Is something missing?

Does it feel like you’re going through the motions? Is your energy low?

Is the only thing that sounds good watching Netflix all weekend.

It’s possible to feel better and to have what you want.

For a long time, I felt that something was missing from my life. I went through periods of time when I felt numb and I was just going through the motions.

I wanted to feel better but didn’t know how.

The importance of deciding

Rather than feeling unhappiness, you can decide you want something different.

Deciding is the first step.

It sounds so simple, right?

You can decide. You can decide that you want something more.

Believing 100%

Believing is the single most important part of getting what you want.

Do you believe in yourself?

Do you believe you can have anything you want?

What do you believe?

Actions in alignment

Belief is important and it works alongside taking action.

You must take actions that are in alignment with your beliefs.

When you believe you can have what you want, watching Netflix all weekend doesn’t seem as attractive to you, you don’t feel the need to numb yourself, right?

When you believe you can be a successful designer with her own body of work, you spend your weekends creating your own work.

Exactly how you will get there is less important than your belief that you can.

Self-confidence

Believing in yourself takes courage.

As Brené Brown teaches us: it takes courage to show up in the arena, we must be willing to be vulnerable.

Are you open to feeling your emotions? Are you willing to feel discomfort?

You may find yourself wanting to jump over “discomfort” to try to hang out in “happy” all of the time. But self-confidence requires us to feel the entire spectrum of feelings from joy to discomfort and everything in between.

Do you want to have more confidence in yourself? Do you want to reach your goals? Do you believe you can have what you really want?

How does that question make you feel?

Unsure?
Confused?
Filled with self-doubt?
Anxious?
Stuck?
Lost?

To determine who you are and how you want to show up as a designer, you need to choose how you want to feel first.

Yes, that’s right, choose how you want to feel!

Feelings drive actions

It’s your feelings that drive your actions.

You need to find a feeling that will lead you towards taking action.

This shift is necessary in order to open yourself up to all the possibilities available to you, to all the choices you have.

When you feel confusion and self-doubt it’s nearly impossible to find answers for yourself because feelings of confusion don’t result in finding more clarity.

How do you want to feel?

• Excited
• Empowered
• Curious
• Confident
• Motivated
• Content

These feelings can produce clarity. For example, feeling curious about yourself as a designer and your future provides a space to explore all the possible options.

So, how can you produce feelings that will better serve you?

What are your thoughts?

When you don’t know who you are as a designer, you’re often thinking something like this:

“I no longer enjoy my work and don’t know who I am as a designer.”
“I want to develop my own style and be known for my work but I don’ t know who I am as a designer.”
“I want to move my career to the next level, but first I need to define who I am as a designer.”

To move forward though you need to make a decision.

“I don’t know who I am” is doubting yourself and staying in a state of confusion and self-doubt.

There’s no wrong answer to who are you as a designer. But yet you still stay stuck.

The F word. Failure

Do you fear failure?

Do you fear that in the end, you’re just not good enough? Do you fear failing yourself, disappointing yourself and others?

Or do you fear that you’ll end up where you started? You’ll try something new and you’ll end up right back where you began.

I promise you if you “decide to decide” and you choose to feel more empowered, you will move forward!!

You won’t know who you are as a designer until you pick a direction for yourself.

Say yes to whatever you’re thinking right now, try it on. What is there to lose by testing it?

Do you feel the pressure to make the “right” decision?

Is this keeping you in the constant state of “I don’t know?”

Here’s the very good news and the truth of it: You do know.

What you know

How do you want to spend your time? Only you know the answer to this.

What’s in your heart? What lights you up? Only you know.

Do you want to do more meaningful work as a designer? How can you move from a focus on yourself to making a contribution to others?

What are your gifts and talents you can offer to the world?

How can you make this part of your creative practice and how you show up as a designer?

Do you want help and guidance to work on this together? How can you develop more clarity about who you are as a designer?

We often don’t take action despite wanting to.

Do these sound familiar?

“Why can’t I find time to work on my passion project?”
“I need to update my portfolio but don’t know where to start.”
“I want to find a new job but I’m confused about how to find one.”

What is The Self Coaching Model?

The Self Coaching Model is the key to uncovering why you aren’t taking action, it’s a tool you can use to help understand yourself better. Read more about it here.

Our thoughts about a circumstance produce our feelings, our feelings cause our actions, and our actions ultimately produce the results in our lives.

The power of your feelings

Everything is in your control when it comes to your thoughts and feelings. Your thoughts are what create your feelings. That’s why it’s so important to understand your thoughts.

So if your thoughts create your feelings then your feelings are very important because they drive all of your actions.

Feelings are the fuel for your actions.

So what are you feeling on any given day? Are these feelings fueling your work?

When you ask yourself “why aren’t I taking action?” it’s because of the way you feel.

Your feelings drive your actions and it’s your actions that produce the results in your life.

The power of your thoughts

So what are you thinking?

Practice both awareness and compassion when observing yourself and your thoughts. It’s important to understand yourself first, how do you think?

Let’s look at an example using The Self Coaching Model:

The Self Coaching Model

Circumstance – Updating your portfolio
Thought – “I don’t know where to start”
Feeling – Confusion
Action – No action, you don’t do anything
Result – No progress is made on your portfolio

Note that confusion is an emotion that will keep you stuck. Have compassion for yourself, we all feel confusion at times. Don’t beat yourself up. Practice curiosity and fascination when it comes to understanding yourself better.

Pay attention to your thought.

The mind likes to repeat patterns. There may be other underlying thoughts and feelings of fear of failure, not doing it right, self-criticism of your work. All of these play a part in why you’re not getting things done. These are thoughts and feelings that aren’t serving you well.

How do you want to feel?

The byproduct of taking action is building more confidence, but it starts with developing the self-confidence and courage of honoring your commitments to yourself and having your own back. Do you believe in yourself?

How can you change your thinking to produce a new result?

Ultimately you want to find other thoughts that you can believe. Ask yourself: what thought can I also believe that is more empowering than “I don’t know where to start.”

Circumstance – Updating your portfolio
Thought – “I know exactly where to start”
Feeling – Self-confidence
Action – Spend two hours on Sunday working on portfolio
Result – Starting to work on your portfolio

Start by observing yourself, doing thoughts downloads and writing the thoughts and feelings inside your head. Build a self coaching model of what is happening using the C, T, F, A, R structure.

This is the first step to understanding your thoughts and feelings and how they’re currently producing your results.

A few spots are open for those of you interested in coaching with me in the next few weeks. I can help you gain an understanding of your thoughts and feelings and produce the intended results in your life.

This is a big question I know, and requires serious consideration. But I ask this question because it is at the heart of making changes in your life.

This was the question I had to answer for myself. I realized I needed to get to know myself better in order to answer hard questions.

Questions like these:

Is this how I want to spend the rest of my life? Is what I’m doing now in alignment with my life’s purpose? Am I going down the path that’s right for me? What do I need?

Basically, are you moving in the right direction?

How do you know?

Take a deep breath now. These are overwhelming questions. You may not know how to answer them. You may be avoiding these questions like I did.

For me, avoiding these questions resulted in becoming more and more confused, stressed, tired, resentful, defensive, and angry overall.

I started to stay up too late, overeat, drink too much, and became paralyzed by perfectionism and overwhelm. Yikes!

Do you want to make a difference?

Maybe all you know right now is that you want to to make a change ” to do things differently. To make the next phase of your life meaningful, to make it really count.

You want to show up for your life, be yourself, and make a difference. That’s how I felt too.

Too much of your time in the past was spent working towards goals and visions other people had for you. (Maybe you felt safe because the job only required what you already knew.) But you were never the focus of your own career!

Now you need your creative work to be for yourself in every sense of the word. You need to build something for you. Something where you can grow every day.

How can you make a change? That’s what I asked myself.

What if you chose to do something completely different, something more personal and meaningful to you? What would it be?

To change your future you need to take a big jump, take a leap of faith.

Do you need help?

If any part of this resonates with you, I get it. Up until recently, I felt this way myself. Let’s work together on moving towards what you really need in your life.