How to Do It All and Keep Your Sanity

“How to Do It All: The Revolutionary Plan to Create a Full, Meaningful Life While Only Occasionally Wanting to Poke Out Your Eyes with a Sharpie” – that’s the title of the new book by our guest, Linda Formichelli.

Linda is a freelance writer and blogger. She has written for over 150 magazines and websites, including Women’s Health, Redbook, Family Circle, and Writers’ Digest, as well as authoring or co-authoring about a dozen books.

Linda really does do it all. In addition to her writing career, she has a family that includes a writer husband and ballet-dancing son. She welcomes exchange students into her home, and has three rescue cats. Linda is into yoga, meditation, manga, military sci-fi, traveling, all things spa, and baking. She also has a Master’s Degree in Slavic Linguistics from U.C. Berkeley.

What’s her secret, and how can you get some of her mojo? Click the player to listen to our discussion with Linda on The BIGG Success Show Podcast, and follow along with the show notes below.

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Aren’t women supposed to stop trying to do it all?

Linda takes on the media and women’s magazines who say trying to do it all brings on too much stress, burnout, and unrealistic expectations. While “having it all” is different for everybody, she says it is possible. Here’s How:

Experiment with your schedule
Break out of a routine trap that isn’t working for you. The typical schedule is to workout, have breakfast, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, and go to bed…there isn’t much time for anything else. Analyze what you are doing, and determine if you need to do it when you’re doing it, and as long as you’re doing it. Make little tweaks and adjust along the way to free up time for new activities.

Welcome Stress
Chronic stress is bad. But the stress you get from taking on a new challenge is good. Studies show the stress that comes from taking on a new challenge creates resilience, and it’s good for your health.

Commit to BIGG Goals
In the chapter on stress Linda talks about committing to big goals. One of the examples she gives is to commit to making fifty calls a day instead of five. Setting a goal of only making 5 calls all day isn’t very motivating. Setting a big goal lights that fire under you, and helps you get past initial fear. But don’t let a big goal stop you in your tracks! Experiment… you may need a combination of baby steps and big goals for motivation.

Create a Values Board
We’ve all heard of a creating a Vision Board, but Linda says that doesn’t go far enough. She says those are a great place to showcase your dreams. A Values Board is what she uses to stay focused on what’s most important in her life. Linda’s values are: Freedom, adventure, health, education and knowledge. A few of the pictures on her board to reflect them include: Pictures of travel, a picture of her son doing ballet at his school, a picture of a smoothie. When she needs motivation, Linda looks at her Values Board to focus on the work that allows her to live those values in some way. As we like to say, your what is powered by your why.

Change your self-talk
1) “Think ‘And’ instead of ‘Or’”
(2) “Think ‘And’ instead of ‘But’”
(3) Use “do” instead of “try”

We thank Linda for sharing some thought-provoking insights with us. Find her new book at How To Do it All online here: www.howtodoitallbook.com.

Thank you for listening and reading! If you found this article helpful, please feel free to share it.
– George and Mary-Lynn

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file | podcast:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/biggsuccess/00925-041316.mp3