Hello Revolutionaries!

This week we are going to uncover our Guiding Values so next week we can apply them to choosing our  Essential Tasks. This will free us to be concentrated powerhouses who DO LESS and LIVE MORE! But before we do, let’s do a brief check-in so you can feel great about how far you’ve already come.

Last week our theme was Setting Limits. We took our Monster To-Do list down a notch by eliminating things that were haunting us, but not serving us. Now pretty please answer some or all of these questions in the comments. Or, if you blog answer them in a post and add the unique URL to our Mr. Linky. (I know. “Mr. Linky.” That sounds naughty doesn’t it? Tee Hee.) Feeling shy? Like pen-and-paper? That’s fine. Just scribble it on the back of that receipt there on your desk. That would work too. (Remember, Fast and Dirty is the way to get it done.) Ready? Here we go!

• Name one thing you crossed off your Monster To-Do list because it wasn’t important to you any longer.
• How many things did you have on your Monster To-Do list that actually didn’t need to be done in the next 30-60 days?
• When your Gremlins started to nag you about “not getting anything done,” which of your one-hour-or-less tasks did you complete?
  Which of your Most Important Task (M.I.Ts) got done last week? How’d that feel?
• Which M.I.T.s are still hanging out? Do they still get the special M.I.T. rank, or can you demote them?
• Name any Ah-Ha Moments you’ve had so far in the process.

There. Don’t you feel better? I knew you would. Onward!

 How Your Guiding Values Help You Choose the Essential

The next stage of the DO LESS Revolution is identifying your Guiding Values and using them to determine what’s essential. This sounds kind of onerous, and I can’t think of a way to make it sound cheeky, but really it isn’t bad at all. Maybe it will help to know that I turned mine into a multi-colored mobile. How tough can it be if it looks like something out of Dr. Seuss?

It’s relaxing to note that choosing the essential isn’t like trying to find a needle in a haystack. You don’t have to determine at random what is most important amongst all your tasks. Once you peek inside and see what values you already carry, you can use them to ferret out the imposter-tasks hiding out among the essentials. It’s like a decoder ring! Doesn’t that seem like fun? You get to be Dick Tracy!

Uncovering your Guiding Values will help you:

• See how fantastic you are. (You value amazing things! Not a vapid choice among ‘em!)
• Trust your instincts around how you spend your time. (Because woah! Check out your awesome internal compass!)
• Make choices for yourself-including choosing your Essential Tasks–knowing they are birthed out of solid, meaningful values.
• Resist Gremlins (and societal messages) about how “everyone else” is doing the things you’ve left asunder. (Your Gremlins don’t get a say in this-Gremlin values tend to be a bit dodgy.)

Are you ready to have that powerful of a tool in your spy gear? Let’s go get your decoder ring!

How to Uncover your Guiding Values

(Notice I didn’t say how to “find” your values. They’re already there. We just need to adjust the focus.)

Some of you right now as we speak are writing down your list of Guiding Values. You can’t get enough of them! The words are just rolling of your tongue. Connection. Financial Security. Fun. Presence… You are probably one of those people who played *8Things this week–and we like you, we really do. But right now you get to chillax, because some of us are having a small but obvious panic attack right now. (Hold on, we’ll be right back – unless you want to come with us to check your work.)

Okay, you folks that are feeling a little panicky, here’s what to do if your Guiding Values aren’t holding still enough for you to take their picture.

• Make a list of Activities that Matter. What do you like to do most? (Hint: it’s probably in whatever color you used to mark “Things That Give Me Energy” on your Have-Done List.) What makes your day feel icky if you don’t do it? What things do you always make sure happen for yourself/your family?
• Look for What is in Common. I like to think of this process as “distilling.” If you distill these activities into a potent brew, what’s left in the bottle? For instance if cleaning your house makes you feel good, then Organization might be one of your values, or perhaps Esthetics. If you always get in your morning run, Health or Fitness maybe tantamount. If there are lots of birthdays and holiday celebrations on the list, maybe Connection is the value they hold in common. This is one of those “don’t overthink it” things. Just run your eye down the list and see which words come to mind. 
• Pick *8 Things: From your list of words naming the commonalities, pick the *8 Things that ring the most strongly with you. Give yourself five minutes to do this. Now breathe a little. (Phew!) Give yourself one more minute to swap one more than 1 thing (if you must.) There you have it. Your super-distilled ultra-potent decoder ring!

Still need help?
When I first started working with life coach Jena Strong of Strong Coaching my head was awhirl. I had a zillion thoughts about my work and vocation, and all the accompanying “but why’s” and “but how’s.” My existential Monster To-Do List was totally out of control!

Jena spent one hour–just one hour!–helping me uncover my Guiding Values, and within a week I had begun to use this powerful tool for making life decisions. My inner whirlwind immediately began to still and eventually my Gremlins settled down as well.

Now, I know I don’t normally do such a direct pitch on my Magpie Girl. But I think the work Jena does around Guiding Values is incredibly helpful. So as a special favor to me, Jena is offering Magpie Girl readers a discount on a one-hour Uncovering Your Guiding Values Session. This session is available at the reduced rate of $75 through July 31^st. (Tell her Magpie Girl sent you.) A Facebook quiz is just not going to do it for you here, folks. If you’re stuck, Jena can help.

Up Next

Now that you’ve been amazed by your Have-Done List; set limits and eliminated stuff off your Monster To-Do List; and uncovered your Guiding Values, you are ready to start doing what Leo Babauta calls “Choosing the Essentials.” You’ve already had some practice with this when you chose your three “Most Important Tasks (M.I.T.s)” for last week. Take a few minutes now to identify your M.I.T.s for this week as well. Want to know mine, just for fun?

Body Maintenance: Walk, swim, or do yoga every day.
Connect: host expat coffee hour, call Emma on graduation day, go to Lisabeth’s concert, dinner with the Marshes before the move Stateside, my first Danish dinner with the parents from Eden’s class, spend the morning with Paul before he leaves for the States. (There are more of these than usually b/c we are leaving the country for six weeks)
Teach: write Ask Magpie, *8Things, DO LESS, and Soultribes columns.

Those things in bold? Those are what Leo calls my “One Goal” (as you can see, I’m very good at rebelling.) They are born out of my Guiding Values, and they help me develop what Leo calls “the fine art of choosing the essential” so I can have a powerful, concentrated life.

Your one goal is waiting to get born too! So choose your M.I.T.s (this will calm your To-Do Gremlins down while we work on things); and make a list of your Guiding Values. We’ll see you next week when we learn to choose the essential. Viva La Revolution!

The Do Less Revolution is an on-going, start-any-time project of Magpie Girl. Click here to join or find all the DO LESS posts here. Recieve an update on new Do Less items by following us on Twitter. Thanks for being here!

If you need some help making your list, my life coach Jena Strong, is offering us a kindly deal on Values Assessment Sessions.  Magpie Girl readers will receive a reduce price of $75 for an hour-long session* — a super rate for some valuable soulguidance. Jena helped me find the right words to describe what I hold most dear. Those words, in turn, helped me stand in my own power and make choices for myself, knowing they were being birthed out of solid, meaningful values. In short, Jena taught me how to value my values! (Oh those professionals, they are ever-so-helpful.) Here are *8 Values that Guide My Life: 

1. Whimsy
2. Generosity
3. Attentiveness
4. Creativity
5. Truth
6. Beauty
7. Freedom, and above all things
8. Love

What are the values that guide your life?  Grab a button and play along or put your *8Things in the comments below. Don’t know? Call Jena and drop my name!  Thanks for being here!

*The Strong Coaching reduced rate offer good thru July 31, 2009.

Jen says, I can be honest about what I know now. And what I know now is that is need my soulsisters –or mabye my soulsibilings. I need them around me all the time, sending me messages of hope and speaking affirmation in my ears. I feel sheepish about it — this constant need for feedback and assistance and the exchange of ideas. But it’s okay to do things and get support at the same time, rights? As Jena says, is it functional? Because if it is, then why fight it?

It is functional for me, this communal way of life, the ebb and flow, the give and take. Even in the midst of my love of the solitary, I also need this chorus of voices. So I’m trying to listen to my own internal voice of authority and no matter what the experts say about rugged individualism, I’m recognizing that I need a hand to hold.

This month when Suzie asked The Universe what she had in store for me, she pulled the Nine of Cups not once, but twice. Two wishes for me! For the longest time I couldn’t decide what to wish for. I knew one wish had to be “Body”– for my health, for my pain, for the way I see my physical self. But the other one remained elusive. I got stuck in that loop of endless decision-making to which I am so prone. What if I made the wrong choice? What if I spoke the wrong word into being, then regreted wasting my wish?

I believe, even on my most doubtful days, that nothing is ever wasted. Or at least, I try to believe. (“Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.”) So whatever wish I make must be right, right?. And like Jaime says, if you move towards something and you don’t feel like backpeddling as fast as you can, move closer. So this is the word that has settled into my tongue, and I speak it into exisitence. “Tribe.”

Who do you need in your tribe? Truth tellers? Cultivators? Dreamers? Cuddlers? Champions? Warriors? Withmates? All of the above? Do tell…

I’ve been working with life coach Jena Strong of Strong Coaching for the past few months and things are starting to break out all over. After years of driving Jen Lemen crazy with my whining, I’ve finally realized that the only thing left that’s keeping me from publishing is fear itself. Fear that I can’t sustain a book length project. Fear that I can’t get around to finsihing. Fear that I don’t have enough material. (In rational moments, that one really makes me laugh!) Fear that once I get something out there no one will buy it. Fear that once I get something out there everyone will buy it and I’ll be pigeonholed as the “girl who writes about X” for the rest of my live long days. Fear. Fear. Fear. Fear. Fear.

As I wrote in one of my answers to the birthday questions, fear is the one thing I am working hard to shed from my self-definition. Instead, I’m ready to embrace whimsy, to do the impractical and live the impulsive life.

So, I decided to write a book this month. Yes, an entire shitty first draft in one wonderful month. And when darling Jena asked me what I was ready for this list poured out:

I’m ready to be seen as an expert.
I’m ready to get paid for my work.
I’m ready to publish.
I’m ready to embrace whimsy.
I’m ready to jump.

My former neighbor and soulful friend Claire Mack is an amazing artist, and I blame and praise her for introducing me to the playground that is mixed media art. (I’m just a novice, but she’s a real pro, as you can see here. I helped inspire the birdcages! Woot me!) When Claire went to Greece a couple of years ago she took a travel art kit with her and made a lovely little abstract book about her adventures. I’ve always adored it, so this month for dreamboarding, with the November Book Experiment on my mind and Claire in my heart, I made not a board but a book. Some of the pages are already filled with the things I need to get to bookville. Others are waiting for words. Every page is lovely. Every page is full of color, and life, and hope. (I’ve scanned them in here, if you’d like to see.)

I’m so enthralled with this charming little number — it kind of reminds me of those little dance cards women used to wear on silk threds around thier wrist in the era of Jane Austin, only with more chutzpah. It’s completely captured my fancy. I carry it around from room to room. Yesterday I even put it in a ziploc bag and carried it with me in my purse!

Sacred Suzie says that the Tarus moon in November is good for breaking boundaries. So here’s what I think. Let’s break the boundary of fear. What fear-free adventure will you dream into reality this month? What will you ask of the Universe? In the words of my beloved Joseph Campbell, “Jump!”

In order to see if I can get a little break through, my life-coach Jena Strong has given me the assignment of only writing one hour day for the next two weeks. (Well, one week and then we’ll re-evaluate and see if we should keep it up another week.) I’m having a good migraine week right now, so I’m nervous that I’ll be well during these 1-hour weeks, then sick again when I’m free to write as many hours as I want. But, I’m curious to see if I can surprise myself about what I can get done in a short, focused amount of time.

That being said, there may be fewer written posts on Magpie Girl, although I’m thinking of trying my hand at more non-verbals, so stay tuned. I’m also planning on feeding my insights regarding this experiment into my new obsession with Twitter. If you’re interested in how this one-hour restriction affects the creative process, I’ll be channeling my thoughts into a daily update there (just 140 characters, so it will only take a sec.) You can track me here.

See you on the flip side!

p.s. Today I wrote this plus half a chapter (1,400 words) in an hour!

I’ve been trying to write a book, and to get it picked up by a publisher since 2005. There have been a couple of manuscript proposals with sample chapters, and some interest, and some more chapters, and some more interest, and another proposal, but alas, nothing definitive has come about.

When I realized it’s been three years since I started verbalizing “I am writing a book” and two since I finished my first real draft, I got discouraged. What was I doing really? Furthermore, what did I want to be doing really?

I’ve been swirling around in an eddy of repeated thoughts about my work as a writer/teacher/learner–most of which are diametrically opposed to one another—and I can’t seem to find the momentum or the release to get myself out of the cycle. So I hired a life coach. Someone I’ve been reading on line for quite some time, Jena Strong of Strong Coaching. (blog│coaching site) We’ve just started working together, but so far so good. I’ve given her permission to blow the “bullshit bullhorn” whenever I am clearly talking out of my ass, and she’s given me…assignments.

One of the first exercises Jena gave me was a Values Clarification exercise. Part of the procedure was to look at a list of values and narrow it down to ten. Then she helped me order those ten values from by drawing a set of concentric circles and putting the most central value in the middle, working my way out to the outer ring. Jena described the outer ring as the ‘container’ that provides the structure to hold all the others. It took a long time to narrow down the right word for some of the values I was trying to represent, and more than once Jena had to blow the bullshit bullhorn when I was trying to claim a noble word that was not really describing what I was getting after. In the end these were my ten — from inner ring to outer ring:

Integrity
Generosity
Attentiveness
Clarity
Guidance
Freedom
Integrity
Beauty
Props (as in “getting’ my props!”)
Security

For a long time I’ve felt really guilty about my high need for security – especially for financial security. I’ve felt pampered, spoiled, and weak when I couldn’t follow my brave and brazen friends in to a life of voluntary poverty and extreme adventure. But when Jena had me draw my values out in concentric rings, I realized that the security was the container that allowed everything else – the generosity, and the guidance, and the beauty – to thrive.

Because embodying emotional and spiritual thoughts into physical symbol is so powerful to me, Jena suggested that I find some way to physically represent my values. She mentioned that she’s always wanted someone to make a mobile of their values so they could see how they move in and out amongst one another. That wasn’t something I could engineer, but it did make me think of those collapsing water cups we used as kids – the type that were made of concentric plastic rings that collapsed down inside the lid of the cup for compact travel. Remember those? (I had an orange one that I kept by the sink as my tooth mug.) I decided to try to make one of those…which turned into a mobile…which looks suspiciously like the color scheme from Oh the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss…which I figure is all pretty much prophetic, don’t you think?

Even though while I was making it I kept thinking “Really? This is what grown adults do with their free time?” I’m finding it to be quite well worth it. It’s hanging in the corner of my studio by my writing desk, and somehow it’s helping me feel grounded and hopeful from time to time – like I’ve done something meaningful, like I’ve taken a good first step.
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What are your top ten values? How might you give them a concrete form? Make a little list, muck something up and show it to us in a photo, or blog about it and give us the link – the comments are open!