Living An Adventure

When John and I were engaged, we committed to not take ourselves too seriously in marriage. Life and work can be weighty enough so we wanted our relationship to be a haven for rest and rejuvination.

Yet during busy or stressful times you can't just tell yourself, "Lighten up and laugh a little." That would be like adding "Have fun" to your To Do List. Without a specific action that you're going to take to have fun, it's not as likely to happen.

Here's how we've been intentionally putting fun adventures into our daily routine, despite the busy-ness right now:

• Indoor picnic: For dinner one night, we spread out our picnic blanket, lit the candles in our fireplace, and ate our meal on the floor. Bonus: indoor picnics can include wine!
• Indoor bowling: This was all John's idea. (No surprise there with John's love of competition!) We set up three empty tennis ball cans at the end of our LONG hallway. We then competed for who could knock the most "pins" down by "bowling" a tennis ball. After five sets we were tied, so we played one more and John barely won!

• Six Flags: We went to Six Flags one Saturday morning, racing around the park to ride only the best rides. It was my first time there and I had a blast!
• Dance off: Pretty self explanatory: Turn on music and compete (see a theme here?!) for who has the best dancing skills. I believe I won this one :)

On the theme of living a life of adventure, I just finished reading Donald Miller's book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to know how to live a good story in life. 

Through vivid, funny, and poignant stories, he explains how what makes a story great are the same elements that make a life great. And great stories are full of adventures.

"The ambitions we have will become the stories we live. If you want to know what a person's story is about, just ask them what they want...when we live a story, we are telling the people around us what we think is important." -Donald Miller

From how you are living your life, what would people say is important to you? 

"We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us that life doesn't mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It's a good calling, then, to speak a better story." -Donald Miller

Are you living a story that others want to hear about and be a part of, one that "invites other people into the story... giving them a better story too"?

Perhaps this book resonated with me so much because of my passion for helping others be embraced by the journey. It's my hope that as I try to live a meaningful story that the little slices of adventure that I show on this blog would encourage you in your journey. Not every adventure is movie-worthy or even fun. Donald Miller talks a lot in his book about good stories requiring sacrifices. And I certainly do not have all of this figured out for my own life either. Hence, why it's about a journey and not a destination.

So go live an adventure today!

If you want to read more about keeping your marriage adventurous, check out these posts:

• How to keep your marriage adventurous
• How to fit adventure into your marriage

  

Motivation Monday

Monday's have been an early start for me during the past year because I do talent and culture development consulting on Monday mornings for an organization in the suburbs. This means that I have to wake up at 6am (at the latest), eat breakfast and get ready in 40 minutes, and head out the door.

Once the meeting that I lead ends at 9am (it starts at 7:15!), my Monday already feels like it's off to a productive start. This momentum typically carries throughout the day.

So to inspire your Monday and give you motivation for the week, here are some ways to be productive and efficient today:

1. Make your action plan. What do you want to accomplish this week? What does that mean for what you must get done today? Write it out and schedule it in your calendar.


2. Take a few minutes to remind yourself why you are working today (or why you are in school, at home, volunteering etc.). Last week I took some of my favorite quotes (found on Pinterest of course) and wrote out an inspirational Bible verse. I made it into a collage using the InstaCollage app and saved it as the background to my computer. This whole process probably took about 30 minutes, but the daily inspiration and reminders that it provides makes me more productive in the long run.

This is the collage I made that is now my computer background.

3. Plan out your meals for the week. Planning out your meals for the week takes a little investment on the front end, but it saves a lot of stress during the week. Knowing in advance what I need to buy from the grocery store also saves money (no wasted food) and time (not having to make multiple trips to the store). Plus, you can consciously make the decision to eat healthy. For quick, healthy meals that I've made lately, check out this post from last week.


4. Fit in some exercise. Working up a little bit of a sweat and getting your body moving actually makes you more energetic. Even if you get home from work and are feeling sluggish, getting active will reawaken you, meaning you don't need that cup of coffee mid-afternoon that will keep you up all night. And you don't have to spend a lot of time working out either. You can burn a lot of calories in 10 minutes. My favorite is FitSugar's 10-Minute Videos.

Or, try this at-home CrossFit circuit that I did recently. If you're unfamiliar with CrossFit you can read about it here and get some sample workouts that beginners can do. The circuit that I created was inspired by this one from Carrots 'N' Cake, but since it was a bit challenging for me I modified it below:

This link shows you how to complete each exercise, and the weights that I listed are what I used. If you're curious, I completed 4 rounds in 11:46. Try to beat me ;)

Happy Monday!

Top 7 Highlights and Quotes from Leadercast

Over at the Student Launch Pad blog, I posted about the key takeaways from the speakers at Chick-fil-A Leadercast. Click here (http://studentlaunchpad.com/simply-lead) to read about what Jack Welch, Andy Stanley, Dr. Henry Cloud, David Allen and others had to say about what it means to "simply lead," which was Leadercast's theme.

Here at BeEmbraced, I wanted to give a more personal side of my favorite parts of the conference. Here are my top 7 favorite parts and top 7 quotes of Leadercast (not in any particular order):

1. Since I have my graduate degree in leadership, I am overly enthusiastic and a nerd when it comes to leadership conferences. So just being in attendance and soaking up what the amazing guest speakers (here's the link to the line-up) had to say was a highlight! (Hence all the exclamation points in this post!)

2. Meeting Michael Hyatt! Michael Hyatt was the host of Leadercast this year, and he is the former CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, a bestselling author, top-rated blogger, and leadership expert. I have followed his blog for years, so getting to talk to him for about 10 minutes was so exciting for me! He is very personable, easy to talk to, and down-to-earth.

Me with Michael Hyatt

3. The entire conference experience was truly remarkable. Every detail was taken care, and Tripp Crosby was a hilarious emcee. I am still laughing about Tripp's introductory videos to the speakers. For Duke's Coach K, he went to Chapel Hill asking them if they knew where Professor Kryzyzewski's office was - trust me, it was hilarious.

4. Hearing NEEDTOBREATHE perform three of their songs - great performance!

NEEDTOBREATHE

5. I loved John Maxwell's interview with Condoleezza Rice. I was so impressed with her poise and quiet confidence. She discussed tapping into your contemplative side during chaos and taking care of yourself as a leader. I can't wait to read her autobiography, No Higher Honor. 

6. I'm not even a sports fan but hearing Duke University Head Men's Basketball Coach Mike Kryzyzewski was very entertaining. He was very funny - telling us about wanting to ask Beyonce for a picture at an event but that Jay-Z and LeBron were in the way. His insights about leading an Olympic team with players full of egos was also very engaging.

Coach K

7. The awesome leadership lessons that I learned from the speakers were obviously a key reason that I wanted to attend. As I mentioned, the Student Launch Pad post explains in more detail applicable takeaways. Here are my favorite quotes from the day:

"There is extraordinary power and clarity when you reduce down to the one thing that must be done... If you don't know what you're doing, you're going to have a difficult time doing it." -Andy Stanley

"There is an inverse relationship between something being on your mind and getting things done... Start paying attention to what has your attention, otherwise it will take more of your attention than it deserves." -David Allen 

"No matter what you're trying to do there will be noise in the market... Before the race starts, I'm already focused on the victory." -Sanya Richards-Ross

"Desire will not meet goals, it’s what gets prioritized... If everything is important, nothing is important." -Dr. Henry Cloud

"Communicators take something complex and make it simple... Leadership is influence: Add value to people every day; subtract your leadership land mines; multiply your strengths by developing them; divide your weaknesses by delegating them." -John Maxwell

"Don’t focus on winning. Focus on creating a culture of success. The winning will take care of itself." -Coach K

"Be centered (authentic)… be an optimist… be able to motivate others toward a common goal… do what fulfills you." -Condoleezza Rice

"Find out what your boss wants then over-deliver... Make your boss smarter than they were before they met you." -Jack Welch

How to choose a college, major, or career: Part I

Choosing a college, selecting a major, and deciding on a career path are all key decisions that students must make. Many of the Student Launch Pad students go through the program to gain personal insight into these decisions. Yet making them can be daunting.

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip and Dan Heath provides phenomenal tips and case studies on improving the quality of our decision-making. The second post in this series will highlight three of their techniques that are largely applicable to students preparing to make college and career decisions.

Choosing the right college is a big decision.
Pictured: Vanderbilt University

But first, why do so many students make wrong decisions in the first place? The majority of students change majors at least three times, and many transfer colleges after freshman year. Oftentimes after graduates enter the workforce, they realize that they are in the wrong career field. Why is this?

1. “Whether or not” decisions are one of the most common type of decisions that teens make. As teens enter college they are often thinking, “Should I join a sorority or not?” Or, “Should I be a Finance major or not?” The Heath brothers explain that this type of decision making “isn’t a decision among multiple alternatives… it’s simply an up-or-down vote on a single alternative.”

Furthermore, this type of decision fails more often than not because you’re pursing a single option and trying to force it to work, rather than seeing if there’s a better way.

The question a college-bound senior should be asking… is not ‘What’s the highest-ranking college I can convince to take me?’ Rather, it should be ‘What do I want out of life, and what are the best options to get me there?

To continue reading for the second poor decision-making technique that we often employ, click here to continue onto the Student Launch Pad blog.

What is passion?

One of my Student Launch Pad students recently commented that he’s not a very passionate person.

He made this remark as if some people are passionate and others just aren’t, putting himself in this second category.

For some students their passions are fundamental to their identity. Oftentimes these students have volunteered in the same organization for years or feel very connected to a cause. Others students, however, know their interests and hobbies but cannot articulate feeling passionate about anything.

In asking questions to this second group of students about how they define a passion, it seems that the main problem is an unclear understanding of what a “passion” really is.

Volunteering at a Malnutrition Center in Guatemala a couple summers ago

The word “passion” is thrown around in so many contexts that it becomes watered down. On one hand, students think that supporting the latest cause on social media with a thumbs up or re-tweet means that they are passionate about the issue. On the other side, students see charismatic spokespeople for a cause and think that they have to have this type of energy to be considered passionate.

The missing piece is engagement.

Students who are unaware of their passions often have not actively participated in and devoted themselves to an issue or interest.

Passions differ from hobbies in that passions generate powerful emotions and enthusiasm, bring purpose and joy to life, and cause you to devote yourself to a task, cause, or belief.

For instance, photography can be a hobby or a passion. If you enjoy taking pictures and maybe occasionally editing them and having them framed or put into a scrapbook, then photography is probably an interest or hobby for you. Or, do you see the world through a lens, not necessarily a physical camera lens, but does your joy of looking through a camera actually change the way you view the world? That is a passion.

See the difference? Passions actually shape how we engage with the world around us.

But what shapes our passions?

Please continue onto the Student Launch Pad blog to finish reading this blog post...

Pursuing Excellence

I was recently listening to a podcast from Michael Hyatt entitled The 3 Components of Job Satisfaction. In the episode, he says, "If you have all three of these components—passion, competence, and a market—you experience satisfaction." 


So often, I think that we compartmentalize our lives, seeing formal schooling or training as building competence, finding our market in business only, and developing our passion in our free time. In a world where everything is so specialized, it can be easy to lose sight of the whole picture.

But I love this quote from James Michener because it blurs the lines between all aspects of how we live:

"The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both. ”

That one line - "He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does" - is critical to job satisfaction, and it is precisely what we discussed at the One2 Conference last week. 

If you strive to be an excellent learner, you will build competence because you will seek to learn in every situation, both at and outside of work. By building excellent relationships, you will also have a keen understanding of the market and what potential customers or clients need. And as you engage with others around your work and explore new ideas for excellence, your passion will grow. As this blog post from Brazen Careerist says, "Passion is nothing more than curiosity and engagement over time." 

When you pursue excellence, you don’t want to half-heartedly develop new skills or knowledge. You can’t be only partly passionate. And as Michael Hyatt says, you either know your market or you welcome obsoleteness.

So how can you pursue excellence today in one of these three areas – passion, competence, and market?

“My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest.” –Charles Dickens, David Copperfield