Arminda Lindsay

Being On Purpose

Divorce Was My Doorway

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Episode Seven is where you’ll meet Shawn Richardson: mountain climber (three of the seven summits are complete), mother (three boys, ages 24, 22 & 19), and multidimensional mover and shaker in this world!!

I love this conversation and Shawn’s vulnerable sharing of the raw unknowns she confronted in the wake of her unexpected divorce from her husband of 22 years:

  1. Who am I?
  2. Why am I here?
  3. What do I want to do?

She openly admits that the journey she’s traveled to where she stands right now was catalyzed by her divorce.

My favorite part of our discussion is listening to Shawn talk about her oldest son, Charlie, and how his life with special needs, and how she’s interpreted his life, have been “way showing” and transformational for her.

Through her pioneering work, Shawn helps adults with special needs children achieve transformational shifts in their family dynamics, professional lives, and personal experience. 

I can’t wait to see what Shawn creates next and am certain you’ll be just as excited as I am to watch her shift our global consciousness around authentic workers.

Please share your thoughts in the comments below and thanks for listening to the show!

If you’d like to join our community, click here.

Frozen Assets

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frozen-assets

Earlier today as I was walking Eli we came upon what appeared to be a frozen fountain. Upon closer inspection I realized while the fountain’s main water had, indeed, frozen, there was still quite a bit of water still freely flowing, uninhibited by the sub-zero temperatures to which its fellow drops had succumbed.

Earlier this week I conducted multiple coaching sessions with clients who each arrived to our respective conversation feeling stuck and unable to move past what seemed like insurmountable barriers. Here’s a sampling of four of those barriers:

1. Frustration with a business partner whose actions had offended a key vendor
2. A marketing plan that didn’t seem to be producing the desired results
3. Overwhelm from starting a new business and implementing multiple strategies simultaneously
4. Personal issues that were “leaking” into the professional space

Upon closer inspection, some targeted questioning from me, and a safe space in which to review their assets, my clients were each able to see avenues to continue moving forward, uninhibited by the surrounding events previously blocking their path.

When we had completed our time together every single one of those “stuck” individuals experienced an overflow of joy that accompanied their awareness that sometimes, or perhaps especially, when feeling stuck it might do to remember Winnie the Pooh‘s sage advice:

Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.”

Remember that being stuck is optional and if you need some assistance just let me know what’s in your way; I’m happy to stand on the bottom rail with you.

Loving you,
arminda

Focus

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focus

Charles Fillmore suggests “There is an inherent law of mind that we increase whatever we praise. The whole of creation responds to praise, and is glad. Animal trainers pet and reward their charges with delicacies for acts of obedience; children glow with joy and gladness when they are praised. Even vegetation grows better for those who love it.”

But there’s a flip side.

What you focus on grows, whether that focus is on something praiseworthy and valuable, or whether on something unimportant and without merit.

When I water my plants, they flourish; when I neglect and disregard them, they become limp and lifeless.

The same principle also applies to our mindset, thoughts and behaviors.

During a recent conversation with the sweetest CNA I know, she told me she is really bad at taking blood pressure and because she’s so bad at it, she’ll never be able to advance her position into a different environment that would require her to regularly take patients’ blood pressure.

Her mindset in this situation is currently “fixed,” as she sees herself as good as it gets with no option for anything different.

Her thinking about herself is negative and comparative to others and she (mis)believes she’s incapable and less than.

Her behavior is resigned to where she is right now and because she can’t ever possibly take blood pressures differently than she does right now, she’ll always be working in a place where that’s not a daily requirement.

Up until our conversation she was focusing on what she can’t do (take blood pressure readings) and so she was simply creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Plus, her fear and inhibition around the idea of being asked or required to perform this task were escalating.

I suggested a little game:

  1. Believe she’s capable of learning something new.
  2. Tell herself (out loud and at least once a day) she is great at taking blood pressure!
  3. Create regular opportunities to practice taking blood pressure.
  4. Update her resume in anticipation of a new working environment in which she will be using her amazing blood pressure taking skills!

What you focus on grows.

Focus on what you want to grow.

Now go bloom.

Practice creates talent.” — Steve Chandler

Loving you,
arminda

Ingredient List

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Ingredient List

Best Tomato Salad Ever

Fresh Tomato, chopped in slightly larger than bite-sized pieces
Fresh Basil, ripped to taste
Oregano, to taste
Sea Salt, to taste
Fresh Pepper, to taste
Olive Oil, to taste

Mix all ingredients together and serve

I love food. I especially love when I can taste every single ingredient in a dish and those blended flavors create magic for me.

Basic, fresh, locally-sourced ingredients combine to make the most mouth-watering concoction you’ve ever experienced. Well, at least that I’ve ever experienced. Maybe tomato salad isn’t your thing. No worries.

Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good. — Alice May Brock

Imagine (just for a moment) yourself as a dish of food. What would be on your list of ingredients? Take a few minutes and consider the qualities and characteristics that make you, you. Write them down and hold the list in front of you and read it out loud. Don’t be afraid to identify what’s truly there, each and every flavor whose distinctive essences combine to create the most exquisite flavor palate that is you.

Did you leave off a key ingredient? Add it to your list. Now read it again. Is it complete?

If you’re afraid of butter, use cream. ― Julia Child

The best combinations are those with the fewest ingredients. Don’t compare your list with what you think comprises someone else’s list.

If you show up wholly and completely as yourself, with your basic and internally-sourced ingredients, what makes you amazing?

I know you’re amazing; I just want to be sure you see it, too.

The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Send me an email {coach@armindalindsay.com} and share your personal ingredient list with me so I can marvel at the magic of the creation of you.

I like a cook who smiles out loud when he tastes his own work. Let God worry about your modesty; I want to see your enthusiasm. — Robert Farrar Capon

Shading & Highlighting

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Shading & Highlighting

Throughout Italy we encountered artists everywhere: on sidewalks, in city squares, and outside of famous landmarks. They had lots of their pieces displayed, allowing their work to speak for itself while they continued creating, seemingly oblivious to passersby. Following a particularly strenuous climb to Piazza Michelangelo, which boasts panoramic views of the city and a bronze replica of Michelangelo’s David, my daughter and I walked to the farthest reach of the square, noticing only the gorgeous views provided of the city of Florence stretching out as far as we could see in front of, and below, us. It wasn’t until we turned around to contemplate David that we noticed the piazza was teeming with artists and vendors of every kind.

My attention was drawn to one particular artist’s work and I began searching his paintings for the one that might speak to me. Intent to create a customer, the artist started recommending watercolors I had yet to see and still nothing was the right one. As if on cue, the artist turned to a folder he kept at his seat and opened it for my benefit. Inside were two or three dozen more watercolors, each spectacular. It was inside that folder I found the watercolor I’d been seeking and when I told him I’d take it, the artist immediately dropped to his knees and began adding to the piece.

I was shocked and delighted. I thought it was perfect when I found it in that folder, but to the artist, the piece was not yet complete, and I watched him lovingly put the finishing touches on his work, his painting, his creation, before gently turning it over to my care.

We are each of us responsible for our own creation. The creation of you. And only you — through your artist’s eyes — can see where and when some additional work might need to be done. No one else gets to decide that. Others might make suggestions or provide feedback (sometimes requested and oftentimes not) but only you can see what you’re creating and what your ending might look like.

A word of caution: don’t be so caught up in the long-term view you neglect turning around to see what’s right in front of you. And just like my artist friend in Piazza Michelangelo knew his creation needed some additional shading and highlighting, you, too, might see some corners that could use some softening and some talents that desire to shine.

Art is about rearranging us, creating surprising juxtapositions, emotional openings, startling presences, flight paths to the eternal. –Rosamund & Benjamin Zander, from The Art of Possibility

You are a magnificent work of art. Display yourself. Pay no attention to the passersby. Keep creating.

Loving you,
arminda

Pompeii’s Got Dirt

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Pompeii's Got DirtHistory First

Pompeii: ancient city best known for its notable volcanic ash covering it received on August 24, 79 AD, by the impressive Mount Vesuvius.

Pompeii: ancient port town lesser known for its impressive aqueduct system that pumped water throughout the entire city.

The streets of Pompeii were nightly flooded with water to clean them from the dust and dirt of the day’s activities, allowing for a clean start the next morning for its 20,000 residents. To compensate for the daily flooding, city planners used stones as crosswalks that could be used in times of high water to still cross a street by foot. The three stones you see pictured here indicate this road was a major thoroughfare in Pompeii. Less-trafficked streets had fewer stones across. Regardless of the street, the stones were all equally-sized and spaced to allow for chariots to pass through unencumbered. Visible today are deep wheel ruts from heavy chariot use on every street I walked.

Let’s metaphor.

Your Ruts

If you were to analyze your regular thoughts and behaviors — the ones you have without consideration or intention because you think or behave them every single day — what would fall into that category?

Have you been riding your mental chariot so frequently over the same roads that you’ve created ruts? I guarantee you that’s true. We sometimes refer to those as neural pathways. And those paths can run very deep. When we create neural pathways we don’t usually do so consciously.

Think of it this way: Imagine standing in the middle of a university campus with an extensive sidewalk system that provides access to every single building. However, as you look across the green spaces between the sidewalks you notice well-worn dirt paths that are the clear pathways walked by the students, natural paths connecting a shorter or easier distance between A and B.

This is exactly what happens inside your brain as you introduce a thought and think it over and over and over again. You’re creating new pathways, new patterns of thinking. Habits are created in this exact way until we no longer think about them, we just do.

Your Stepping Stones

And oftentimes, those patterns of behavior we’ve been running for so long and whose tracks run so deep, are not serving us, so we also lay stepping stones to justify, excuse or skirt around the thought or the behavior when needed. This skipping across the pathway is our way of avoiding getting wet when the guilt or the embarrassment or the self-judgment comes rushing through.

The accusations or awarenesses or the judgments can come from ourselves (most often) or they can come from someone else or from an organization or a cultural expectation that we don’t feel we are meeting. So we skip across them.

Your Dirt

We experience the guilt, embarrassment, and judgment as dirt, something that we shouldn’t have, but do and think skipping across the stones we’ve carefully placed and positioned will allow for a cleanse. Maybe this looks like yet another resolution to make a change, or a recommitment to doing things differently from now on. The skipping across can also look like defensiveness, self-justification, blaming others for where or why you are where you are right now, and all of these thoughts and behaviors are born out of fear.

Real Cleansing

Of the items on your list, can you imagine what it would feel like to cleanse yourself of any of them? To purge yourself of the weight of those behaviors and thoughts?

In my experience, creating a new neural pathway takes 33 consecutive days and I love making new trails in my brain!

The old wheel ruts will likely remain, but whether you continue using them is entirely up to you. If you give yourself some alternative routes to follow, you might just surprise yourself with how easy the new paths are to use.

If you’d like the digital calendar I created for myself and that I share with my clients, send me an email (coach @ armindalindsay dot com) and I’ll happily share the file with you. I use this to keep track of my daily path creation and by the time I’ve filled in the calendar, I no longer need it to remind me where to walk and what new behavior I’m employing.

I also offer a unique program that includes just two sessions with me for individuals in need of additional support in rewiring themselves from particularly difficult and long-standing behaviors that no longer serve them. If you’re interested in learning more about this highly-effective and individualized program, please send me an email (coach @ armindalindsay dot com) and tell me more about what’s going on and what behavior or habit you can’t seem to cleanse.

Choose to wash away any pathways that are no longer serving you and ride your chariot in a new direction.

Loving you,
arminda

Caesar Salad

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Caesar Salad

I love a good Caesar Salad; the one I make at home is my favorite. Wait. Actually, the version I make is the only Caesar Salad I ever eat. I’m particular that way. Julius Caesar, as it turns out, has nothing to do with our obsession with Caesar Salad. The man credited with the creation of said salad is an Italian-born chef named Caesar Cardini. Stories conflict with the exact reason Chef Cardini threw together the exact ingredients he did, but regardless of the reason, in the early 1920s an amazing salad was born.

Julius Caesar, as it turns out, was so popular a ruler in Ancient Rome that after the senators decided to murder him they had a public outcry on their hands to which they had to respond quickly before the widespread displeasure put them out of their jobs. Their solution? They agreed to cremate Julius Caesar in the public forum and then they deified him.

And on the site where the 23 stab assassination took place now stand three trees.

It’s the trees I want to discuss.

I don’t know what variety of tree they are — all over Rome are planted amazing umbrella pines, but I believe they’re also this same beautiful evergreen.

I come from a large family with seven siblings. My mom was always having a baby — or so it seemed. More significantly, each time a baby joined our family, my father planted an evergreen in that child’s honor. These trees were special focal points in our yard as we watched them grow through the years alongside the child for whom the tree had been planted.

Just like the three trees in Rome impress upon me their significance because of the point in history they represent, the trees my father planted with love to commemorate the birth of new members into our family fill me with love and gratitude.

And just like the trees in Rome or in my dad’s yard, you also have visible (to you) plantings you have made at the most significant moments in your life.

1. What are those moments?
2. What did you plant to commemorate the event?
3. How do you feel when you look at those internal trees today and the growth you’ve experienced since they were planted?
4. How can you acknowledge yourself for your own historical significance?

Make yourself a big bowl of Caesar Salad and catalog your own historical significance.

Do more than casually consider a moment and call this exercise complete.

Really ponder and consider which parts of your history are most significant and why. Write it down. And after you feel your list is complete, read it out loud to yourself, or talk through each event and why it made the final list. Then really acknowledge yourself for where you are today as a result of how you’ve grown.

Loving you,
Arminda

Finding Balance

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If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me about balance in my life. . . .

Ever wonder how to answer that question? Or how to create it in your own life? What IS balance, anyway? Does anyone have it? How did they achieve it? And better yet, how do they maintain the seemingly impossible? When you see someone else who apparently has it all together, do you long for a life that isn’t the one you’re currently living?

It’s okay. Let all that out. And watch this video.

I give you: A Discussion on Balance

Let’s Talk About Goals

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Let's Talk About Goals

Steve Chandler said,

It’s not what a goal IS that matters; it’s what a goal DOES. So when you think of this goal, what does it do for you? Your goals are creations; you create goals to serve yourself. The goal is supposed to serve you.

WHAT?!!!!

Back up. Rewind. Reread.

No wonder we get discouraged and don’t feel excited about the novel we committed to write, or the gym membership we paid to use, or the sales number we pulled out of a hat, or the company projection we’re anticipating, or the global domination we intend to execute.

When you think you’re not motivated to act on that goal it has little to nothing to do with you; it’s the goal, itself. Chances are you set the goal because of what it represents and not for what it does.

I’m all about vision and creating amazing things AND I know I can’t jump farther than I can jump.

Let me put it another way: If I’m not walking around excited about what I’m creating and in the act of DOING it then I know my goals are clearly under the IS column and not the DOES column.

Right now is a perfect time to review your goals. Are they serving you, or is it just a goal for the sake of being a goal?

LITMUS TEST

Are you looking for ways to motivate yourself toward actively accomplishing your goal?

Do you feel “less than” or embarrassed because you’re not working toward your goal?

Does looking at or thinking about your goal incite fear, frustration, overwhelm or excuses?

SOLUTION

Create a smaller goal that DOES for you what a self-help book never will: keeps you in action in your own life.

That, my friend, is serving you.

#thatwaseasy

allarminda.com | 2024