Have you considered what you want? At the deep soul level? What, when it’s all said and done, would be the fundamental desire of your heart?
by Raymond Carver
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
What is it you want?
Ta-da!
For months, I have been teasing the fact that Get There From Here was going re-focus around story in an bigger way. Today, after nearly a year’s work, it officially has, and I’m so pleased to welcome you to the updated site that reflects this re-orientation. It’s all about helping you get to the stuff that matters through the creative power of story!
There are some obvious changes. The website copy has changed. The font is easier to read. There are beautiful new images on each page. This is all good stuff and I hope these changes will make getting the support you need an easier proposition. You might be particularly interested in a few specific spots:
Check ‘em out!
I also think the following interview of me, filmed by the Empowerment Group to help kick-off their Power of Story event, will provide some nice context for this shift. It’s the story of my business and of me as an entrepreneur. At the very least, you can appreciate the creepy image of me that YouTube chose as the still.
As Get There From here has grown over the last 3+ years, I have so valued the deep learning clients and readers of this blog have enabled me to to experience. In other words, thanks for being here. It makes all the difference.
I’d also like to offer a shout-out to Alx Block, Lula Jones and Scott Gleeson Blue who worked tirelessly to get the new site up and running.
I know a lot of amazing, inspiring people. People who live openly, honestly and with passion. People who are making a significant contribution to the world.
In this post, I’m sharing with you a recent interview with one such person – a Ms. Molly Hoyne – who happens to run a super cool organization in Seattle called Stratejoy. If I lived there, I’d do my best to spend a lot of time with Molly, where we’d undoubtedly drink margaritas and talk about the crazy gift it is to be helping others live life on their own terms. I’m choosing to share Molly with you here for two reasons:
- She’s bound to inspire you. Seriously.
- She’s offering something amazing right now.
This offering is called The Joy Equation: A 30 Day Guide to Living Life on Purpose. Especially if you’re experiencing a quarterlife crisis and you’re a woman, I think you might be interested in hopping on over to this page for some more info.
For now, let’s get on with the interview. Friends, meet Molly. Molly, meet Friends.
Jennifer: First of all, could you share a bit about yourself?
Molly: I’m Molly. I live in Seattle. I love to travel and take baths and wear costumes and and partake in naked adventures and have wicked smart conversations about the meaning of life/business/saving the world. I’m getting married in August even though I refuse to plan my wedding. I’m taking off in an RV for a year in September. Here’s my life list. Here’s a 7 minute video of my story. Here’s my business. That is all.
JGB: Your new guide, The Joy Equation, is all about living life on purpose. Can you say a little bit more about what that means?
MH: Living on purpose means making deliberate choices about our personal resources – our time, money, energy and love. I think it’s fairly easy to get stuck living on autopilot, doing something today just because we did it yesterday. Sometimes autopilot is useful- it helps take the guesswork out of making every little decision. Wake up = brush teeth. Or drink coffee in my case! But living a life? I think we need to stop and take stock on a fairly regular basis. What am I doing with my time? My money? Why? Am I loving it? Suffering it? Am I making conscious choices or just taking the easy road?
JGB: So is there an actual equation for joy?
MH: There is in fact! I’m sure there are bunches of personal “equations for joy” but I operate with this one: Connect with Yourself + Define Success + Cultivate Powerful Habits + Commit to Your Happiness = Authentic Joy.
Connecting with Yourself is really about clarity around your values and all the little things that make you feel alive. Defining success comes down to declaring your own version of “making it” or what it’s going to take to rock your world. Cultivating Powerful Habits is the goal setting portion of the equation! We can dream and envision and set intentions all we like, but there is execution that needs to happen as well. And finally, Committing to Your Happiness means recognizing the importance of your own fulfillment and self-realization. We need to create and commit to our own happiness in order to be fully alive and present for everyone else in our life.
JGB: I know that this course evolved out of your own experience conquering your quarterlife crisis (QLC). What do you think brought you to the point of crisis?
MH: I think I ignored the little niggling feeling that “something feels off” for quite awhile before it hit “crisis” mode! After all, I was doing what I had studied in college, getting the proper promotions, kicking butt, making my bonuses… But when I was really honest with myself, I recognized that I wasn’t fulfilled whatsoever and I had no idea what do to about it. I felt stuck. I was totally self-medicating with wine and constantly bitching about my job without doing anything about it. I was turning into someone I didn’t recognize!
I think I hit crisis when I realized that I was the only one who could change the direction of my life, but I felt totally clueless on how to start. What direction did I even want to go? How was I going to “start over”? What if I failed?
JGB: And now? How would you describe your life now?
MH: Busy! And so full of the right things that I frequently find myself telling people I love my life. Which is ridiculously corny, but totally true. It’s been four years since I hit the worst of my QLC and in that time I quit the corporate world, spent 10 months backpacking around the world with my boyfriend, started Stratejoy, cultivated a meditation practice, got engaged, and dove headfirst into coaching/teaching/speaking about success on your own terms.
My life is a lovely reflection of my authentic self. It’s a mishmash of ALL my interests. This year alone I will have performed in a burlesque show, attended a 7-day silent meditation retreat, bought a cabin in the woods on a river, partied in Vegas with a bunch of 20-something bloggers, taught workshops on both coasts, and made out with James Franco. (If anyone knows James, can you pretty please help me arrange that last bit? Thanks.)
JGB: And now that you’ve discovered so many wonderful things about yourself and about life, if you could stand on a rooftop shouting one message, what would it be?
MH: This is Life! Jump in! Make it Count!
JGB: Thanks, Molly! I couldn’t agree more!
Don’t forget to find your way to Stratejoy’s website and check out Molly’s pay-what-you-can promotion on her guide, The Joy Equation.
I’m often thinking about priorities. In part, I am paid to do as much. I help my clients sort through their own priorities in order to design actions that support those priorities. I do the same for myself, too, of course.
Prioritization has been a particularly hot topic of late. Many of my clients have been asking for a specific emphasis on it; last week, I guest blogged on why/how you can stop trying to manage time; and this morning I had a brief conversation with a colleague by the name of Julie Cohen who was telling me her number one key to creating work-life balance is to develop priorities.
My work with clients, my own blogging and Julie’s comments have reminded me of how important it is to not only identify what matters most to us but actually construct our lives to reflect those priorities. Or, as Steven Covey would say, we need to put first things first.
The way you choose to spend your time is a reflection of what matters most in your life. If someone were to look at how the hours in your day are allocated, would they see who you really are? Would they see where your priorities lie? And if not, why not?
Who doesn’t love a good email forward?!?!?
Okay, I don’t either. I’ve discovered, however, that they have this interesting disarming quality to them, especially when they are packaged with cute photos of animals or children.
See, you're hooked now, right?
It’s like talking to a dear friend who believes passionately about something and during the discourse, you feel your head nodding yes and your eyebrows raised in agreement. It’s not until you walk away that you realize that no, you don’t actually think waterboarding is ethically sound.
I received a forward today that compared the experience of life to that of a train journey. We get on board when we are born; we disembark when we die. The other passengers are our friends, etc.
As any recipient of such dispatches knows, the meaning is inevitably made clear enough that your 3 year old nephew would understand – no critical thinking required. This is handy. After all, I’m certainly not going to spend time on the deconstruction of a feel-good Power Point presentation that I feel compelled to read because I like sender.
Back to life = train ride. I’m moving quickly through the slide, gently rolling my eyes at the positive use of the word “baggage.” And then comes the message:
“Above all, we should all strive to make the ride as pleasant and memorable as we can.”
I feel my eyebrows raise a bit, my head lean to the left and a slight nod start at the top of my spine. This is nice, I think. Pleasant and memorable. I like pleasant – it’s comforting, reassuring, unobtrusive. And who doesn’t want to remember positive events? Or be remembered? Maybe I should think more about being pleasant and memorable.
And then my brows furrow. Pleasant and memorable? Pleasant is as vanilla as vanilla gets and memorable seems like a partial waste, considering you know, death.
What about bold? Powerful? Creative? Helpful? Connected? Authentic?
But what I really want is to hear from you. Play a little Mad Libs, fill in the blanks and share below:
Above all, we should all strive to make the ride as _____________ and ______________ as we can.
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