Today is my birthday.

I’ve not been a huge fan of my birthday for a long time and I’m not sure it’s an age thing. (I won’t tell you how old I am but through a few Google searches I am sure you can figure it out if you must.) I just don’t like how fast time is flying and my birthday is always a harsh reminder of that.

A few years ago I had a free day before my birthday — no work, no business to run, just me with lots of time to walk around, drink overpriced lattes, and hang out in Barnes and Noble — and I decided to create a list of all the things I’d learned/done/figured out during the past year. I like lists, as you may have noticed, and I really liked doing this. As I was about to do it this year again, I came across this post over at one of the blogs I read frequently. Apparently smart career coaches think that doing an end-of-year review is a good idea, so I am in great company.

I’m going to share some of my list with you here, with no other purpose but to encourage you to do this for yourself. We spend a lot of time making plans and goals, but sometimes we need to take a time-out and think about all the things we have accomplished/learned/done. So here are some of mine for this past year of my life: Read the rest of this entry »

I really like writing down plans, goals, to-dos. I’m pretty fanatical about it, actually. I have a special notebook where I write down the BIG plans and BIG goals. I have a different notebook where I keep track of my daily to-dos. In yet another notebook I write about things I’ve tried to do and not accomplished and try to figure out why. I told you I take this too seriously.

I make a lot of goals and plans around New Year’s. I like a fresh start and my birthday also happens to be around this time, so it’s a good reason to think about what I want to accomplish during the next year. But you know as well as I do that New Year’s resolutions can work in two ways: If you get them accomplished, you feel great, if you see a bunch of things on your list from last year that are still just resolutions and not reality, it doesn’t feel so good. The other night I took a look at some of my New Year’s resolution from last year and while I did get to a few — going for a walk every day (almost), drinking more water (done), remembering friends’ birthdays (did OK here) — there were too many on the list that were untouched — meditate regularly, learn about wine, read more books, and many, too many more.

So this year I’m trying to hold myself back from making New Year’s resolutions. It’s not as easy as it sounds, at least not for the fanatical goal-maker like me. But I want to try something different: Read the rest of this entry »

A few years back I wrote a book called The Daring Female’s Guide to Ecstatic Living. (No, the purpose of this post is not shameless self promotion. Ok, a little, you got me.) The reason I mention the book is because the entire point of it was to get women to dare themselves to do something new, scary, risky, interesting, exciting, never-thought-I-could-do-this with their lives. I felt that I’ve done a few of those things myself–and this was before Work It, Mom!, which has taught me a whole new meaning of terms like scary and exciting and risky–and wanted to encourage others to give it a shot.

One of my favorite things about writing the book is that the process forced me to look for ways to make my own life more interesting and more along the lines of what I wanted to get out of it. By investing the time in thinking about and writing the book I found that I was investing in myself and my own life. And I liked the results.

And I’ve decided to explore this idea of investing in yourself here on the Work It, Mom! Blog. As working moms we know that the first thing that often goes out the window and off the to-do list is ourselves–our hobbies, interests, big goals, even basic things like say, sleep. But this is a bad idea in the long run. You can’t ignore yourself and just take care of other people and responsibilities in your life; after a while, you’ll be a very tired and bitter person, trust me, I’ve tried this and learned my lesson.

So as we’re now full steam ahead into the holiday season that brings with it too much stress, running around, and ignoring yourself, I’d like to offer an antidote here on the Work It, Mom! Blog by writing a series of Invest In Yourself posts until I run out of ideas (which hopefully won’t happen if you offer your own suggestions) or you tell me to quit this nonsense. Every week I’ll try to come up with an activity that will focus your energy on yourself and your goals, to-dos, ideas, and yes, dare I say dreams? I’ll try to make it small and manageable because I how how little time we all have.

OK, I’m getting a bit too Oprah-like now, so I’ll stop with the self-helpish intro and get on with the first Invest In Yourself idea: Read the rest of this entry »