Sonia Marsh - Gutsy Living

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Now here’s a job I’d love. What about you?

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When I was five, our plane was forced into an emergency landing in a ditch at the end of the runway at Lagos airport, Nigeria. I shall always remember that glass of orange juice I was given by airport staff after the incident.
“Let’s do it again,” I said to my dad.
At eleven, I wanted to be an astronaut, like many kids, perhaps not most girls though, and at fifteen, air traffic controller was the only thing I could think of as a future career.
Planes and airports have always fascinated me and even today, at 53, I look towards the sky every time I see a plane and wonder, “Where’s it going?” For some reason, all planes are heading to a tropical location.
On my way back from the gym this morning, I heard an interview with a British author, Alain de Botton. He applied for a job as a writer in residence at Heathrow Airport. Botton has always had a fascination for airports, and my first thought was, lucky him. What a fantastic project to work on. During his interview on NPR (National Public Radio) he said, “Airports make us raw.” He said people open up and one man told him about his two families, one in Los Angeles, and one in London. How can a man have two separate families for fifteen years?

 

I love Heathrow airport Terminal 5, if you haven’t been there, I think it’s the coziest terminal I’ve ever experienced. Botton was stationed there and wrote, “A Week at the Airport.”
Another interesting comment Botton made was related to how we stand in line to go through security, and most of us have a vague sense of guilt but feel absolved once we make it through. Have you felt that? I know I have.
I just signed up for the World Domination Summit in Portland, Oregon to meet other adventure seekers like myself. This is my new adventure for 2011, Chris Guillebeau, Leo Babauta, and more exciting people are attending. Life is full of Gutsy Adventures, and I’m going to make it happen. 

What would you like to work on that’s exciting for you in 2011?

What’s wrong with simple pleasures in life?

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I recently had my annual check-up and was asked a standard question on the form: How much coffee do you drink?

 

“Three cups a day,” I wrote down.
The young female doctor scanned my answers and told me to cut back to one a day. “Three’s too much,” she said in a scolding tone.
I did what I always do when I disagree with someone. I tell them, “I’m from Europe,” as though that lets me off the hook.
I’m sorry, but there are some habits I enjoy, like my coffee before the gym, my coffee around 10 a.m. with a Danish cookie, and my coffee after lunch.
I refuse to change because statistics show one year that one cup of coffee is acceptable, but three is not. And the following year, caffeine is supposed to be good for you.
Simple pleasures like coffee or tea, should be enjoyed and not used to make you feel “bad” when you’re already doing everything you can to live a healthy life like: working out, eating fresh vegetables, fruit, lean protein and no fast food.
Now that I’ve been able to vent my frustration, time for me to grab my mid-morning Peet’s coffee. If you have not heard the story I wrote called: “My Italian Lover,” (trust me; it’s related,) you might enjoy a laugh.
What are your simple pleasures in life?

How to achieve the ideal work-life balance

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Let’s talk about work-life balance with best-selling author, 
renowned CEO and performance coach, Nigel Marsh.

When Nigel turned 40, he decided to step back from the work force and spend a year at home with his wife and four young children. “I found it quite easy to balance work and life when I didn’t have any work. Not a very useful skill, especially when you’re not making money,” he says. He then returned to work and spent the past seven years, studying the work/life balance, and came up with four observations.
Four Observations on work/life balance
1). If society is to make progress we need an honest debate. The core issue is that certain jobs and career choices are fundamentally incompatible with being meaningfully engaged on a day to day basis with a young family.There are 1,000’s of people working long hours at jobs they don’t like to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.
2). Governments and corporation aren’t going to solve the issues for us. It’s up to us as individuals to take control and design the life you want. It’s important that you never put the quality of your life in the hands of a commercial corporation. Commercial companies are inherently designed to get as much out of you as they can get away with. It’s in their DNA. We have to be responsible for setting and enforcing the boundaries that we want in our life.
3). We have to be careful with the time frame that we chose upon which to judge our balance. We need to be realistic. You can’t do it all in one day.
We need to elongate the time frame without falling into the trap of thinking
I’ll have a life when:
  • I retire.
  • My kids have left home,
  • My wife has divorced me,
  • My health is failing.
  • I’ve got no mates or interests left.
A day is too short; after I retire is too long. There has got to be a middle way.
4). We need to approach balance in a balanced way. Other parts to life are:
  • The intellectual side
  • The emotional side
  • The spiritual side
To be balanced we need to attend to all areas.Nigel tells a story about spending time with one of his four kids. He took Harry to a park, then to eat pizza. Back home he gave him a bath, read him a story and tucked him into bed. As Nigel left Harry’s room, Harry said, “Dad,this has been the best day of my life. EVER.”

“I hadn’t done anything. Hadn’t taken him to Disneyworld or bought him a PlayStation,” Nigel remarked.
Nigel points out that small things do matter.“Being more balanced doesn’t mean dramatic upheaval in your life. With the smallest investment in the right places, you can radically transform the quality of your relationships and the quality of your life. Moreover, I think it can transform society.””We can change society’s definition of success away from the moronically simplistic notion that the person with the most money when he dies wins,to a more thoughtful and balanced definition of what a life well lived looks like.”

“And that I think, is an idea worth spreading.”
So what are your questions or comments for Nigel?
I highly recommend his book, Fat, Forty and Fired. I shall post his responses to your questions in a future blog post. (Nigel has a deadline for his upcoming book.)
Thanks so much for your interest on this fascinating topic of work- life balance.

What is Panic-itis? I’m letting you in on my secret

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 Woman's Thoughts Pictures, Images and Photos

Lately, I’ve been suffering from a case of panic-itis. Now there are two ways I can handle this topic: 

  1. The Professional Way, “Five Simple Ways to Fight off Panic-itis,” or
  2. The Gutsy Way, “Say it like it is.”

Which one would you like to hear? Well, tough! Today you won’t get the professional way. My head feels like taking the easy route. 

So what’s going on? What are the symptoms of panic-itis?

  • A night with blog topics floating around my mind. Which one to pick? Thankfully one popped out.
  • 684 e-mails in my inbox. (Oops. I should perhaps not have revealed this, but don’t worry, I’ve taken care of all of them.)
  • Researching improvements I would like to make with my blog in the future.
  • Panic-itis over perfecting my final query letter to submit to agents. It has to be ready before my kids come home in two weeks.
  • A book proposal? How about a business and marketing plan? That’s easier for me to write.
  • Wondering how I can get 2,000 subscribers so I can impress a future agent and publisher. Now wouldn’t that be super. I’d be grateful if you would like to subscribe thus helping me promote GutsyWriter.
  • Panic-itis on how to use Twitter effectively. Great advice from GetintheHotSpot.

Now it’s time for the sun to come out and shine on Miss Footloose for being the featured success story on the Expat blogger website. Many of my blogger friends know her blog: Life in the Expat Lane. She is a brilliant writer and her stories always make me laugh.This is where I go when I want to get rid of my panic-itis.


What about you? Are you suffering from panic-itis?

Do you believe in setting goals for yourself?

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Marathon Runners
“Whenever you take a step forward, you are bound to disturb something.” INDIRA GANDHI

December is a busy month with added pressures. It is also a time to reflect on what you’ve accomplished during the past year and your goals for the upcoming year. I have come across two interesting theories why it’s important to set goals, and why it really doesn’t matter. You decide.
1. Why you should set goals in your life.
Are you already disciplined and organized? Do you follow a set of goals like the ones below?
  • One-Year Goals: You review your list a few times a year, and have specific categories like fitness, writing, income, travel, family, etc.
  • Five-Year Goals: The “big things” you hope to accomplish, and review once a year.
  • Lifetime Goals: Your bucket list, everything you want to accomplish in your life. You also review this once a year. What memories do you want to have when it’s your time to say “goodbye?” What would you regret not accomplishing?
Chris Guillebeau admits that people who seem to get a lot accomplished, like he does, are not super disciplined but have been able to “create a structure around work” that allows for improvisation. Chris, my new hero, says he takes goals seriously and does work hard, but this is usually a result of him building a good structure to begin with.
2. Why you should not set goals in your life.
On the other hand, Leo Babauta, the author of the popular blog ZenHabits, takes a different approach. He completely changed his life a couple of years ago. At first he focused on goals. He was overweight, a smoker, sedentary, completely stressed and deeply in debt. Goals helped him change his life around and he was then able to run several marathons, get out of debt and start a very successful blog ZenHabits. Now Leo says, “I’ve pretty much given up on goals, though I’m still learning how that works.”
Listening to Leo Babauta talk on FitMarriage I was struck by his statement regarding letting go of goals, and getting away from goal setting. For example, instead of saying, “I shall lose twenty pounds,” Leo recommends focusing on the enjoyment right now, rather than on your future goal. “When you do it that way,” Leo says, “You’re not fixated on where it will get you.” He believes in starting as small as possible, even with exercise. Just five minutes, don’t think one hour.
Leo says, “We give (goals) a lot of credit for our accomplishments, but they didn’t do the work. They might have given us a direction, but in the end, the work is done on a daily basis.”
As Leo points out, “Even with goals, some people aren’t going to achieve anything, because they haven’t figured out how to motivate themselves. Goals don’t do that for you — they just make you feel guilty that you haven’t gotten them done.”
So my advice is to follow what Indira Ghandi said, take a step forward, preferably a Gutsy one. After all, who wants to stand in one place?
Are you a goal setter? If so what’s your style? Any tips are welcome to help us get moving.

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