Link Love + Celebration Friday

Hello and Happy Friday!

Wanderlust is coming to the city and my buddy Jenn will be your emcee

Jessica is leading an Egyptian belly dancing workshop tonight! 

Marie Forleo on how to say no when someone asks to pick your brain. It’s more than OK to set boundaries, y’all. 

I love language

MailChimp on A/B testing

Never gets old. For those of you who don’t live in SF, the fog has a name (and a twitter account).

Did you know that you can submit card ideas for Cards Against Humanity?

Dream big and make it happen — YES!

And my Celebration Friday: I set a goal with my coach and exceeded it. By A LOT. If you can do one thing, you can do the next thing. And it gets better and you get more successful each and every time.

Love,

Lindsay Jean

Won’t you…

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.”

– Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

It’s spring! It may be a false spring (I do live in San Francisco, after all), but man, am I happy. 

Hemingway goes on to write, “The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”

I’d like to think I’m a little more optimistic than good ol’ Papa, though I do think he’s hitting on something: it’s true that people are the limiters of happiness, but it isn’t other people — it’s us. Yep, you and me. We are each responsible for our own state of affairs. The question is: 

To the degree that you are at choice, do you choose happiness?

Are you focusing on the good stuff? 

When my friend asked me, “How’s life?” yesterday, I shared a flurry of happy news — so much so that I found myself wondering, “Am I too much?” 

Hold up. 

How could honest-to-goodness happiness be too much?

It’s not just me — my girlfriends and clients do it all the time. We play it down, we defer praise onto colleagues, we question whether we can really put it on our resumes.

Not any more, okay?

Here’s five good reasons it’s important to celebrate: 

1. It’s an expression of gratitude — and gratitude works.  
2. To celebrate is to publicly praise or honor — it brings you in closer relationship to the people in your life who are as good as spring itself.
3. It’s the perfect antidote to complaining. When ineffective, complaining can actually cause harm to our brains.
4. To paraphrase another of my favorites, Walt Whitman, it’s not bragging if you’ve actually done it. You want something? Be prepared to ask for it — and to say why you should get it. 
5. As we say in yoga, may all beings be happy, healthy, and free. Celebrating our own well-being is a practice of metta, loving-kindness. And it’s the first step towards offering that unconditional loving-kindness to others. So if you won’t do it just for yourself (though I wish you would), do it for the greater good. 

HOMEWORK: Reflect each day on one thing you can celebrate. Big or small. Try it out and notice how you’re choosing to view your life. Let me know how it goes.

Love,

Lindsay Jean

Link Love // Celebration Friday Vol. 5

Hi honeys! 

Vincent has some excellent tips for creating an industry specific meet-up group

Trish is doing a super special giveaway over at The Grateful Life. I love what Thread is up to and I think you will too. 

What people really want from onboarding

Emily is working at MODE, building a better way to analyze data and share results

Matt’s company Groceries Apparel is now being sold at Urban Outfitters. Go buy your summer tees there! 

Stunning. The only thing better than flowers is REALLY BIG FLOWERS!

Tabloid headlines without the sexism

Livestream of the earth

My Celebration Friday is partnering up with this awesome spiritual gangster. As Carey would say, I’m fist pumping for aliveness! 

Love,

Lindsay Jean

 

 

 

Your Full Self Workshop with Carey Baker

I’m excited to share with you that my friend Carey Baker and I are joining forces for good to bring you a creative yoga and coaching workshop. 

When coaching was first just a tiny little seed of a dream for me, I called up Carey and asked for her guidance. And I remember that she put a word to it that just hit home for me: it’s about being alive. The same is true of my yoga practice: I do it because it makes the rest of my life brighter. Because it makes me feel the full blessing that it is to be living this life. To bring these practices together and to do it with my favorite spiritual gangster is an honor. Carey is such a bright light. She is fiercely committed to celebrating aliveness and she is, quite literally, a master coach. 

So what is this workshop about? This workshop is about waking up to your full self. It’s about dropping the armor, determining what really matters to you about how you live your life, and wearing it on your sleeve. Or shouting it out loud. It’s yours — use it in the way that lifts your spirit. 

We’d love for you to join us. Drop me a line if you have any questions. 

Love,

Lindsay Jean

 

Say No to Your Shoulds, Coulds, Woulds, and Maybes

For years, I’ve had an on-and-off relationship with my seated meditation practice. It’s that thing I know I ought to do but just don’t (not for any sustained amount of time, at least). And, worse, it’s felt like a dirty little secret: a yoga teacher who doesn’t meditate every day? FRAUD!  

“Maybe I’m not trying hard enough,” I think. Or, “maybe it’s just not that important to me.” 

Reasonable maybes, as far as maybes go. But I think there’s a better one:

Maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way. 

My clients each have their own list of shoulds, coulds, woulds, maybes (SCWMs). They should do yoga because their aunt told them it’s good for them…but they just don’t like it. They could be more loving to their partner. They would like to eat more vegetables. Maybe when they have more time?

There’s no substitute for eating more vegetables, sorry folks. 

But as far as the rest of the SCWMs go,

Most of us don’t need another

item on our agendas.

The list is too damn long already. 

Let’s look at the SCWMs in a different light: how are you already doing these in your daily life? It might not show up in the format you are expecting. Look more closely. 

For example, the big should on my shoulder is a daily meditation practice.

Mindfulness isn’t just something you do when you’ve finally got some peace and quiet.

For me, mindfulness is about being more awake, more alive, and more connected. So I came up with a list of ways that I can practice mindfulness — ways that are aligned with how I actually want to feel each day: playful, curious, with love, with integrity. As with most practices, the point isn’t perfection. I’m not aiming for 10/10 each day, but if I look closely enough I usually find most of ’em in my life most days. And that’s good enough for me. I think of it like planning for a trip: make a good game plan. Book your reservations. Don’t forget your passport and show up on time. Arrive at your destination. Unpack. And then forget the game plan. You’ve made it. Enjoy! 

• Delight in something: my grandma passed away recently. At her service, everyone kept saying things along the lines of, “Jean never met a stranger.” “Jean loved to dance.” “Jean had the prettiest blue eyes.” She was delightful. There is absolutely something good about finding pleasure in life. 
• Take pride in something: I added this one after Alexandra Franzen tweeted about it. I like it. It’s important to me. 
• Give love and kindness: Pretty self-explanatory, right? 
• Receive love and kindness: Because I need it too — we all do. 
• Breathe deeply and take time for reflection: This can happen anywhere! I’m a big fan of taking long walks (and leaving my iPhone at home). 
• Say hi to the sun!: Sunshine makes the spirit big and free. 
• Honor creative pursuits: Mine and those of others. Lately I’ve been reading poetry before bed and taking more time to write. 
• Honor your body: Maybe it’s going yoga, maybe it’s walking out of a Bar Method class. Or taking a rest day when I need it. My body knows. Listen. 
• Say, “No, thank you”: Sometimes you have to say no so that you can…
• Say, “YES!”: to what matters! 

That’s mine —  take what works and forget the rest!

Love,

Lindsay Jean

Link Love // Celebration Friday Vol. 4

Hello!

It’s been a wild week. You just gotta go for it sometimes, you know? 

Kate is doing a Sister Sciences (yoga and ayurveda) challenge. She is so knowledgeable and passionate, I promise you’ll learn a lot — and it’s not too late to join her! 

Chani’s astrology blog 

My kinda church

How to win friends and influence people online

This Friday, I’m celebrating new partnerships (more on that soon), dreaming big, taking risks, and those first glimpses of summer that make you feel like anything is possible. Hallelujah! 

Love,

Lindsay Jean

Is it Intrinsically Rewarding?

“Lindsay!” I heard a familiar voice shout out this morning. I was rounding a corner in a huff, having just exited the Bar Method thirty minutes into the hour-long class. “What are you doing here?” asked my friend Trish. 

“I just left the Bar Method. I couldn’t stand one more minute in there.” 

Trish laughed, “Yeah, you don’t look that happy.” We commiserated for a few minutes and (what were likely a few expletives from me later) parted ways.

I wanted to like it — I really did. I tried different teachers and different time slots, but…no.

“Ladies! Think about those 6 pack abs!” the teachers would inevitably shout. “Lift those heels higher! It’s almost swimsuit season!”

It’s almost swimsuit season. I recently joked to my best friend that my new fitness strategy mostly involved wearing long sleeve t-shirts. I’m so glad I live in San Francisco where that’s pretty much a necessity year-round. It’s not that I don’t care about my physical health or my appearance, but…

I don’t want a smaller ass at the expense of a smaller spirit. 

I am continually checking back in with my theme for the year: enthusiasm. If I can’t do it just for the joy of doing it, it isn’t worth doing unless it needs to be done. The promises of potential extrinsic rewards aren’t enough. It just doesn’t stick.

Put simply: more time and energy on what matters and what I LOVE, less time and energy on everything else. 

We all do this, of course. Finding balance and prioritizing are often at the top of the list of what my coaching clients want to work on. Inevitably, we find that they’re putting effort into things that don’t matter to them. Putting effort into these things ends up detracting from what does matter to them.

What if you stopped doing the things that don’t matter to you? 

Do what you love. 

With love,

Lindsay Jean

 

Link Love // Celebration Friday Vol. 3

Hello! 

Sarah launched an Indiegogo campaign to take the Identity Project on the road. WAHOO! Please send her your support! 

Don’t fuck up the culture — great read from Airbnb’s Brian Chesky

Activate Your Community from my pals at Signal Camp

Your kindness is good for you

You are the journey – Carey Baker

Ellen Page renamed people’s dogs on twitter this week and it was pretty hilarious

“We showed you using SCIENCE!” – great Dove parody

The limits of no pain, no gain

My Celebration Friday is that I get to spend some good quality time with my hilarious, witty, brilliant, gorgeous sister, Mickenna this weekend. She makes me laugh like no one else. She’s creative and bright and such a go-getting entrepreneur. I’m so proud of who she is and excited to see what she does next. Mickey, if you’re reading this, there’s no one else I’d rather hang out with in the ‘burbs than you. 

Love,

Lindsay Jean

Ditch the Devil on Your Back

“And it’s hard to dance with the devil on your back, so shake him off…”

– Florence + The Machine

Self-doubt. Fear. Anxiety. Stress. Not knowing. Unworthiness. In my life and coaching experience, even the most confident and capable people struggle with these challenges from time to time. I’ve written about some of the tools we use in coaching and today I want to share a little more about the Saboteur. Or, as I think of him: the mean monkey.  The mean monkey is the voice that says, “You don’t deserve that. Who do you think you are?” The mean monkey hurls insults at you and steals from your spirit. He swings from tree to tree — thought to thought — climbing to dizzying heights, taking you far away from your groundedness.

Whether you call him the mean monkey, the Saboteur, or the devil on your back, it’s a different name for the same shady character. And it’s one skill to observe that the mean monkey has taken over, but it’s a whole other set entirely to know how to ditch that devil. 

1. Don’t feed the monkey. Step away from the monkey! Seriously. Just like you can’t have a rational, logical conversation with a crazy person, you can’t have a reasonable chat with your mean monkey. Because he’s mean. He doesn’t play fair and he doesn’t have your best interests at heart. Do not engage. 

2. Ask for help. Never, ever, ever worry alone. Promise me! Worrying alone gives the mean monkey free reign to sabotage and terrorize you. Saying that we need help and that we can’t do it all by ourselves makes us vulnerable, no doubt about it. But it also gives the people who care about us the opportunity to show up. And what is worrying for one becomes connection, empathy, and problem-solving for two. 

3. Come back to what you love. Honor what is good in your life. We don’t do this to ignore what’s wrong — far from it. We do it build the resonance around what’s right. Shifting the focus even a little bit in this direction will feed what matters most. What matters to you? What’s important about the way you live your life?

4. Think of your future self. You don’t have to have your 5 year plan all worked out to do this one. Even if the now you is totally lost, please know that somewhere within you there is a deep understanding of what you really need. Your future self is going to be just fine. I know that my future self has lots of space to create. Now, I don’t know what that looks like in actuality and it still feel really far away sometimes. But I believe that my future self will have that. That it is accessible and attainable because I have the tools and drive to make it happen. I’m making choices in that direction, not just for the now me but for my future self. 

5. Shake him off! Dance. Turn up the music so loud you can feel it rattle in your bones. Sing along. Do yoga. Go for a walk. Get your feet on the ground or up in the air. Shake your ass. Break something, burn something. Sometimes you need to destroy to create. Sweat a little. Cry as much as you need. Shake it out. Make time to breathe; to feel what you feel. Let it find it’s way out. ‘Cause it’s hard to dance with the devil on your back…

Love,

Lindsay Jean

 

Link Love // Celebration Fridays Vol. 2

Hi honeys,

Did you see the Blood Moon on Monday? My friend Geri-Ayn took a great photo from Grizzly Peak.

Let it crack and love the light coming in. Beautifully said, MB.

Check out Scavenger Hunt — I love their sound. You can buy their EP here. Run don’t walk! Way to go, Jill.

More in amazing things my friends are up to: Ashley is leading the Dare to Be Seen and Heard conference to help women deliver their message with confidence. 

On that note: “Success, it turns out, correlates just as closely with confidence as it does with competence. No wonder that women, despite all our progress, are still woefully underrepresented at the highest levels.”

“You’re connected to…the universe, because every cell in your body was cooked in the hearts of stars. We are star stuff, my dad famously said, and he made me feel that way.” Beautiful piece, and quite timely for me personally, by Sasha Sagan.  

Seen from above

“In my view, the people who are happiest are the people who do things for others.” – Marc Benioff (I also like his point: “If you can get 14, you can get 100, and if you can get 100, you can get 1,000.” — what else can we all apply that to?)

The complex housing problem in SF by Kim-Mai Cutler. 

This makes me cry too! (I’m an easy mark, though)

Chelsea makes Google Glass look good!

Those gams! That joy! This, of course, also made me cry.

I wholeheartedly agree, Elizabeth Gilbert.

Case in point: Trish’s story about Imperial Day Spa (my, uh, exuberance makes a cameo).

You filed your taxes (hopefully). Congratulations! Now this is where the money went.

Celebration Friday is hard for me today. My heart is heavy as I celebrate the life of my Grandma Jean, who passed away on Monday evening. My grandparents emigrated from Scotland when they were about my age, with four young boys in tow (they had another after they arrived). They are courageous. Adventurous! And kind: everyone is welcome at their home. And they are fun. Grandma Jean loved to dance. She loved a good card game and her afternoon biscuits (that’s cookies for you non-Scots). She had a truly special sparkle in her eye. Mischievous, playful, curious. Even in the midst of her decline, she had a remarkable aliveness and awakeness to her. She truly enjoyed life — what more can you ask for, really? She is missed and loved. And I celebrate her, because boy did she love a celebration! I wrote about my grandparents 64 year marriage here and about my grandma here.

Grief is just the strangest thing. One moment the water is still and calm and there’s just the slightest breeze to remind you of the crispness of it all. That you are alive and someone you love is not. And out of nowhere a tidal wave washes over you and it’s so heavy it hurts to breathe. And the world goes on — that’s the strange part. Happily so, even. Lucy and Greg are engaged! Babies are on their way. Joyful things. We’re all being created and destroyed all of the time. And it’s just so wonderful and so terrible too. 

Wishing you so much love and life and laughter and joy. You are here. Celebrate!

Love, 

Lindsay Jean