.

I said no to the people and the work that no longer felt like a fit.

I asked for a rate I know I’m worth. And I accepted not a penny less.

Again, the freedom flooded my body and I felt alive.

So alive that I began to tell myself and others the truth about my relationship to my body. I used to say I was restricting my food to tiny portions and going without gluten for 11 years for my health and my longevity.

But it was really to be thin.

A lifelong ache rooted in childhood trauma and a culture that not only validates this self-harm, but requires it for acceptance and “ok’ness.”

But the truth.

The truth was that I was hungry and rigid and I was teaching my daughters this way of being.  

The truth was my body, my whole worthy-of-all-the-love being was done with that.

The truth was that at 49 on my way to 50, with a full life of people who love me and a career supporting women to be their fullest, truest selves – there can only be truth telling.

And so while I wasn’t writing in 2023, I was healing and advocating and connecting and playing with all the extra time that I had now that I wasn’t counting and tracking and planning my completely new life that starts tomorrow.

My body knew this is what it desired last January. It took me until April to figure it out and I’ve been in a healing place ever since.

It’s a work in progress that I will continue in 2024 with a new word that came to me while lying still on a yoga mat.

IMAGINE.

I will sit with clients to imagine their wild and energizing new paths.

I will imagine new areas to deepen within my business and new ways to show up for my community.

I will imagine the words of compassion and love and acceptance I needed to hear as a child, how they would have sounded in all of those memories instead of the ones that made me think my body was a problem to fix.

Because that’s what happens when you tell the truth. You realize the pain was real. That you deserved more and better and when you imagine, there are still some ways you can have it.

I’d love to hear the themes and anti-resolutions you’ve chosen for your 2024.

Anti-resolutions are my jam

Welcome to 2024, friend.

As a human doing the hard work to divest from diet culture and the hustley, robotic tools of “productivity” - I’ve been struck in this moment by the strength of my disgust for the concept of resolutions to start a new year.

I have compassion for all the versions of young me who started each January with a new way to lock into an exercise habit. Kickboxing, spinning, barre, pilates, yoga or my favorite – signing up for a marathon.

And all the ambitious Rachels who bullet journaled from 1/1 - 1/7.

Some of them also miracle morning’ed themselves into meditating at 5:30am before the kids woke up.

At the heart of all of these resolutions was the belief…

I’m not enough.

I’m not thin enough.

I’m not successful enough.

I’m not lovable enough.

I was starting each new year with a practice rooted in self-harm.

And that no longer fits with where I am in my healing – even if it continues to be normalized in the culture around me.

For several years now, I’ve been abstaining from resolutions and instead coming up with a theme for the year. I do love this practice and will continue to do it – but somehow this year it doesn’t feel like enough of an opposing force to counteract my resolution disdain.

So, instead I’ve chosen an anti-resolution.

Something I love about myself that I will double down on in 2024.

For me, it is connection and my ability to build community. I LOVE bringing people together. I’m grateful to have this gift and the opportunity to do it often in my personal life and in my business.

More of this 2024, please!

What do you love about yourself that you want to bring into focus this year?

What feels different when you declare your anti-resolution to the world?

What happens in your body when your intention comes from a place of self-love?

Feel free to share your anti-resolution with me and with your people. Change starts with the vulnerable and honest conversations we have within our inner circles.

Consulting during the search

As you may remember, a key part of my work with clients is helping them find the right next role on their terms.

Often times that means…

At an organization that prioritizes kindness and respects boundaries.

In a new industry.

At the right level.

Full transparency–sometimes these opportunities take awhile to find.

It takes thoughtful, persistent working of your search.

It takes turning down the roles that are “good on paper” but don’t meet your non-negotiables.

A higher title is not going to make a toxic culture easier to tolerate.

And if you truly can’t meet your financial responsibilities with the salary offered–passion is not going to pay the bills.

So–one very viable and popular temporary solution my clients choose is to take on project or consulting work while they are pursuing the right next role.

It’s both a way to experiment with new skills and leverage your deep expertise in an area that’s in-demand for the companies and colleagues in your network.

It’s also a way for you to choose the type of partners with whom you want to collaborate.

And my favorite part of this approach is that it’s a way to test out a company culture before you commit to a more full time opportunity.

With many of my clients who choose this path–they make themselves invaluable and then are asked to join the company full time. They say yes only when the opportunity aligns with their terms.

One of my recent clients consulted for nearly a year before committing to a full time role.

She needed the time to refuel after her last role, truly reflect on what she wanted next and ONLY say yes when the role met her criteria.

Yet she was earning the entire time she was job searching so she was able to be more selective and avoid desperation (not the best fuel for effective decision making!).

Job searches unfold at different speeds and I encourage you to get creative, give yourself some grace and stick to your path, your true north, your terms.

Sending you love and strength on your way to what’s next.

And here’s my annual reminder–November and December are POWERFUL times for networking.

Every single year I have clients who accept their new roles in the last six…even two weeks of the year. So don’t take yourself out of the game. Keep going. This year it could be you!

Get unstuck from your career box

What if...you won nearly every argument with friends and adults alike since you were in high school, killed it in debate tournaments through college and everyone you ever met told you, “You should REALLY be a lawyer!”. You work your butt off in law school and toil away in a firm to become partner. You get to the destination you’ve dreamed about since those feisty teen years and all you want to do is take the first flight out of this life into something more fulfilling.

What if...both of your parents were teachers and all of their friends were teachers and it seemed like they enjoyed their work and it was meaningful. And hello summer adventures! Becoming a teacher felt like an inevitability – even though you were a bit suspicious about why they were counting their days to retirement. You march forward into the teaching profession. It’s fine, but you’re already counting your days til retirement in year four.

What if...you’ve been doing the same damn job for ten years – with little bumps in title and pay to make you feel like you’re growing – but you fear this is the only role in the entire professional universe that you can do. And so you stay. You wonder, but not enough to take action.

These are the boxes we learn to lock ourselves within.

The safe paths.

The roles we know and can see.

They may be the only possibilities we’ve imagined for ourselves. Often others have told us these paths are part of our identities.

The only way out is owning our stuckness. Admitting same, same is not enough. Acknowledging you want more or different or in many cases – less.

It’s flexing your imagination (remember that part of you?) and dreaming up a hundred scenarios of what else this could look like without judging yourself for thinking any of them.

Then, you act.

This isn’t about manifesting or meditating or even hoping these things are possible.

It’s about test and learn. It’s experimenting and gathering the data to see if they’re possible.

Some of these potential paths will not be the right ones for you. Sometimes that bad news can take you down for a while – so expect that.

Yet – some of them will be right.

And finding that new right path isn’t even the most powerful part of this process.

It’s that you’ve learned how to extract yourself from your own rigidity and fear.

Because you’re human, you will find yourself within those boxes again and again and again.

Until you remember your ticket out.