The Benefits of Criticizing

Posted on by Anna

It’s so easy to criticize. So very easy. And it can even feel virtuous, and responsible, and productive, like something is actually being done! Like the criticism and criticizing are actually doing something for the greater good.

As a lifelong armchair and sometimes professional criticizer, I too have felt that my criticism is productive. Almost a duty. (Lucky you, who have had the honor of receiving it!)

But lately, I’ve been wondering how helpful it actually is? It certainly doesn’t help me have a better experience. Turns out, it helps me feel worse. Of the probably hundreds of thousands of criticisms I’ve unleashed into the world, there have been exactly zero times that I felt joy, happiness, fulfillment, or anything positive or productive afterwards. And when I share my criticisms with others, there is no joy or happiness or substantive improvement added to their experience either. And there is no empathy.

Perhaps there is a more beneficial alternative? Something that actually helps, and also feels better, in the long term?

The True Cost of Consumption

Posted on by Anna

Instead of spending 30 seconds opening a can of tomatoes with a traditional can opener, it’s now possible to spend 30 minutes working to pay for an electric can opener that can open the can in the same amount of time.

…

This is the gist of the service economy; presumably, if we didn’t create enough problems to spend time solving them, the economy would collapse.

from Early Retirement Extreme by Jacob Lund Fisker

Already and Always Okay

Posted on by Anna

This is from a check-in email I wrote this morning to some coaching colleagues. It feels almost too personal to share, so in the spirit of living on the edge…

I’ve been feeling well over the past few months, circumstances notwithstanding. Over the past few years I’ve had some paradigm shifting insights into how humans work and it has made such a difference in my everyday experience.

There have been so many things happening over the past few months that I can’t even remember half of them – husband still healing from the massive leg break and surgeries; both kids had reactions to antibiotics at separate times, daughter’s was severe and involved swollen joints and not being able to walk for almost two weeks; over the span of 6 weeks I was at the doctor with one or both kids for various ear infections and stomach viruses; dad had a stroke, he’s okay now but that really shook my world for a few weeks; there are some lumps in my armpits that I’m having to wait four weeks to get checked out – it’s probably nothing, but the waiting for confirmation isn’t my favorite.

Throughout all of this, and the past two+ years which have pretty much looked exactly like what I just described, I’ve also been trying to grow my coaching practice. There have been a lot of planes on the runway but all have been grounded due to illness or crisis of some kind. I still really want to build my coaching practice, dammit! I’ve made small steps, though they were big ones emotionally – beginning to write publicly in a blog (super excruciating to put myself out there like that at first), revamped my website to integrate my coaching and consulting work (I kept those identities separate for many years), gearing up to ask previous consulting clients for referrals and possibly make coaching offers (even though it feels uncomfortable to make requests).

And throughout all of this, I know in my bones and in every cell in my body that I am okay. I am grateful for every moment I have with my beautiful children, with my incredibly loving (and occasionally lovingly annoying) husband, and with myself. Even with myself. Never thought that would happen, yet here I am. In a lot of ways I feel like my life is only just beginning. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow (Hurricanes? Medical emergencies? Just another day in the neighborhood?) but I know that I will be okay, that I am already and always okay, and that is pretty amazing.

I sure seem to have woken up on the right side of bed today. I’ll just go with it and let it be 🙂

All my love,
Anna

The True Joy in Life

Posted on by Anna

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

from Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw

Live joyfully.

Remember that you are a force of nature.

Devote yourself to making yourself truly happy.

The side effects are contagious.

♥ Anna

Integrating

Posted on by Anna

Wow it’s nice to be back here. I took a break from blogging for the past week, but I’ve been sticking with my intention to create more than I consume. I was busy rewriting and rebranding my website, which I finally unleashed into the wild yesterday.

This experience of developing my website was very different from the previous one. Early last year, I launched my first coaching-only site and it was excruciating. I’ve been responsible for the strategy and design of hundreds of websites over the years, from 5-page small business sites to multi-thousand page behemoths. All of those were easier than sharing a part of myself that turned out to be profoundly meaningful and precious to me (I am not a precious person). When I launched that first coaching site, I immediately shared it with a handful of friends – as a form of desensitization therapy to help me get over the vulnerability hangover. It was a very cringe-y time.

I felt a similar discomfort when launching this blog. It was so uncomfortable, in fact, that I kept it completely anonymous for a month. This time, it only took a couple of weeks to become comfortable with this new form of sharing myself.

Writing and designing the most recent incarnation of my website was an entirely different experience. I enjoyed it! I enjoyed the writing, and I enjoyed the personal challenge of integrating the two faces of my professional work – coaching and consulting. Before this version, I had maintained two separate sites, using two versions of my name (Anna and Ania). I didn’t know how to combine the two, because I was still understanding how to integrate parts of me that seemed to be incongruent – the consulting career that I only rarely enjoyed, and the coaching which is indelibly connected to who I am at the core.

This time, I wanted the experience to feel easy and fun, to enliven me versus leave me feeling depleted. I decided to focus on thoughts that aligned with ease and joy, so that my experience would be one of ease and joy. It worked.

♥ Anna