43 - Create a Trial Period
Thanks to those who completed the survey that I ran in November. I got about 10 responses which with a readership average of 150 people weekly is actually pretty good. Big congrats to Brad T who will be receiving a $25 Amazon gift card by email later today as he was the lucky winner of the random drawing!
Photo of the Week
It was a very busy week. I’m even a bit late with today’s newsletter because I got home late last night and my brain needed a bit of a break rather than heading back to the computer
I started the week in Richmond with another progress report on dad’s shoulder at the ortho doc - all continues to heal well with PT hopefully starting with at least passive resistance before the end of December. I was there to drop off Kona for the last time this year. Thanks again to dad and Susie for all of the dog sitting!
I flew to Baltimore for the Achieving the Dream Coach’s Retreat where I got to connect with a lot of dear friends from across the country AND take part in incredible professional development. Check out this week’s book note for a little more on that.
Kona and I were reunited on Wednesday and are celebrating that we will be together the REST OF THE YEAR! No more airplane travel for the momma in 2022.
I launched my Quarterly Retreat Workshop and Workbook this week!
While sad, Johnny, Susie, Dad, and I were together on Friday to attend my Aunt Sarah’s funeral. Sarah was my mom’s twin sister. She is now in peace.
I got to spend Saturday resting and baking with my sister Susie, her daughter Ashley and Ashley’s boys Clifton and Gene. You’ve met all of them before in this section. Clifton is an awesome helper in the kitchen and Gene is so enamored with watching his big brother.
We closed out the week with the Monroe Family Christmas Gathering that my dad and my Aunt Idris put together each year. This was our first “post-COVID” gathering as we had to call off each of the last two years. We finally got to “surprise” Idris for her 80th birthday which was in August but she has been battling some health issues so this was a good time to celebrate!
A couple of folks asked for more photos in the survey so I’ll try to extend this part just a little bit each week and play around with some different gallery options.
Create a Trial Period
This was a completely different essay topic until Monday morning (p.s. - I don’t recommend managing a weekly newsletter that way). I took on a topic - in the draft that I had started - that might even be bigger than one single newsletter and I was going around in circles with it.
Then, I realized, there is a lesson in there. And, it comes through to me in a lot of different experiences just this week. I think it’s an especially good lesson for this time of year as well. Why? If you’re like me, you’re spending a little bit of time right now thinking about how you want 2023 to be different from 2022. (My Quarterly Retreat Workshop and Workbook are an awesome way to think about this type of stuff. And, join in with the All Access Pass and get all of the live sessions as well throughout the year.) How do I keep the best stuff and make it happen more often? How do I lose the bad stuff or at least make it happen less often?
One was I do this is to create a trial period for myself. And, I mean trial in the “try and see what you learn” sense of the word and not in the “one more horrible thing going on in the world around me” sense of the word. It’s like the Netflix free trial or the free sample chapters of a book from Amazon Kindle. That kind of trial. Try it risk free and with no obligation to continue to learn if it’s right for you. Often, what you learn is something about what does and doesn’t work for you in this season of your life. That is some of the most valuable learning we can get in this life.
I’m doing this with some of my possible goals and activities for next year. For instance, morning workouts were perfect for me when I was working for someone else but they are annoying me now that I work for myself. So, I’m testing out a few different mid-day and afternoon/early evening workouts right now to see what I can learn from that experience that might help me to be successful in the new year.
Why call it a trial period? Because failure is expected in a trial period - and it’s even a really good thing. Think about that Netflix trial. Let’s say you signed up for Netflix one Saturday and binge watched Unorthodox all weekend. But then you didn’t turn Netflix back on again for the rest of the month. Do you keep Netflix or get rid of it. Too many of us hang on to it but failure would actually be a good thing here. You learned there was one show you enjoyed and then you don’t really want to keep going anymore so it makes sense to cancel and save your money on something you like better.
Creating your own trial periods can also help you better identify your own specific needs. I feel like needs analysis is a step in the process of problem solving and product development we often skip over or avoid because it feels like it might be hard. I actually view it as fun. Trying new things on and being willing to say - NOPE! - I enjoy that. I love finding out how something does or doesn’t work for me in this season of my life. If you’re overwhelmed by decision making - I get why this might not be your idea of a good time. I urge you to think about it in this frame of reference: “What’s the best decision I can make right now with the resources and information I have right now?” I’ve found this to be valuable perspective to take when I am struggling with a decision on how to handle something.
So, I hope you’ll consider creating your own trial period for a goal or an idea. Try it on for size. Focus on what you can learn from the experience and how that might change how you move forward. Let me know if you give it a try. It’s easy - just hit reply.
Where’s Kara?
A quick summary of where I’m going to be hanging out online and IRL over the next few weeks. Join me, and if I’m visiting near you, hit reply and let’s meet up!
In Real Life (IRL)
Home! Well, more specifically, in and around Indiana for the foreseeable future!
Around the Virtual World
Join My Course and Community - You will often find me hanging out in the course and community for my course “Facts of Life Book”. Do you need to organize your most important stuff for life’s most important moments? If so, then the Facts of Life Book course is just for you. With loads of templates, tools, and guides I’ll help you get your most important information organized. Newsletter readers - get in now for the low cost of only $25 for life!
Quarterly Retreat - Quarterly Retreat - It’s time to sign up for the Quarterly Workbook (free), Quarterly Workshop (self-paced, $25) or the Quarterly Retreat All Access Pass ($50 and includes everything) which is the best deal as it gives you the Workbook, the Workshop, and access to every update as well as every live session I offer this year! Check it out now at https://karamonroe.podia.com.
This makes a GREAT gift for the holidays. Just drop me an email at kara@iwannabemewhenigrowup.com when you purchase. Let me know who you want the course sent to (name and email) and when you want me to send it and I’ll take care of the rest. Or register with that person’s name and email and they will get the announcement of the purchase immediately!
Creative Work Hour - Every single day of the week, at 10 a.m. eastern, a group gathers online in Zoom to do a quick check in, a brief meditation, work for about 50 minutes on whatever they want to do, and then check out with one another for 5 minutes. Creative Work Hour is one of my favorite places to hang out online and I’ve been there every single day that I could be there since about March of 2022. Come as often or as little as you need to get projects done. To register for the sessions (they are free but you have to sign up to get the zoom link) and to learn more, visit https://lu.ma/CreativeWork.
AP Productivity - I’m once again joining my friend R.J. Nestor as a mentor in his exceptional course AP Productivity. We are wrapping up the current cohort with a new cohort starting in the near future. Sign up on that page to be alerted as soon as registration for the next offering opens. I’ll also let you know when a new offering is about to begin.
Tools, Tips, & Tricks
100 Things That Made This Year Great
I’m a big fan of Austin Kleon’s work, but somehow I missed that he’s been doing an annual reflection called 100 Things That Made My Year since 2014. Here is his 2020 edition as an example. This was going to be the topic of this week’s newsletter but it may be a little long for a single newsletter and/or it may just not be right for newsletter content but I am still committed to trying to get it done for 2022 so watch the What I Published section if you’re interested in reading that when I get it done.
Use Google Location Sharing
I might have shared this before but it merits repeating.
Do you want to know where someone’s phone is located (which is, let’s admit, a placeholder for where they are located)? If so, ask them to share their location with you via Google Location Sharing.
I’m the first to admit this has serious big brother is watching vibes - or in my case big sister is watching. One of my favorite location sharing moments is when my sister texted me while I was sitting in the drive thru at Dairy Queen and told me what kind of blizzard she wanted. She just happened to be checking to see where I was and when she saw I was at a DQ, she capitalized on the moment. While my sister and I share location with one another all the time you can just use this for a temporary time period as well. We started using it while driving together to our vacation in Michigan several years back. For some it stuck and for others it was nice for just a few hours.
You will just need a person’s email address to share your location with them. Open up the Google Maps app on your phone, click your picture in the top right and then click Location Sharing. In the bottom right of that screen, click the little blue add person button. Decide how long you want to share location for (you can use the +/- buttons to increase or decrease the time and then select the person you want to share with or slide to the far right and select the three dots for More to enter an email address or phone number or select other contacts from your phone.
This is a great idea for new teen drivers, kids getting phones for the first time for Christmas, aging parents, and more.
What I Published This Week
Goodness my publishing is out of whack! I’m making no commitments here but have three things planned to get out this week including what’s next for the podcast (the thing I told you last week I’d do that didn’t get done).
My Digital “Garden”
As a part of the Obsidian Vault Rebuild Series that I wrote on Medium and YouTube, I began using Obsidian Publish. This add on tool for Obsidian allows you to easily publish your “in progress” notes to the web. If you want to see what I’m thinking about, this is a great place to see inside my head. It’s always available at https://publish.obsidian.md/iwannabeme
This Week’s Featured Book Note
Each week, I’m featuring one book note from a book I’m currently reading. Click the image to view this week’s note as a PDF file.
Not much actual reading time this week so no new book note - but lots of good books got added to my To Be Read pile as a result of the wonderful trip to Baltimore. The retreat I participated in while in Baltimore featured training by the “Courageous Conversations About Race” organization. The information this training is based on is from the book Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools, 3rd edition by Glenn Singleton. The other book specific to the training portion of the retreat was The Lost Art of Good Conversation by Sakyong Mipham. I intend for both to show up as future book notes. I was also reintroduced to the work of John Kotter who writes extensively on Change.
A Question
As a result of some feedback in the survey, I’m going to experiment with a few things in the coming weeks. The first is a deeper opportunity for simple engagement. I’ll use some poll questions and some specific things where I just ask you to hit reply on the newsletter and send me an email with an answer (which you can always do any week - try it this week). Here is this week’s poll question.
One of my trials right now is experimenting with planning my reading in advance. I definitely tend to be a “read what feels right” person which for me leads to a lot of abandoned books. I’d LOVE to hear more about how you lead and live your reading life - just hit reply and drop me your thoughts.
Diversion
I love to doodle. It is doodling that often keeps me in a paper notebook instead of going fully digital. I also used to get highly embarrased when people would see my doodles in my notebook and ask about them - but then I started to hear a wistfulness in people’s voices when they asked about my doodles (in a statement often accompanied by “I can’t draw”. Doodling isn’t drawing - it’s just doodling. It’s using the visual grammar of dots, lines, circles, triangles, and squares in a all sorts of combinations - combinations which feel right to you in the moment.
This guy has taken doodling to a whole new level. It’s a fun little 2 minutes watch when your brain needs a break today. And, why don’t you grab a pen and scrap piece of paper and doodle during your next meeting or Zoom call.
Ways You Can Support Me
Join the Facts of Life Book Course and Community
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