Showing posts with label michele woodward. Show all posts
Showing posts with label michele woodward. Show all posts

Friday, March 23, 2012

Michele Woodward -- Managing Change

Michele Woodward

I'm always looking for people who have positive insight about life and its surprises.  An office friend told me about Michele Woodward and how she is a fantastic life coach.  I read her blog (www.michelewoodward.com) and have found that she almost always presents a fresh perspective on how to get out there and do whatever it is I need or want to do. 

Michele doesn't just talk the talk.  She has also walked the walk.  She is a divorced mother of two teenaged children, so her down-to-earth advice is not clean and dry theory; it's based in real life, rolling up your sleeves and being in the trenches experience.

I loved the following inspirational post from Michele's blog and I hope you do too!:

From Here To There
By Michele Woodward
March 11, 2012

I am rather smitten with the idea of transformation.

Utterly fascinates me.

It fascinates me how common things like today's newspaper gets recycled into tomorrow's paper towels.  Like how left over table scraps can become food for tomorrow's flowers.

Magical things fascinate me, too, like how simple trial and error leads to a new invention that changes the world.  Like the light bulb.  Or the internet.

To some of these things we say, "Yes, but..."

Yes, but nature's way of doing things - has nothing to do with me.

Yes, but that's somebody like Thomas Edison.  That's somebody like Steve Jobs.  Not somebody like me.

Rarely, it seems, do we say, "Yes, but...I can do that, too."

But it's more than possible.

You absolutely have the power to transform things.

You.

An you can do it all by yourself, when you think about it.

You can transform the challenge of sickness into the relief of healing, just by talking about it in a different way.

As in, "I am on my way toward remission."

You can transform the stress of working with a difficult person into calm productivity, just by managing your own energy and being an advocate for yourself.

As in, "I am not jumping into that drama with him.  No, I am not."

You can transform your business from struggling to succeeding, just by focusing on your strengths and what really matters.

As in, "Despite the advice of marketing gurus, I know I am an introvert and not at my best in large networking events.  I'm going to meet people my own way."

It's daunting and a little confusing to think that you have any power to change anything.  Because so many of us have lived our lives believing we're at the mercy of others.  That power belongs to someone else.  That we're small, insignificant, unable.

But we're not.

I know you're not.

The power to transform -- to shift one thing into another -- is your greatest superpower.

And, if you open your eyes and see, you will find that you use this great skill of yours every day, in ways large and small.

Every time you open a door, turn a corner, start a new document, begin a conversation, you have the ability to transform one thing into something else.

And guess what?  The more you use this superpower, the stronger it will get.

The stronger you will get.

So begin today.  Begin by transforming where you are right now, to where you'd like to be.

And that's as easy as getting up from your chair and moving some place else.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Lennon and McCartney


Paul McCartney (left) & John Lennon (right)
Ouch!  It's Monday morning and you had a great weekend, a busy weekend full of fun, and now, all of a sudden, you're back at work.

Work?  How did that happen?  Don't worry.  You're not alone.  Michele Woodward knows how you feel and she's here to give you a jump start and get you going again.

A work colleague told me about Michele and I went and checked out her website (http://www.lifeframeworks.com/) and the blog she writes for Psychology Today called Getting Unstuck.  Her straightforward writing style style and her down-to-earth message about abandoning the idea of perfection is timely and refreshing.  Not that I am seeking perfection, but there is this idea out there in the American psyche that we can do it all and have it all when in reality we can't.  Something in our lives always has to be compromised in order to do something else.  It's just a fact.

There's no theory here.  Michele know this because she's a divorced Mom.   She's a real person, facing real challenges, like a real adult with responsibilities.

The following link will take you to a column of hers about John Lennon and Paul McCartney that jumped out for me right away and I hope you like it too:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/getting-unstuck/201105/the-college-lennon-mccartney