Hope you are having an amazing week and are enjoying this summer-like weather! I’m ready for my mums, pumpkins and fall wardrove, but I’m still ok with the sun and warm weather… It’s been hectic around here with new Autumn projects both personally and professionally. But, not losing sight of flowing from values, staying focused, keeping things simple, leaving room for breathing, and the like. How are you doing with this (the Essentialism) concept?
Sometimes it’s challenging to narrow down our focus, choose our commitments, systematize our operations, protect against distractions, and capitalize on our strengths… We want to please. We want to impress. We want to be a part of it all. We find everything interesting or fun. We like to juggle and change things up. We wing it…
This is a sure way to burn oneself out, live with a lot of stress, have things fall through the cracks, not excel at what we do, not be as productive as we can be, not make an impact or get a lot of satisfaction at the end of the day. This is just a lot of busy.
We create a more meaningful and rewarding journey, and life when we:
These lenses help make the right choices for us… They invite us to operate from our Passion and from our Strengths… Our Virtues are our Character Strengths. As a parent of a teenager, and just because, I like to play with developing/identifying and honoring our character strengths, living by our Virtues… But sometimes knowing these is even challenging!
I love that we can actually measure our Character Strengths. Woohoo! So glad I found this resource. Our Character Strengths can be classified into these categories:
Wisdom
Courage
Humanity
Justice
Temperance
Transcendence
Once we know what our Virtues/Character Strengths are, we can capitalize on these as opposed to trying to be somebody we are not… We can use these to implement our Essentialism philosophy, to relate to others, to parent, to build our teams, and so on. Knowing and utilizing ourselves well makes a huge difference in our productivity and satisfaction level across all areas of our life…
And of course, knowing how we operate best and what are our Practical Strengths is also essential… If our talents are wasted we are not doing anybody any good, specially ourselves! This goes hand-in-hand with the concept of Unique Brilliance, initially developed as Unique Ability by Dan Sullivan.
When we operate from our Unique Brilliance we leverage our talents and strengths. Operating from our Unique Brilliance means we only do things we are awesome at… The rest is a waste of our time!
Focusing on utilizing our Unique Brilliance allows us to let go of the rest, to reassign, delegate, outsource… You can identify your Unique Brilliance, using the: Unique Brilliance Quadrant, sorting all the tasks on your plate by your skill/strength level. Use this to choose what you say “yes” to and what you allow on your plate, in all areas of your life… The goal is to eventually only have tasks at which you are Uniquely Brilliant!
When you start operating from this approach, you free up tons of time! You become more productive, enjoy what you do a lot more, you have more time and energy to spend with your loved ones and to pursue different kinds of fun, your everyday life becomes seamless and your life journey more meaningful. You feel more competent, awesome, energized – simply Brilliant!
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Shining!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
Complete your Unique Brilliance Quadrant, tracking all the tasks currently on your plate by if you excel or don’t into the respective quadrants. You can do one for your personal life and one for your professional/entrepreneur life.
Note, all the tasks currently on your plate that fall into the two bottom quadrants… This is what is killing your energy, stressing you out, and taking the joy out of your everyday life… These tasks should not be on your plate!
Starting with the bottom right quadrant, start reassigning, delegating, or outsourcing those tasks… Keep going till this box is empty!
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2018 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
I hope things are wonderful in your world. I hope you have been taking my advice to heart and simplifying your life. I hope you are entertaining, if not embracing, the concept of Essentialism. For in pursuing the Essentialism Lifestyle™ you allow yourself to live a fuller and more meaningful life…
There is peace, joy and abundance in the spaces in between, in the taking a breath, in the quiet, in the focusing your attention, in the saying No to the extra, in the asking for help or support. There is Flow in this… There is more bandwidth, energy, effectiveness, productivity, impact, and reward…
With a more streamlined approach to life, you get to be in the moment more. To enjoy the little things more. To savor life more. To connect with your loved ones more. And therein is the magic…
Before the Holiday Season is upon us and we wonder what happened to Autumn, let’s make sure we take this concept seriously to slow down time…, keep our sanity, or better yet to enjoy much happiness and wellness. It is with much pleasure that I bring to you the Autumn Bucket List!
This is not to do everything on the list and pack your free time with extra stuff. Rather, this is meant as an inspiration to create more free time to allow you to enjoy the good things in life… Don’t make it a goal to cross of everything on this, or your own list… Rather, look at this list for inspiration, glee, amusement and replenishment…
Take a look at your Teams – your family members, your coworkers, your colleagues, and such. What kind of team member are you? I’ll bet, because you are reading this, you tend to take on more than your share…
It’s time to own the concept of simplicity, of putting better systems and accountability in place, of working off strengths, of setting better boundaries, and of focusing on priorities. Focusing on the vital few commitments versus the trivial many is where the rubber meets the road!
Here are a few pointers towards Essentialism:
Protect your time from interruptions and distractions
Limit time with energy-zapping people or activities
Only make commitments you want to keep
Compassionately and gently tell others you can’t meet their request
Set clear expectations and accountability
Let others carry their own weight
Select your Big Focus and safeguard it from the rest
Block off “unscheduled time”
Use the “unscheduled time” to nurture yourself, to ponder, to Be
This brings us back to sprinkling joyful activities into our life. If you plan an outing with the kids or your partner in the name of sprinkling joyful activities but you end up more stressed out, tired and aggravated, maybe it’s time to reconsider how you refill your cup…
Obviously, how the activity is set up and carried out, and how the interactions are allowed to play out are important in and of themselves. But this is for another topic. In the meantime, focus on what actually gives you Joy. The benefit is exponential…
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Sprinkling!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
What areas in your life create the most chaos, are overflowing with to-dos, are the least productive, and give you the most agita?
Make a commitment with yourself to tackle this area from an Essentialism angle: streamline, cut out, set boundaries, FOCUS.
Stay on this till there is more room to breathe, then reward yourself with a super fun or nurturing activity.
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2018 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
It doesn’t fully look like Autumn yet, but it’s beginning to feel like it with the slight chill in the air and the days getting shorter. It feels cozy but not in a lazy kind of way. It feels like newness, inspiration, motivation, new beginnings. Do you feel it?
This feeling comes with an energy that rumbles, gets a grip and gnaws at you till it’s put to good use. It feels like an engine revving. I love this feeling, this is when I want to start a million new projects and have to be mindful about what I choose to take on. They all feel exciting, important, and fun.
This is when the minimalist concept I like to play with comes in. I’ve actually updated this to the concept of Essentialism… Where we focus on what is important, what gives the fastest and better results, what has the most meaning, the most value, the most impact, and such… This is one of my growth places for I like complex things, I like to be busy, I like to tackle a lot, and such… I’m known for this in my circles. LOL
But, I recognize non-essentialism and its related pain a mile away now for myself, and others. I’m aware I’m on the spectrum with this, and I like it that way. I’m not shooting for complete, pure essentialism (I might one day, one never knows!). I am though shooting for continued movement towards more sustained ease, peace and joy. And, this is where the pursuit of essentialism holds a lot of promise…
As the new season, back2school, and Q4 are here, these are dangerous times. This is when the revving rears its ugly head. In anticipation, I tackled some of this towards the end of the summer in my writing, posts, sessions, and of course my personal and professional life. But, it’s feeling imminent to be more direct and assertive about it now as I watch those around me being seduced by the allure.
There are a few factors that play out in this magnetism to our demise. We make decisions in a vacuum, we look at each instance on their own merit and not as part of the whole. We make decisions based on our values but still following the more is better approach. We pursue our commitments blind, unprepared, un-resourced, and alone. We take a “spaghetti against the wall” approach when looking for solutions.
We react, put out fires, try this and that in an effort to fix issues that are more systemic in nature. We meddle, mingle, dabble without enough knowledge and commitment for our efforts to make a difference. You get the gist. This is a life lived by default… There is no overarching structure, plan, Design…
I’m witness, as I’m sure you are, to people running from one commitment to another. They are double, and triple booked. They squeeze in something into every second of the day. They try to do it all. They say yes to everything. And, even if they don’t they say yes to a whole lot.
There is no guiding master plan. There are no in-betweens. There is no just being. There is no milking the moment. There is no ease. There is no flow. There is little inspiration. And, what little inspiration is there it can’t be acted on because there is no room to do so!
Then there is another breed, that might think they don’t fall into the category of the above because they pursue only what they want… But they way overdo that! They end up in the same boat and missing out on other Opportunities…
Where do you fit in? Is your life demanding and you are now recognizing that it’s too full, even of the good stuff? Did you have good intentions of not overdoing it again this season but here you are with a spilling over plate again? Are you so stretched out that you can’t even think straight to begin to remedy the situation?
Are you so taxed that you can’t sleep, don’t feel emotionally well, and even physically well? I have seen these people’s lives not pan out as they desired. Their health suffered. Their marriages didn’t make it. Their children were impacted. Does this make any sense, to pursue a full life that ends up being too full for our own good?
Here is where the concept of essentialism can help. Can you get on the spectrum? Can you be curious about the concept? Can you start playing with it? Can you put on the “essentialism lens” and run your decisions through it to prevent overdoing it?
Can you take it a step further and use the lens to review your current lifestyle and see what feels like too much, even of a good thing…? Start there. Start by assessing and beginning to get a grip. Then, it’s ok to let this momentum get going, and start streamlining… This is good to entertain. Your Life depends on it!
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Streamlining!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
When do you feel the most frazzled? When do you become the most irritable? When do you feel like throwing in the towel and running away? When do you collapse from exhaustion?
What commitments, projects, teams, groups, responsibilities, get on your nerves? Frustrate you the most? Zap your energy and creative juices?
What areas of your life suffer from lack of adequate attention? What areas of your life do you wish you had more time for? What areas are getting a lot of coverage and others not enough, according to your value system?
Start making the necessary adjustments to live the life you want!
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2018 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
And, how are You doing? What theme do you have currently going on? What new approach, system, structure, plan, routine, and such have you implemented for a smoother Autumn? Do you recognize any old patterns rearing their ugly head yet? What can you do differently to nip them in the bud this season? Do you have a fun theme in the mix? Mine is Socializing!
All my commitments, involvements, and projects have a Social gathering aspect attached to them right now. Ha! So fun!
It’s interesting how we might not realize how many “networks” we actually belong to. Unless we are purposefully trying to engage with a lot of people to build a business or sell Girl Scout cookies, we don’t necessarily pay attention to this. Now a days we pay a lot more attention to how many Friends we have on Facebook, Connections on LinkedIn, or Followers on Instagram.
We are a lot more focused on our Social Media audience, not even our other online communities. I guarantee you belong to at least 10 (on- and off-line), go ahead count them. The point of this is that there is so much fun and opportunities to be had when we fully engage in our world… We don’t have to reinvent the wheel, we just have to show up…
The deal is that we might get mired down with negativity in our life to the point that we don’t know how to appropriately engage in our world and actually enjoy it…
We might hold resentments, compete with ourselves and/or others, do comparisons, make judgements, strive for perfection, self-neglect and even abuse, have unreasonable expectations, be demanding and critical, be controlling, have ineffective boundaries, entertain drama, you get my drift… All these serve to sabotage our awesome life.
All these block our Light. They don’t allow us to leverage our Resources… They hold us back from our full potential. They conspire to create a mediocre and unfulfilled life at the end of the day. And we have a ton of these littering our mind every moment! We are feeding a toxic environment between our ears, that color the whole of our existence…
This negativity informs our mindset, influences our feeling state, generates our biochemistry, impacts all our organs and physiology, and that’s before we even speak with anyone or take any action…
This negativity influences all our choices, our decisions, our interactions, our behavior; our approach to everything. It is a lens we unknowingly put on that we don’t know to take off… We might have hints that we have it on, like: not feeling emotionally well, actually getting sick, being chronically ill, things not going well in certain areas of our life, having issues with people, not making progress on projects, things breaking down all around us, and such…
If you notice this going on, it’s time to take stock of what is renting space in your head… And, it’s time to start doing some evicting!
It is absolutely rewarding to start catching the negativity and shifting it, to let go of it, to stop it in its track. Notice what brand of negativity you tend to carry around and address its source. Eradicate its roots to prevent it from coming back. We don’t want you working hard at this, be smart about it. Address it and move on to the fun in life!
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Eradicating!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
List all the ways you recognize that you are negative, what negative thoughts you entertain, how you sell yourself short, how you might beat on yourself and others, and the like…
Choose a particular way you do negativity that takes a significant toll in your life to address first. Process for how this serves you…, and how it holds you back…
Then make any necessary changes to replace how it serves you… and any necessary changes to remove its trigger…, so it can no longer hold you back.
Copyright (c) 2018 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
As we continue to settle into September, Back-to-School and the Hectic/Q4 Season, it is paramount that we are in tip top shape to handle the demands and opportunities of the Season. We all have different expectations for ourselves, our relationships, our family, our home, and our business.
We all have different ambitions, wishes, and dreams. We all have different definitions of what being in tip top shape means as well. But most importantly, we all have different motivation, energy, resources, skills, support and such. We are our own worst enemy and usually hold ourselves back if we are not intentional about our approach to our life…
In your quest to get yourself in better shape to gracefully and joyfully navigate the Season, you might want to address and clear feelings that might be driving and glitching your “operating system”…
Some of these feelings include: guilt, shame, anger, resentment, rejection, loneliness, abandonment, sadness and grief. The energy generated by these feelings course through our body and inform our state. They even lodge themselves in our body when left unprocessed. This causes the body to function poorly and eventually break down, causing dis-ease (ungraceful aging and a shorter life-span to boot!)…
The issue with this is that it’s not as simple as getting over the feeling… Our thinking patterns keep generating the same feelings over and over!
Our thinking habit is the culprit. The way we choose to interpret the events in our life, the way we give up are personal power, the way we allow others to take advantage of us, the way we allow others to take us for granted, the way we plow through inconsiderate of others and the like, all generate feelings that we don’t process or address properly.
A lot of times we are aware of the feelings but continue to go about our situation the same old way in the pursuit of resolution. The same approach will always create the same result! So, unless we are proactive, intentional and mindful in our attempt to take care of ourselves and do right in our life, not much will change. If we have lofty dreams, they might go unrealized… And, what a shame that would be!
When we are habitually angry and resentful – we are the only ones hurting with our insistence of holding on to these feelings! This habitual state of being means you are processing your world with a victim, poor me, I don’t matter and the like kind of lens that generates these feelings. This lens needs cleaning and your boundaries need reinforcing…
When we generate guilt and shame feelings we are filtering our life by beliefs that don’t serve us – guilt has to do with doing what we consider a good deed, shame has to do with what we consider being a good (worthy) person… We might have all sorts of funky beliefs driving these… We need to set clearer and more compassionate expectations… Also, we might be great at guilting and shaming others. Ugh! Clean this up immediately.
We don’t want this done to us, so why would we do it to others. Through mirror neurons, what we do to others we also are actually doing to ourselves… Stopping this relational habit is the quickest way to start cleaning up the negative related energy running through our bodies…
Rejection, loneliness and abandonment are similar to anger and resentment. We can choose how we perceive the event, and most importantly how much meaning and power we give to it… We can also go about getting connection, belonging, and acceptance needs met differently than how we are expecting them to be met currently that is dissatisfying…
Sadness and grief usually follow a loss of some sort. Sometimes the loss is not so obvious, or what we traditionally would consider a loss… These include things like – loss of childhood, youth, success, progress, outcome / certain experience, what was, what could have been, etc. Transition periods cause this inherently, even when the transitions are positive.
Here our role is to honor the feeling. Rituals, traditions, processes, and the like are excellent for relieving this.
It is imperative to make sure we are in tip top shape to smoothly, effectively and productively tackle our Autumn Agenda. Addressing our feelings and our habitual feeling state is a must to get out of our own way, and ensure a peaceful, delightful and rewarding Season. Minding our feelings clears the way for a better way of Being and an enriched life. Go ahead, you’ll be super happy you did!
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Minding!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
Identify what is your habitual way of feeling…
Anger, resentment
Guilt, shame
Rejection, loneliness, abandonment
Sadness, grief
Start cleaning up your lens/script/beliefs, how you interpret events, how you allow events to impact you, how you choose to feel, how you choose to respond, how you are proactive about addressing your circumstances…
These feelings are your friend. They guide you to where you need to make changes…
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2018 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
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Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT has been in the mental health profession in varying capacities for the past 20+ years. She is the Founder and Director of metrorelationship.com a psychotherapy and coaching practice specializing in working with busy professional and entrepreneurial couples who are struggling getting on the same page and feeling connected. The work helps couples create a radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life by becoming a strong partnership and increasing their connection, intimacy, and fun. Emma is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Relationship Strategy™.
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