What is career self-love?

Are you as exhausted as I am from the onslaught of Big January Energy?
The "you’re already behind, your weaknesses are holding you back " vibe?

Side note to the marketers on this: fear does not motivate people long term.

And to the organizational leaders: you can’t accomplish the entire year’s goals in January. So put away the six decks you’re working on concurrently. You’re burning out your people in week four of the new year.

How can we possibly sustain this pace?

As you may have noticed, I’ve been taking an intentionally different approach to January. One that interrupts the crushing messaging about all I need to change about myself and my business.

It’s unhelpful, unproductive and well…unfun.

While everybody else is Dry Januarying or New Year, New You’ing – I’m rounding out my Self-Love January – and it feels rebellious in all the best ways.

I’m writing down my energizing new ideas for the year AND I’m simply letting them percolate.

I don’t need to take action yet and force the ideas into the world before I’m ready. It feels grounding to give myself some time to let the ideas untangle themselves.

I’m meeting the Big January Energy in my people with calm and compassion. Modeling another way that comes from an inner knowing of what truly motivates me.

I’m building wide berths of buffer into my calendar.

I’m seeing heart filling friends and colleagues for coffee, lunch and REALLY chilly walks.

I’m respecting my body’s desire to hibernate on cold, dark winter nights. I’ll meet you for an evening in April.

My self-love January is mostly about self-trust and the belief that I know what’s best for me.

And it’s not anything you’re selling to make me better. I’m already pretty great.

I hope as we round out this month, we also say goodbye to all that’s already burning you out. And if not, we could make Self-Love February a thing too. I’m in if you’re in.

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Generalists! I’m celebrating you.

As part of my intentional self-love driven January counter-programming, I thought it would be the perfect time to give some of my favorite people the extra TLC they deserve.

Raise your hand if you…

• Inevitably become the glue connecting multiple disciplines.

• Are the translator among teams to find common ground.

• Prefer the forest to the trees.

• Continue to be surprised when you get tapped for leadership roles.

• Are confused about which direction to choose because you’re good at most things you try.

• Have a nagging feeling that your expertise (or the multitude of them) isn’t deep enough.

Congratulations, friend. You’re a generalist. And you have a critical role to play in any and every organization.

Most of my clients who fit this criteria, first admit it to me in a whisper. Like they have a secret. Or they’re saying a dirty word.

My response: Yes, you’re a generalist! Stop apologizing and let’s celebrate your general awesomeness!

Somehow, in academia and in some corporate circles we began worshiping deep expertise as if it is the only way to pursue a career.

As if anything else is superficial. A path to avoid at all costs.

I’m calling bullshit on this.

Generalists are…

General Managers, Chiefs of Staff, Program Managers, Project Managers, Consultants.

They are also…

Strategic problem solvers, flexible communicators, motivating leaders.

So, generalists, if I could write you a love letter, I would say…stand in your power. Talk about your multidimensionality and your brilliance in being the catalyst that brings teams and projects together.

Add it to your elevator pitches, your LinkedIn profiles, your resumes and your cover letters.

Don’t hide your magic anymore.

We need you.

We need you to lead us more than ever.

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.