The power of accepting your most unacceptable unique attribute
The door to freedom you open when you simply can’t but then do anyhow
The infinite inner beauty blooming of self-appreciation once you take time to plant the seed
On this webinar you will offer:
Your own insights as to the issues and challenges women face around beauty
Your thoughts on how women can most embrace their fullest self-expressions
Your participation in a movement to free women up from societal norms and assumptions
We invite you to join not only to hear our ideas of how to “IMBUE Your Beautiful You” but to get yours!
Our program is in development, and we need your input!
Come join us to co-create this work, and let’s enjoy the freedom it offers together.
Either before, during or after the webinar we would love to get your feedback on our program by filling out the survey here(we also have some freebies to give away if you complete the survey).
Today I bring you a quote from The Back Forty INFUSE Program. Take a moment to read the quote and, as always, I’ll meet you on the other side.
The first part of this quote that I want to make sure you understand is the reference to “the front 40”. It is a pretty common misconception that the “front 40” correlates to the first 40 years of something and the “back 40” correlates to the last 40 years of something. As it turns out, that is not the case. The front and back 40 are just metaphors for the first and second half of something, whether it be life or career (if you want to learn more about exactly what “back forty” means click here).
Okay. Now that we have the confusing part sorted out, we can move on to the meaning of the quote. The thing I like about this quote is that it is a reminder of how far each and every one of us has come. Think about everything you have learned in your various jobs and careers up until this point. Chances are that if you actually take some time to think about it, you have learned so much more than you usually even think to acknowledge.
What are the skills, knowledge, education, and training that you have learned along your journey? I bet that the first things you started thinking of are your formal education and training, or maybe different skills you have honed like writing skills or negotiations. But I want you to look even further beyond those “planned” skills. What have you learned that you were not planning to learn, what have your hardships taught you? Your mistakes?
If you take the time to actually catalog every single skill you have acquired – chances are you are even more skilled than you were aware of. And that is what I want you to take with you throughout the rest of the day.
You are unique and skilled in ways that not everyone is aware of and when you add up all of your skills, you are a rare individual whose unique skills are unmatched by anyone else.
Today I found a new YouTube vlogger that I have absolutely fallen in love with.
Meet Melissa55.
Melissa is a 60-something wife, mother, and grandmother living in Tennesse. She has been posting on her Youtube channel each week for roughly 3 years with topics surrounding midlife beauty. While I was trying to find out more about Melissa, I stumbled across a quote of hers that I absolutely love:
“I feel like if we stick together in this aging journey, we can lift up each other and grow older gracefully and beautifully.”
– Melissa55
She creates tons of wonderful content surrounding the conversation of aging and how to feel beautiful while doing it. However, my favorite video series of hers is The Aging Woman and in this video series, she covers everything from fashion and exercise to friendships and marriage. Today I am going to share a few of my favorite (initial) videos of hers that I am loving and maybe you will love them too!
This is the perfect example of what Melissa is all about. She uses her own experiences from finding her way through midlife to help other women abandon the stigmas surrounding aging and beauty and really embrace themselves. So, if you’ve watched the video, what’s your style and how has it changed as you have moved through midlife?
Craving more Melissa? Here are some of my other instant favorites:
What if development of people became our organizational raison d’être?
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
What is the purpose of business?
Milton Friedman, a Nobel-prize winning economist, wrote that the purpose of business is maximizing profit for the shareholders.
Peter F. Drucker said that “the purpose of business is to create and keep a customer” and “the purpose of an organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things.”
Blaine Bartlett, bestselling author of “Compassionate Capitalism” says that “the purpose of business is to uplift the quality of life on this planet.”
This is my personal favorite:
“Business is where you practice your human skills. It’s where you grow.” Andrew Cherng, Co-Founder and Visionary, Panda Restaurant Group, Forbes’ 2015 America’s Best Employer.
Part of Panda’s expressed mission is “becoming a world leader in people development.” According to Vipul H. Shah, Regional Director of Operations at Panda Restaurant Group, “Panda exists to better the lives of people, and we build an organization to allow that to happen. How we do this is selling American Chinese food.”
Andrew Cherng has more to say about that: “I’m talking about everyone who works at Panda. They’re inspired to better their own lives. We’re not really selling Chinese food, you know. Our real purpose is about developing people. You have to grow! You grow as a person, and then you will grow in business.”
Why would we, as leaders and visionaries in Conscious Organizations, want to make development of people our raison d’être?
8 Why’s To Have People Development as Priority 1:
When an organization is committed to transforming people’s life, people bring back to work their transformed self along with new mindsets, behaviors, and ways of being. As a consequence, they produce results and create solutions that were not possible before.
People become more fulfilled, confident, happy, and self-expressed, often finding a clearer sense of direction in life. Their personal life and relationships improve which, in turn, positively impact their achievement and satisfaction at work.
Transformation and growth is challenging. As people begin to dig deeper and learn about themselves, they start to understand who they really are and why they do what they do. Their sense of purpose crystallizes, resulting in clearer focus in their work.
People develop a better understanding of others, causing communication and connectedness to drastically improve. As a result, R&D and Sales work well together, and so do Accounting and Marketing. Teamwork, collaboration and effectiveness skyrockets.
As people grow, they become willing to “play big,” step outside the box, take on challenges, make mistakes, fail, get up and try again – knowing the company has their back. They achieve results and performance levels that could not have been achieved by “playing safe” and staying in their comfort zone.
As people are being challenged, how they learn to respond to challenges (rather than react or retract) becomes important. This builds resilience and stamina.
Everyone in the organization begins to take responsibility and ownership of their work and their roles. This results in a company-wide “buck stops here attitude,” free of blame or finger-pointing.
When everyone takes full responsibility and 100% ownership of any situation, there is no space for anyone to be a victim. Leadership becomes not a title of authority but a chosen mindset.
This sounds like an organization I want to be a part of!
Bottom line is this: if we make development of people the purpose of our business, all other purposes fall into place:
Shareholder profit is maximized
Customers will be kept and created
Common men and women will be enabled to do uncommon things
“Get comfortable being uncomfortable. That’s how you break the plateau and reach that next level.”
-Chalene Johnson
We’ve all heard Albert Einstein’s idea that you can’t solve a problem at the same level at which it was created. His challenge was to rise up, to the next level, so as to see and deal with the problem from a higher perspective.
And yet many of us with dreams and goals ahead (a problem) can be deceived into believing that we can get to that next level easily and effortlessly, or by playing the way we have already been playing at this particular plateau.
Let’s face it: it’s damn inconvenient to take on growth and fulfillment as a lifetime pursuit!
I spent a 4 day weekend with a wise, high-performance leader 14 years my junior. I admired how he had taken on breaking through to the next level for himself as a pattern of life from the age of 19, and was apparently continuing to do so forever.
I noticed a bit of reticence at first to being open to someone who’s been on the planet less time than me telling me about how life really works. However, I quickly realized that voice was my own Back Forty Blinder, the old mindset that says “I should know all this by now.”
So, I shook it off in true Back Forty Fliers style and again affirmed that we all have our path and we all have the time and place in which we fulfill on what we came here to do…which is, according to our philosophy, always ahead of us, not behind.
I began thinking that, in my growing up and the messages I received from my own shaping cultural influences, there was this idea that you worked really hard until you “made it” to some level and then you enjoyed that “made-it-ness”, got comfortable, and at some point “retired”.
There are lots of folks who are proud to say “I retired at 30” or whatever young age because the idea of having “made it” earlier is seen as a badge of winning.
This is not knocking “made it”, as to get to those points, those individuals had to apply themselves and their wheelhouse of tools and intelligence in wonderful and admirable ways.
Yet, what about the next level after “making it”?
In The Back Forty, we say “you have yet to do what you came here to do”. This is not to knock what has already been accomplished, and yet what’s next?
And, if there hasn’t necessarily been the sense of full accomplishment in our life as lived thus far, this mantra gives us all hope.
What will be required by both parties – those who’ve already “made it” and those who believe they haven’t – is to take on the inconvenience of continual leveling up.
Those inspired to be Back Forty Fliers must adopt a willingness, outside of their amassed “wisdom” of who they are, what they’re capable of, what they can learn, the way the world works, etc., so as to be open, fresh and available to receive new input.
When it comes to midlifers fulfilling on goals and dreams – which may be on the chopping block at this point in life – it’s important to realize that the same sweat, learning processes and jittery uncertain of growth they experienced in younger years can still take them to their next level of fulfillment.
It’s simply a question of willingness to be inconvenienced by growth and fulfillment.
Here are a few tips from my own experience of leveling up.
Expose Yourself
Get outside the box of groupthink mindset you may have surrounded yourself with – same friends, same community, same church, same avenues of exposure – and make yourself available to new people, ideas, and input.
Kids leaving home for college or going out into the world have no choice but to do this, and the process of exposure begins to point them in directions of discovery about themselves, their passions, their interests, and their abilities.
At 40, 50, 60, 70 and beyond, we can learn more about ourselves and our passions, interests, and abilities if we gain more exposure – and let go of all the “wisdom” of the comfort zone we’ve become accustomed to.
Listen
When exposing yourself, be willing to really listen…like a 20-year-old, who is taking in all new information all the time.
The tendency of the “wise” midlifer is to evaluate and assess everything as to whether they agree with it or not, whether they’re capable of it or not, whether it fits their belief system (BS) or not. Therefore, the groupthink mindset stays in place.
Often, there’s a resistance to engage and consider incorporating new ideas because the inner voice says “Well, if this is right, then I’ve been off my whole life!”…and the ego doesn’t want to consider that possibility. So, rather than try and engage in something new, it’s far easier to write off the new input as crazy or ludicrous. Admitting that one doesn’t know it all (yet) can be a big hurdle.
To listen – as opposed to hear – means to truly consider without the slice-and-dice mechanism of cynicism/resignation disguised as discernment shredding every piece of evidence that something beyond who you are now is possible.
Turn off the garbage disposal and listen.
Experiment
Try some of those new ideas, belief systems and practices on.
You have survived very well to this point. Whatever experiments you choose to engage in won’t kill you for sure. You’re tried and true “knowing” of how things are might still prevail, even if you experiment. Just watch that you don’t experiment with the objective being to prove yourself right. You’ll definitely end up “right”.
Life is too short for knowing too early exactly who we are and what we’re capable of. And, if there’s something beyond what has come before for you to be and do, then inconveniencing yourself to play around with new toys might be just the shift required to take you to your next level to fulfilling on that.
You have yet to do what you came here to do.
“At the moment when you feel you have reached the point of absolute exhaustion, inspire yourself to take one last step, and that is when you have successfully arrived to the next level.”
Today I am bringing you a little inspiration from our Back Forty archives. Take a moment to read the quote and I’ll meet you on the other side.
This is an interesting viewpoint. Everyone has heard the phrase “let your light shine” but we don’t usually take the time to consider it much.
For me, the phrase reminds me of my childhood when I would sing “This Little Light of Mine”. The way I always interpreted it, the song was about being yourself and not being afraid of what other people think. But what if it means so much more?
What if your “own light” isn’t just being yourself. What if it is what makes you unique? These two phrases might seem very similar, but when we put it in the context of letting your light shine, it shifts the meaning in a pretty profound way.
You can “be yourself” every day, but that doesn’t mean that you are sharing what makes you unique with the world.
So that brings us back to the quote:
“For me to let my ‘own light shine,’ first and foremost it is important that I know what that light is.”
“It is important that I know what that light is.” I feel like that is the most important part of this whole quote. We have to know what makes us unique. Now tell me, when was the last time you actually thought about what makes you unique? About what your personal “light” is? Do you know?
Today my goal for you is two-fold. First, spend 5 minutes thinking about what makes you unique and how you can share that uniqueness with the world around you. Then, do it!
You are unique. You do have your own personal inner light. And you need to share it with the world. Why? Because, if everyone took the time to share their own inner light with the world, think about how much better we could make this world we live in.
At The Back Forty, we have been blogging for roughly eight months and during that time have posted over 130 different articles across more than nine different topics. We do our best to come up with lots of unique content to share with you!
Today, I would love to get some feedback about your favorite things to read about! Do you enjoy reading about funny midlife stories? Do you like to be inspired? Are you looking to learn more about different aspects of midlife?
Just pick a topic below and see how your favorite topic compares to the favorite topics of some of our other readers!
Let’s say you are an enlightened leader and I just proclaimed my undying commitment to Organizational Development and Conscious Organizations.
(Who knows, it could happen.)
Now what?
As I dive into the OD world, question upon question arises. I resolve one, and two more show up.
Here is today’s sample of OD dilemmas you might be dealing with:
How do we engage with people and create an environment where they love to come to work and have a support system that empowers and enables them to play big, step out of their comfort zone, take risks, and be their best?
How do we support new leaders in the organization to adjust to the company culture, environment, and philosophy? How do we coach and develop them to make the needed changes and be successful with existing staff?
How do we create an environment where coaching, training, and development are viewed as a contribution and commitment to each team member’s future, rather than as corrective or punitive action?
How do we as leaders create and define company culture such that everyone knows they have a voice and an opportunity to thrive?
How do we create a work culture that translates into a better family and personal life, resulting in employees being more empowered to create a conscious, high- performing organization?
If you are looking for “THE ANSWER” to these questions, it does not exist.
Yes, that’s right – lots of questions and no ready solution. The appropriate answers will be somewhat different for every organization.
If you are looking for an answer, you’re out of luck.
But if you approach the very process of inquiry with a sense of curiosity and wonder, it may provide the needed awareness upon which your individual organization’s answers can be built.
Here are some insights from Carrington Mortgage Holdings – an organization expressly committed to creating a culture of growth and learning.
According to Claudia E. Mino, VP of Organizational Development, several things make a big difference:
Carrington Mortgage Holdings is made up of 17 different companies. Through coaching and development programs, participants build a network of relationships across business units and levels. They create a support system of classmates and cohorts in different areas of the organization which they can count on and are as easily accessible as picking up the phone.
Program participants are coached by cross-functional EVPs, SVPs, or Presidents, and get to know and build relationships with leaders from other business units. This allows for the transfer of wisdom across business units and develops a culture of mentorship and camaraderie.
The organizational development team is committed to taking the time to support their program participants whenever needed. “They trust us and feel safe to reach out for support. Be it conflict, team dynamics, or organizational changes, we partner with them and provide a strong support system” says Claudia.
Organizational Development programs get full support and collaboration of the executive and HR leadership. All coaches are SVPs, EVPs, C-level, and the organization is committed to having high-level leadership invest their time in coaching and developing talent.
At the end of the day, Claudia says, “For us, it doesn’t matter where you are as a leader. It is our job to help you be successful, and we will do whatever it takes to help you do that.”
Your turn. If you begin your inquiry into the development of a conscious organization where you are – inside of the spirit of curiosity and wonder – what do you see?
“Madness is somewhere inbetween chaos and having a dream.”
-R.M. Drake
The urge inside is to take on new things, play in bigger ways, and set free what’s destined for us to express. It invites chaos.
The urge inside is also to find security and predictability and order. It invites balance.
It’s all about evening out the urges. The tendency is to mitigate the first, and feed the second. Yet, without an invitation to chaos, we stay where we are.
In my own growth toward both opening up to allow The Back Forty message to express through me as well as the friction of frustration in the learning new ways and means to deliver it, I can pretty much claim a resident element of chaos inhabiting my office and life!
First, there’s the giving of freedom to myself to just let the creativity flow. Then, there’s the jumping into the deep end of new methods and technologies and gadgets for sharing that creative flow. And it’s ALL NEW, mostly untested, and definitely not a reflection of who I’ve been in the past but, rather, a glimpse of who I’m becoming.
Yet, even while in the midst of that chaos, I find myself seeking ways to tame the new energies and desires by structuring my life in ways to best incorporate them. Better scheduling, more effective and efficient communication, and even – yes, and I’m realizing as crucial – more downtime, fun and play.
All that – along with the rather oxymoronic phrase “chaotic balance” – is hard to see coming together sometimes.
How does the idea of chaotic balance land for you?
In The Back Forty, we say “you have yet to do what you came here to do.” In order to do that, we need to face chaos…and even invite it. Contrary to what the first half of life – and the bumps and bruises that came with it – may have conditioned us to believe about keeping life safe and predictable, we need to make room for and incorporate the chaos…in as orderly a way as we can.
Here are a few ideas for incorporating Chaotic Balance:
1. Free the Artist!
If you’re up to something big, creating something beyond what you’ve been or done before, you are releasing an artist from within you. That includes starting a new business, writing a book, embarking on a new career, jumping into dating or a new relationship, or even re-inventing the relationship you’re in! It’s anything new and creative that you’re taking on.
A couple great books to support Back Forty Fliers in distinguishing and freeing that inner artist are The Artist’s Way and The War of Art, both which press you beyond the resistance to staying in the comfort zone of the known.
Take steps to express in whatever your area of artistic and creative growth is. Go take a class, hire a coach, join an action or support group, or in any other way set aside specific time to engage in that wild dream or crazy idea.
2. Expect Discombobulation
Know that the new ideas, the beta-test technologies, the expanded perspectives and the stretch of your capacities to incorporate these new endeavors – mentally, physically, emotionally, and even spiritually – WILL discombobulate you and you’re life, if you’re really playing big.
Expect it. The discombobulation is your friend.
3. Wrangle the Wild Stallions Into Pens
Establish structures, time commitments, and new ways of running and managing your life to incorporate the wild new frontiers.
Balance your need for routine and order with carefully and strategically organized elements that allow those ideas to take root. Keep or even build new ways to include it ALL. Meditation, time-blocking and action buddies are just a few methods to bring the chaos you want into the balance you need.
Every now and then, I simply compile too many quotes that demonstrate what I could only attempt to say in my own words. This is one of those days.
I leave you with these quotes to support and empower your own finding of Chaotic Balance.
“Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.”
-Chuck Palahniuk
“The worst thing you could do is tame the chaos in you. It’s like being told not to feel when you’re thrown in the fire.”
-R.M. Drake
“Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.”
-Buddha
“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.”
-Carl Jung
“You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
“All great changes are preceded by chaos.”
-Deepak Chopra
“Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.”
-Henry Adams
“Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order and everything becomes…chaos”
-The Joker
“In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.”
-Deepak Chopra
“Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.”
-Henry Adams
“Chaos is a friend of mine.”
-Bob Dylan
“Fall in love or fall in hate. Get inspired or be depressed. Ace a test or flunk a class. Make babies or make art. Speak the truth or lie and cheat. Dance on tables or sit in the corner. Life is Divine Chaos. Embrace it. Forgive yourself. Breath. And enjoy the ride.”
-Unknown
“Balance is the ability to be happy in the midst of the most chaotic…circumstance.”
Today, while searching through midlife videos on YouTube, I found a new channel that intrigued me. The channel is called RedGreenTV and “Red Green” is the star. “Red” is played by Steve Smith. He was the handyman from The Red Green Show which was a Canadian TV comedy that aired from 1991 to 2006. Even though the comedy has been off the air for over 10 years, Steve still posts videos to his YouTube channel regularly and performs live a few times a year.
If you’re looking for a laugh, take a minute to watch Red as he shares his midlife “wisdom” with the world. His video about shopping for your wife is below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K42n5HW5JI]
So remember, even if you’ve been “buying her gifts for 25 or 30 years and you think you’re getting pretty good at it, well you’re not.”
Let me know what you think. Regardless of if you are a husband or wife, do you think your gifts have gotten better or worse over the years?
