Nothing seems to have changed in your life, but you’re not getting the nourishment you need, and you feel drained and blocked.

Maybe your self-care has gone stale.

I made a video about how this happened to me and what I’m doing to make it better. And I bring it home at the end and issue a challenge for you!

If you don’t see it above, click here to watch it – and let me know what you think!

Here is a dorky happy little video tour of my new studio, just for you. It’s less than five minutes long and is really quite amusing and adorable, if I do say so myself. (And I do.)

And! I’m in my super awesome 70′s shirt. It really doesn’t get any better.

(If you can’t see the video above, click here to watch it on YouTube.)

My face is half-gone because I was using the camera on the back of my iPad so I could see what I was doing after I turned it around – which, of course, meant I could not see what I was doing before I turned it around. Hilarity! Ensues!

I would love to see pictures or videos of your studio/workspace/creative zones, if you care to share!

Enjoy!

I dedicate this video to Jen Hofmann over at Inspired Home Office who, after a short 10-minute pep-talk, inspired me to create this studio and give myself my own creative space! Thank you, Jen – you rock!

In our Top 5 Posts of 2008 series, this post is #3! The message is as important and valid today as it was when we first published it, so we’re pulling it out, dusting it off, and giving it another moment in the sun. Enjoy!

I am alone, laying in bed, re-reading ‘American Gods’. I brace myself as the part that scares me most approaches, and the dead woman comes to talk to her husband. I get through the scene, frightened, and this time I pause my reading to examine the fear fresh in my still-racing heart.

Why am I so afraid of this scene? Laura is dead, but animated… but not particularly zombie-esque. More vampiric, actually, and vampires don’t scare me. The imagery clearly suggests she clawed her way out of the grave, and that certainly scares me… but this feels different. Bigger. What is this fear?

This is the fear of death, quietly stalking my every move. The deep-seated fear of death, silent and backgrounded, creepily crawling across my subconscious.

A long pause in my exploration as I let this sink in, test the waters to see if this resonates true. It does, resounding in me and sending shivers up my spine. I give it much thought – why am I so very afraid of death? No answers, but the realization that this fear has become second nature to me, has been in my heart of hearts for many turns of the clock. No beginning; it stretches back into my past.

Eventually, the shivers pass and I groggily give up the process for sleep.

The next morning, I break open my current life-changing non-fiction book for to read a few pages while my beloved tinkers on her computer. The book tells a story to illustrate a point, and this is what I read:

“On Monday, Hans returned to his law office in Century City, LA’s posh corporate haven, and promptly handed in his three-week notice. For nearly five years, he had faced his alarm clock with the same dread: I have to do this for another 40-45 years?

Immediately, a strange shift began – Hans felt, for the first time in a long time, at peace with himself and what he was doing. He had always been terrified of plane turbulence, as if he might die with the best inside of him, but now he could fly through a violent storm sleeping like a baby.”

Tears pouring from my eyes, and I grok in fullness. Death stalks me and fuels my fears because I am failing to live my life as my heart needs to live! Life is precious and fragile, and I have wasted so much of it, spent so much of my life doing the wrong thing, on the wrong path, in the wrong marriage, ignoring my intuition and my dreams, doing instead what others wanted or expected even when it went loudly against my own needs or desires. I’ve been reasonable and rational instead of magickal and intuitive. I’ve disrespected and dishonored myself, lost my self-esteem and self-respect.

I spend excited moments flailing about and reading aloud to Pace, somehow managing to get the words out through the knots in my throat. She cries, too, and in our tears we vow to make our life what we want, to listen to our dreams and be irrational and loud and go against the grain, and most of all, be true to ourselves and each other.

I feel the fear unraveling in me even now, as I begin to open and listen to myself, my intuition, and my dreams.

We asked Courtney Ramirez to be our Awesome Apprentice; she’s taking the 52 Weeks to Awesome course and will be writing us a post at the end of each month to share her experiences with us.

Five Ways to Make the 80/20 Rule Work for You

This month’s lessons were all about increasing your awesomeness in profound ways. At this point in the course, I’ve been busting through old patterns, releasing negative ways of thinking and approaching the world in a more awesome way.

But now it’s time to up the ante.

If you’re familiar with the Pareto Principle, you know that you can expect 80% of the results from 20% of your efforts. It applies to other things in life as well; for example, 80% of your enjoyment comes from 20% of your activities.

If you want to see more good stuff in your life, you need to focus on the 20% that is getting you the good stuff in the first place.

So this month I tried to put the 80/20 rule (aka the Pareto Principle) to work in as many ways as possible. Here are a few ideas to get you started!

With your kids.

This may be controversial, but it’s the norm in our house – we focus on the 20% of the rules that are actually get results. Cookies before lunch? It doesn’t really affect the big picture as much as brushing teeth or playing nicely together.

It wasn’t until this month’s lessons that I realized that we’d been naturally applying the 80/20 rule to the way we parent.

With your entertainment.

How much television do you watch each week and really enjoy? With streaming content like Hulu or Netflix, you can pick what you want to watch the most – drop the 80% you don’t love and focus on the 20% you do!

Stop yourself from turning the television on for no reason. Plan your viewing habits – and you’ll not only enjoy what you watch more, you’ll gain more time because you’re cutting out the junk.

With your online communities.

How many forums do you belong to? Social networks? How much value are you really getting out of them?

Although it may feel like spending time in forums or on social media is valuable, 80% of your time is actually being wasted.

Focus on the 20% of connections and friends that make the most difference in your life!

With your eating habits.

We all know that eating more vegetables, avoiding fast food, and drinking more water is important to health. But getting everything just right all of the time can be a pain.

I used to go into a tailspin of fried food whenever I slipped up, but now I apply this 80/20 rule: I get 80% of the results from the 20% of the time that I focus intently on my diet. (And, of course, I try to do my best the rest of the time.)

With yourself.

If you’re working on self-improvement, the intense amount of change that you need to undertake is often overwhelming!

But you can apply the 80/20 rule to yourself, too.

Start with the 20% that is causing you the most trouble. Maybe it’s a relationship problem you need to sort out. Maybe you need to focus on a particular career problem. Maybe it’s time you started working on your fitness. Whatever the biggest issue you’re facing, tackle that first – and you’ll get 80% of the awesome right away!

After all, you can’t change the world overnight – but you can make a lot of progress if you step forward 20% at a time!

Courtney Ramirez is a content, seo and marketing superhero consultant by day and geeky BBC sitcom watching mom and wife by night. When not developing carpal tunnel by writing for her clients or playing the Sims, she’s homeschooling two girls and toying around with the idea of starting a new blog. You can follow her on Twitter.

We asked Courtney Ramirez to be our Awesome Apprentice; she’s taking the 52 Weeks to Awesome course and will be writing us a post at the end of each month to share her experiences with us.

3 Reasons Why Organizing is Good for the Soul

I had a rude awakening when I moved to college: I realized that not everyone is as much of a Type A neat freak as I was.

Wanting to make peace with my roommates, I slacked off in my organizational ways. Then I got a little less organized when I got married to a very creative, very spontaneous, very unorganized man. Then I had two babies in two years, and if you’re a parent you know how that goes.

Suffice to say, in the last fourteen years I went from highly organized young lady to a woman who’s inner Type A voice is screaming “What the heck are you doing?”

Try as I might, I had a hard time getting reorganized. Then this month’s exercises (especially week 36: “Decluttering Essentials”) snapped me back into shape and I began to see that being unorganized is not me.

Being Type A doesn’t mean being a stick in the mud or having no feelings. It’s how I work – and it feeds my soul.

Even if you’re a little more on the creative side like my husband, getting organized and purging your clutter can be a soul-expanding experience.

And here are my three reasons why:

1. You only have so much room in your brain.

Trying to keep everything in your head and not on paper is soul sucking. There are so many details through your brain that on any given day you’re dealing with thousands of people of information.

When you try to hold it all in without getting it out, you’re wasting your mind on the details. Get those little details out so you can save your brainpower for more important things.

2. Being disorganized can cause excess stress.

How simple is it to meditate, relax, or reflect when you have a million things that are stressing you out? How can you spend time developing your soul and deepening your connection with what matters in life if you can’t remember if your library books are due today or tomorrow?

Being disorganized means that you have more stress and are less able to relax. Get everything out of your head and onto paper – or onto your computer, or in a digital to-do list (yes, there’s an app for that), or whatever system works for you – so you can reduce your stress and spend time on more important matters.

3. Getting organized feels good!

The simple act of purging out that overflowing junk drawer, donating old clothes and books, or cleaning out those dreaded closets gives you a fresh start and lifts your spirits. If you find small ways to purge out the old and bring in the new, you’ll see that it can lift your spirits and open your door for new things to come into your life.

Try purging out the old, writing down everything you want to accomplish, and putting it all down on the calendar.

You’ll be surprised by how good it feels – I certainly was!

Courtney Ramirez is a content, seo and marketing superhero consultant by day and geeky BBC sitcom watching mom and wife by night. When not developing carpal tunnel by writing for her clients or playing the Sims, she’s homeschooling two girls and toying around with the idea of starting a new blog. You can follow her on Twitter.

In this video interview with Eric Klein, we talk about how his free e-book 50 Ways to Leave Your Karma changes the world. It’s kind of like 52 Weeks to Awesome but with a more “52 Weeks to Enlightenment” flavor.

Two thumbs up from me! *thumb* *thumb*

If you prefer audio, here’s an MP3 for you.

Highlights:

• What’s your purpose in life, Eric?
• What is karma and why does it matter?
• There’s a spectrum from “comfortable apathy” to “crush anything that gets in your way”. What’s the middle ground?
• “effective spirituality”
• Tell me a story about how this e-book has changed someone’s life, and how it can help change the world.
• Why are you giving it away for free?

Read it, enjoy it, live it, share it!

In our Top 5 Posts of 2008 series, this post is #4! The message is as important and valid today as it was when we first published it, so we’re pulling it out, dusting it off, and giving it another moment in the sun. Enjoy!

“

Seth Godin posted today about what watching less TV means for the world. This post is about what it means for you.

Your life can be interesting, too.

People sometimes say to me, “Wow, your life is so interesting!” Sometimes they say it in kind of a fearful sort of way, but sometimes they say it in kind of an envious way, as if they find their life boring and would love to have a more interesting life. So here it is, folks, How To Live An Interesting Life, in one not-as-hard-as-you-might-think step.

That’s not so bad, right? You don’t even have to do anything, you just have to stop doing a few things. Like watching TV. Maybe playing video games. Maybe spending so much time at parties or social events. Whatever you feel is “sucking up your time” and making your life uninteresting — it may be totally different for you than for someone else. Just stop doing it.

Here’s what you’ll notice.

You will get bored. You will feel antsy. You will get jittery and want to go back to doing the things you just stopped doing. (Notice how this is like withdrawal from an addiction?) But if you stay the course, you will come out the other side.

You will get so bored that you will find something interesting to do.

This is our default state, but we have so many distractions that it’s hard for us to get back to our natural baseline. Eliminating all the distractions will help you regain your default state of having an interesting life.

Here’s how you can stay the course.

I’ve found that it helps to make a small number of large decisions rather than a large number of small decisions. It’s like choosing not to buy junk food once a week during grocery shopping time instead of choosing not to eat junk food every hour during potential snacky time.

I’m talking about medium-to-large decisions like not owning a TV, or not signing up for cable. Not buying a game I know I’d get addicted to. Setting up a calendar with certain times reserved for certain things, and sticking to the schedule.

Consolidate your willpower.

“Uninteresting” is not the same as “boring”

Notice I said to stop doing “uninteresting” things, not “boring” things. TV isn’t boring; it’s specifically designed to not be. But on a higher level, on a life level, it is incredibly uninteresting. Take stock of all those things in your life that you feel are uninteresting, and just stop doing them.

That’s all it takes. The rest will take care of itself — or rather, you will take care of it, because it will help you find and express the true inner amazingness that is inside you.

It’s the best decision you’ll ever make.

We asked Courtney Ramirez to be our Awesome Apprentice; she’s taking the 52 Weeks to Awesome course and will be writing us a post at the end of each month to share her experiences with us.

Getting Unstuck by Nurturing Yourself

If you aren’t reaching your goals, conventional wisdom says you’re not working hard enough. You need to run faster, push harder, lose more sleep, and generally stress yourself out in order to WIN IT ALL!

If this type of thinking leaves a bad taste in your mouth, we’re in the same headspace.

The lesson that hit home hardest this month in the 52 weeks to Awesome course was a lesson about following through on your dreams and reaching your goals.

There are four things in play when you achieve your dreams: goals, taste, inspiration, and energy.

One of the key aspects missing in most motivational courses is the aspect of energy. Energy is what drives your motivation to be able to work on your goals. It helps you follow through on your initial inspiration. So without energy, you’re not going to get anywhere. It doesn’t matter how much you try to make it happen if energy isn’t there to begin with. It’s like beating a dead horse.

Nurturing yourself is a key to reaching your dreams and seeing your goals through. If you haven’t yet reached your dreams you may feel like you need to push harder – but that rarely works! Looking inward rather than pushing outward will get you a lot further.

Here are three ways to nurture yourself so you can get unstuck:

Get enough sleep!

Sleep is highly underrated. Without proper sleep, you’re not going to think as clearly. You’re not going to act as kindly. You’re not going to be the best you that you can be. Carve out time for sleep. Try some chamomile tea or herbal supplements to help if you find it difficult to sleep. Make sure that you create great sleep habits so you can support your energy.

Take deep breaths.

“The Energy Prescription” (by Constance Grauds) was an eye-opener for me with regards to deep breathing. The book focuses on several practices that can increase your energy – and deep breathing is the first step. Like most of us, I always knew that deep breathing could help, but I never made time for it. It often slipped my mind. Thanks to Constance’s book, I started completing 10 deep breaths twice a day. I was absolutely shocked at the results. Whether or not you regularly exercise, try the deep breaths. You might be surprised.

Give your brain a break.

Sometimes when you’re working toward your dreams, you might feel single minded and ultra-focused on the task in front of you. You push everything aside and become obsessed with your dream. But just like a runner, you can’t sprint forever. You need a break. You need to give your brain a break!

Creativity comes from relaxation. Take some time off. Step away from your email, from social media, from the computer. Play! Run through the grass with your shoes off.

Have fun – and you’ll find yourself more energized and closer to reaching your dreams.

Courtney Ramirez is a content, seo and marketing superhero consultant by day and geeky BBC sitcom watching mom and wife by night. When not developing carpal tunnel by writing for her clients or playing the Sims, she’s homeschooling two girls and toying around with the idea of starting a new blog. You can follow her on Twitter.

Inspired by Johnny B. Truant, Pace challenged Kyeli to two weeks of only checking her email twice a day.

Kyeli’s initial response, in her own words: “FUCK NO.”

But! There’s a surprise twist ending!

We recorded a conversation about the experiment, and you can listen to it here.

WARNING: Contains oodles of laughter, gems such as “Email is like this little gnome that walks across my desk and hits me in the hand every 3 minutes,” and ends with a challenge.

In our Top 5 Posts from 2007 series, this post is #5! The message is as important and valid today as it was when we first published it, so we’re pulling it out, dusting it off, and giving it another moment in the sun. Enjoy!

One of my goals for this year is “Pass V 7-key”. V is a particularly difficult song on Beatmania (it’s a remix of Winter by Vivaldi), and 7-key is the “non-easy” mode. I’ve been trying to pass V 7-key for years — I’ve gotten as close as 54% or somesuch (you need 80% to pass), but haven’t practiced enough to do it. I chose to make it one of my goals, since I had just gotten IIDX Red and expected to be playing a lot anyway.

One day as I was thinking about what I wanted to do, I decided to play Beatmania. “Not only is it fun,” I thought, “but I’ll be getting closer to accomplishing one of my goals!”

A lightbulb went on.

I had transformed something from simply fun to fun and fulfilling simply by adding it to a list of goals. Whoa! Would that work for other things that we currently find fun and unfulfilling? Things that are enjoyable and necessary, but leave a slight guilty aftertaste for not doing anything “productive”?

The answer was yes.

We talked about this and decided to add a few additional goals to our list. For example:

• spend quality time together
• get enough down time

And now, when we’re relaxing together or having down time, we’re also accomplishing one of our goals for the year! It’s pretty amazing!

What fun thing could you make into a goal?