Lightening My Load

So here I am in LA surveying all of the c-r-a-p that I have inherited over the past few years plus all the c-r-a-p my husband brought here when we sold his farm in Mississippi. Holy cow - can you say overwhelmed!

When my father died, I got the job of cleaning out my childhood home. While I threw away a ton of stuff, there were a few pieces of furniture and some books that I chose to keep, mostly for sentimental reasons. When he died I also got the job of cleaning out my grandmother's house. This story is so mired in traditional Southern twisted-ness it deserves it's own paragraph!

No one has lived in this house for twenty years, yet there are still jelly jars on the shelves, food in the fridge (can you say gross!), clothes in the closets and furniture, letters, jewelry, china, packed suitcases - oh god it makes my head spin. Plus the roof is caving in because my dad and his sibs could not agree on who should pay to have it fixed so they just let it cave in. Now mixed in with all the unbelievable junk is cool stuff, vintage jewelry, salt cellars, antique furniture and luggage, letters that my aunts and uncles wrote home as far back as 1923, etc - and I am a sucker for all things cool and vintage. But oh is it work to get to it and then what do I do with it once I have it?!

But, as my husband keeps reminding me, we can't light on our travel feet if we are weighed down with stuff. He reminds me that one of my favorite coaching things to say is "It's all about choices".

I'll keep you posted on how I dig through all this mess! Oh - and any advice would be most appreciated!

Sarah

My Husband Asked Me....

Well now my whole family is getting hooked on this book. My husband, who reads nothing cover to cover, read the entire thing page by page and is starting to quote Timothy. Yikes!

This morning he asked me what trip I would take if I knew I only had three months to live. He chose stag hunting in Russia, something I know he has longed to do.

After mulling it over during my 3 hour drive to LA (don't get excited, that means Lower Alabama in my part of the world!), I decided that I would return for a month long workshop at Shakespeare and Company in the Berkshires. I spent a month there one summer over 5 years ago and it is truly one of the bright and shiny moments of my life. If I knew I only had three months to live, I would want to spent one third of it immersed in one of my greatest joys - studying and performing Shakespeare - in one of my very favorite places.

My choice reveals so much to me about me that I have to ponder it all the more.

So, what would you choose?

My Email Autoresponder

Okay, so I am doing some things out of order from the book. For starters, I am getting my email under control. Here is the message I just loaded up into my vacation settings in Gmail:

Hi!
In an effort to break my email habit, I will only be checking my email twice a day at noon CST and 4 pm CST. If you need me more urgently than that, call me. While I will try to respond to your email immediately, please give me at least 24 hours to get back to you.

Thanks so much for helping me with this!

Sarah

P.S. If you email message doesn't include a specific question, please don't be offended if I don't respond. Just trying to manage my e-load!

So far, so good. Now to decide about Spam Arrest. I don't want to have to pay for it for every email account I have - and I have 3. Hmmmm......

Sarah

An Explanation

You can hardly move in the virtual world these days without running into Timothy Ferriss, the uber-lifestylist who is blowing apart the way everyone is thinking about work. This guy is everywhere!

I got his book The 4-Hour Work Week hot off the presses and was immediately enthralled. Just so you know, I am not easily enthralled. I am a business coach and reading books like this is part of my job. In fact, I've read so many that they've all started running together. Until I read this one. As I told my fabulous VA, Amber, from the get-go this book immediately began to transform the way I thought about work. I 'll talk more about this as we pursue this adventure together, but it's been a long, long time since I got caught up in this kind of vision for my business and, more importantly, my life.

And I so want Timothy to be right! I so want it to be possible to create a self-sustaining business and a lifestyle that is long on free time to enjoy the things that excite me. Mostly, I want to know that I can create it now, this year, not sometime in the future, "when the time is right".

So, starting this week, I am going to begin from the beginning of the book, work through the questions and exercises, pursue the contacts he suggests pursuing, basically following the book to the letter.

I'll post my thoughts, my answers, my challenges as I come to them. Just don't expect me to post 12 times a day everyday. Following Timoth's lead, I will post maybe 3 times a week. I invite you to follow along with me, posting your comments, your questions and challenges right along with me.

So....let's begin, shall we?

Sarah