Fankle 1#

You know how sometimes you are ready to pop – to leave the old stuck encrusted place and get your love going? I coach ready-to-pop people and last week I coached Lisa Sonora Beam and she is popping and flying and you can benefit.

Introducing her Creative Entrepreneur Strategy Sessions

You want a systematic, doable, step-by-step plan to develop a very healthy relationship with your creative process and your business, so you can follow your bliss? Hello! Of course you do.

Lisa, I’m dancing with you!

Fankle 2#

Thanks to Claire for this:

I read the phrase “Satisfaction Finder and I’ve never read anything which resonated more!  I love it!  It’s so simple, and it’s where its grace lies – little by little, small step by small step.  Thank you Jen, for reminding us that we are “enough”!

And Vicki,  your Comfort Cafe post made me grin and grin,

I’m already am beginning to feel happier.  I don’t have to do it all, and I certainly don’t have to do it all right now!!  That realization was HUGE for me.  Thank you, Jen!”

It’s only been two weeks and the kit is flying out the door – 121 sold as of 5/25/10 – but you know what really makes me hop and twirl and leap around my studio? Your life is no longer spilling away while you fret about what is enough or what to choose or how to feel good about what you are doing!

I talked to a coaching client yesterday who bought the bonus package (I think there is one session left) and she had all these great insights from reading The Satisfaction Finder, and we spent the hour working on her freedom to want what she wants, to do the things that get her excited, for the love of it.

Her courage and insight and resolve took my breath away.

In the end, that’s the coolest thing about knowing how to find satisfaction –  you get to declare happiness for yourself.

Fankle #3

Havi is my guest teacher again this year The Luscious, Nurturing Get Your Writing Done While Laughing Your Butt Off and Maybe Crying a little Too Writer’s Retreat which is the best thing ever. I love doing Shiva Nata with her and her wisdom brings an extra lovely shine of learning and permission to the retreat.

Havi’s doing this sweet small thing, opening her own yoga studio, in Portland, OR. She needs help. So get some of her groovy stuff so she can get a floor installed so I can drive down and do Shiva Nata with her and then hang out with Mark and Charlie and maybe finally meet Chris and Jolie, then go down to Salem and hug Naseem.

Fankle #4

Speaking of Naseem, she has written the best novel I have read in years. It is the perfect book club book, the perfect book to read with your family this summer - oh my god, read this with your family – that would be so brilliant! She is my new friend and I love her. But her writing? It will change you so deeply and call you out of the cave of your heart to love even more.

Fankle #5

Pace and Kyeli are hosting this incredibly well organized, deeply amazing World Changing Writing Workshop with the wisest bloggers and writers teaching… and me. If you write, you must check it out.

What’s your wiry fankle? Tell me what’s up in your world, what you are excited about, I’d love to hear!

The end is here somewhere! Image from SubCircle

Today is a sometimes-Wednesday, in which I eradicate posting flummoxia by offering up a jambalaya, a comfort basket, a wiry fankle (a Scottish word that means a tangle or a state of confusion)… in other words, a bit of this and tad of that.

Fankle 1#

Find the Good Booster Pack free gift is available right now – look to your right and up slightly… yes, there it is. That simple box holds untold riches.

It’s an e-course in Self-Trust drawn for the most popular month of content at the Comfort Cafe. You’ll learn, in tiny bite-sized bits, how to look to your own wisdom first, and increase your confidence and ability to navigate choices.  You’ll also get an audio about Minimum Requirements for Self-Care, which is one of those concepts that just might bring some true sanity to your life. Grab it, it’s free and worth my dogs’ weight in diamonds.

Fankle 2#

March’s Very Wise Person at the Comfort Cafe is the very wise (sorry, couldn’t help myself) Todd Kasdan, who wrote the very wise book (I’m on a roll of bad jokes here) Curiosity. In our call, I asked Todd to enlightened us about psychological resiliency and boy, did he. Okay, I’m actually not smart enough to say, “Will you enlighten us about psychological resiliency?” so what I really asked him is “Will you help us get out of our own way?” and he did that.

Here’s a little excerpt for your resiliency pleasure: ToddExcerpt**

Fankle 3#

Most days, my Brain Trust – a group of heart friends who support each other through the ups and downs of our work – share what our “high value” actions are for that day – What is the first and main thing we will each do to move our businesses forward. It’s a simple and powerful practice (try it!) and, as the years pass, we learn all kinds of things about ourselves and how we work, which is golden knowledge!

One thing I’ve been learning lately from Molly and Michael and Mark and Eric is pacing. If you have a few big days of getting a lot done, if you continue to try to get a lot done, you start procrastinating and that can lead into a downward spiral of beating yourself up and then avoiding your work.

The idea that you can work 8 hours a day every day doing high-level creative work or reaching out to clients or coaching is bullshit.

Speaking of Eric, go vote on his manifesto – Lizards & Leaders: How Meditation Accelerates Change.

Thanks for fankling with me – hope you enjoyed the bits and pieces.

**Members of the Comfort Cafe have access to a library of complete Very Wise Person recordings, including Todd’s. If all you did was listen to these calls, your life would unfold around you in a gracious carpet of enlightenment!

Fankle 1# – Tribal Authors

I’ve had a crush on Jonathan Fields ever since I bought his yoga video oh probably 10 years ago. I love a guy in a bandanna who is gently telling me what to do with my body. (coy blush)

Fast forward a year or so ago and we connected via Twitter over his first book, Career Renegade.  He didn’t contact me so I could help him — he wanted to see if he could help me! Major mensch.

Watching Jonathan develop his kickassiness via his blog this year has been so enlightening but you know what made me fall in love even more with him?  When a client o’ mine signed up for his Tribal Author Camp and then had a family emergency and instead of him saying, “Shine it on baby,” he gave her the recordings for the entire weekend. As we say around my house, “Good form! Good form!”

Jonathan interviewed me via video Skype last week on my Tribal Author Book Biz Plan – watch me admit that I don’t have one and talk about what I’m doing to keep reinventing myself.

Thanks bandanna man, I love learning from you.

Fankle 2# – She Does it Again

How does Cairene MacDonald keep doing it?  I want to be her when I grow up!  She takes ideas that could be so surface and pat and she digs into them and makes you see new ways of being.

Lots of my peeps at the Comfort Cafe are big fans. She was one of our Wise Persons last year (we have a call every month with someone, um wise, who teaches us something wise – get the theme?).

Picture this: I’m hanging out with my Lillian (she’s 15) and we’re talking about how she can’t decide whether to date this boy and how making decisions is hard for her in general (I’m talking even ordering in a resturant) I’m trying to explain to her “good enough is good enough” and how you have to leave the not quite right and be in the unknown so the right stuff can find you (can you imagine how annoying it is to have me as a mother?) and then

THIS POST ARRIVES IN MY IN-BOX.

Oh. How. Perfect.

(and no, not because she talks about me.)

Fankle #3

I’m all et-up (as my grandmom used to say) with retreats these days.  The Virtual Retreat and my live mini-retreats. I’m on fire with new material to help people end the dreaded deadly cycle of depletion.

Then I read Andrea Lee‘s last newsletter in which she says, “If you’re stuck in any way, or even if you’re not stuck but you want to amp up your flow of energy, ask yourself:

In what way could I be applying the things I sell, teach or stand for, to myself?”

I remembered I have canceled not one, but two, retreats this month.

I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

But I have so much to do!

I have to keep pushing through!

Oh my god, I will not believe that lie again!

So here is the word: Starting Friday at noon, 24 hours of total retreat time.

I will not be a liar who sells one thing and does another.

P.S. Next two live retreats are soon:

Wisconsin, near Madison.

Texas, near Dallas. Early bird price for Texas goes up February 27th. I’ve added local beloved yoga teacher Brandie Werner to our day – easy restorative yoga, yes ma’am!

Fankle #4 – Another Mensch!

Charlie Gilkey has been my coach and he is certainly my friend.

I love him because he is so smart and yet he still wants to talk to me.

I love him because he is so smart but gives away too much stuff (like me) and refuses to do sleazy marketing stuff (hopefully like me).

Let me admit right now: I am a planner whore — and I created a few myself back in the days when The Life Organizer was a date book.

Isn’t there something so Garden of Eden about hoping you will find the perfect planner?

Charlie thinks so too (or he’s a planner whore, too,  you’ll have to ask him) so he keeps creating these cool planners for creative types.

It’s all about chunking it down to the smallest action.

Action, people, action. Which might make some planner whores uneasy because you would actually not just be planning but creating.

Please check out Charlie’s hip and helpful planners for creative people.

Wiry Fankle #1

Monday is Freedom From Self-Improvement Week here . Free goodies and giveaways and inspiring audios and silly coupons to help you celebrate your innate goodness.

It’s about acknowledging you don’t have to do anything to be worthy.

Not only that, but you can make mistakes and yes, you are still totally lovable.

It’s a shot across the bow of everyone who markets to our fear that we aren’t good enough.

It’s a bath of relief from endless shoulds, have tos, and get somewheres.

It’s a breath of self-mercy.

Starts Monday. Right here.Tell the world!

Wiry Fankle #2

I adore Jill Sobule. Saw her at the Tractor Trailer (Seattle bar) a few weeks back and her erudite acerbic wit lit me up. Her website is a blast and my favorite cuts off her new album are A Good Life and Nothing to Prove. She raised the money for the album from fans and some even sing on the album (no, not me).

Wiry Fankle #3 – Warning Rant Ahead

Recently, I became lightly interested in taking a marketing course offered by an Internet marketing gal. I sent her a private email, asking several tender questions.

I didn’t hear anything back. The program was about to start.  I shrugged it off and went on vacation.

I came home to an email from her, but for the life of me, I couldn’t tell if she had answered me personally or publicly. Had she turned my private questions into a public sales letter?

Oh no, nobody would do something that slimy.

Turned out she had. She did remove my name and website but you know what, still very bad form.

Not only did she not answer my concerns, she made them sound rather pathetic, sort of “I was where you are until I did what I will tell you how to do, all for the low, low price of $998.”

It was really hard not to send her a blustering email filled with “Do you know how many books I’ve sold, do you know what I’ve done, who I’ve spoken in front of, who I’ve coached, etc.”

I didn’t. I prayed. I breathed. I bitched at Bob.

But you know what’s sad? When people like me want to be able to tell people like you what I’m doing in a clear, honest way, and people like her make us feel there is no way to do that.

Being self-employed is hard.

I know, I’ve been doing it for 26 years.

Thank God for Mark Silver and Molly Gordon and Pam Slim.

These people are authentic; some other people only know how to use that word as marketing copy.

Rant over.

Wiry Fankle #1

The beauty of vacations.

I talk a lot about the beauty of retreats (we’ll be enjoying a Virtual one at the Comfort Cafe this Saturday) and not so much about the beauty of vacations, but having just returned from a perfect one with Bob, I am now a convert.

See, the key is taking a vacation you want to take.

Doing the things you want to do.

At the pace you want to do them.

Another key?

No technology.

No email at all for five days. Not once. And I didn’t miss it.

No TV.

Texted my daughter very few times, called her once.

You want inspiration? You want to feel life flowing through you again?

Follow this no-fail formula: go away someplace in nature (we went to the Methow Valley). Follow your rhythms as much as you can. Leave technology out of it. No cheating.

I know, this sounds very much like a retreat. The difference: drinking wine. I don’t do that on retreat.

Wiry Fankle #2

I was very, very awestruck to have Katie Goodman as our Wisdomcast guest at the Comfort Cafe last week. She was nominated for a MacAuthur! She’s Ellen Goodman’s daughter. She writes for O!

It helped that she’s a fan.

Get her book, Improvisation of the Spirit. It’s genius. Like MacAurther genius.

Here is an excerpt from our call for you to enjoy.

Wiry Fankle #3

I had a big big juicy epiphany on our vacation / retreat with wine and it’s so very happy making.

The next phase for me!

Can’t wait to be sharing it with you, starting in October at the Seattle retreat.

If I can keep my mouth shut until then.