There are many exercises available on how to 1) vision possible futures, 2) identify strengths and passion, and 3) determine what to do first on your journey. I have blogged on these topics and Google can suggest many sites with techniques you can try.

An off-beat idea is to study your regrets. We tend to want to forget our regrets. I’ve read lots of quotes telling me not to have regrets (which is humanly impossible) or that regrets are just lessons (maybe, but they are still regrets).

The more you experience life, the more you look back on decisions you made with the sense that if you only knew then what you know now, you would have chosen differently. There is great wisdom in hindsight.

Yet hindsight can give you great foresight if you study your regrets.

What are you sorry for that you did or did not do? The answer to this question can give you great insight on what could be missing in your life.

Of course, there is no purpose in beating yourself up, again, for the decisions you made in the past. You had a reason you believed in. What you can do is use the loss you still feel to help you focus on what you want to create this year and beyond.

Consider these questions:

1. What do I miss or wish I would have done? Can I factor these losses into my plans for this year?
2. Do I still feel guilty for not doing something I think I should have? Is there a way I can complete this situation this year so I can move on whole-heartedly?
3. What is still stopping me now from doing what I really want to do or getting what I want? What can I do to remove these obstacles?
4. Have I set the right standards for my own success? Maybe I’m not celebrating what I have today regardless of what I thought it should look like. And if I want more for myself, can I clearly paint that picture looking forward instead of backwards?

If you call up and clearly identify what you regret, you can use this information to help you focus on the future. Your regrets can help you make major life decisions.

What insights do your regrets give you?

During the last hours of the flight, I had the options of staring at the flight map or writing a blog post.

As I slowly pulled my computer out of my bag, my Scientific American Mind magazine fell out. I had finished reading the issue but thought I would flip through it for inspiration. Then I found the article called Half Asleep.

The article described the research showing that even though you may be good at keeping yourself awake to cross one more thing off your to-do list, parts of the brain flips over into a sleep-like state when you are tired.

Do you ever feel like a part of your brain is dozing off even though you keep tapping your keyboard? It’s likely your neurons are only partially firing.

So why bother writing when you are sleepy? You will only have to edit or redo it when you fully rested.

I put everything back in my computer bag, selected my Sleep Playlist on my iPod, and closed my eyes with no guilt. I wrote this post in the lounge on my layover after my nap, a cup of tea and a chair massage in the express spa in the terminal.

Happy Holidays!! I dare you to turn off the email on your phones and shut down your computers for a few days. And I wish you many wonderful naps.

Second, I’ve been reflecting on how best I can serve you with this blog. I thought refining my focus would help me find the inspiration to write while giving you useful ideas and perspective.

I decided to base this blog on what shows up as “The Theme of the Week” when I’m teaching or coaching. There always seems to be one major theme that shows up for all my coaching clients on specific days. It is often carried over into my teaching.

The theme of this week was Making Major Life Decisions. This is  a common theme for my clients since I attract Wanderers.

You make decisions all day long, many of them unconscious based on your past experiences, such as what to do first when you first wake up and what steps you take to drive your car out of the driveway. Other decisions require some deliberation, such as what clothing to wear or what street to turn onto.

Your major life and work decisions are more time-consuming, brain-confusing and scary enough to make a normally-confident woman feel as if she has gone mad.

The problem is that you want to make “the right decision.” Most likely, there is no possible way for you to know at this moment  what will happen to you in the future regardless of what choice you make.

The only data you have is what you know to be true and how you feel about each choice RIGHT NOW. Everything else is speculation that may or may not come true.

Most of the decisions my clients bring to me relate to job or career choices. Most often, their current situation is tolerable if not good. Otherwise the choice would be easy. Therefore, the new option they are facing has some benefits today and paints a cool possibility for the future.

It’s the future possibility that messes with your mind. There is no way of knowing if this will be the chance of a lifetime or a big mistake.

Regardless, your decision-making is a crap shoot. There are pros and cons for each decision. Therefore, contrary to what a lot of coaches would do, I ask my clients to go to the dark side instead of focusing on the best possibilities.

First, let me say that it is likely that no decision will be wrong. You  struggle most with decisions that offer two or more good options. Your angst with leaving a bad option is another issue altogether.

Therefore, when you can’t make a choice among good options, know that whatever you choose will turn out alright. You may have regrets for what you didn’t choose but that’s life. The more we age, the more regrets we can count up even when the decision we made was the best at the time. So my first question is:

1. Which choice will leave you with more regrets?

If the answer isn’t clear, I ask:

2. Looking at each choice, how difficult will it be to move on if it doesn’t work out? There is always another step beyond your current choice. Consider your choice as a part of the path instead of the destination.

3. If you had no choice and had to leave what you are doing today, would you be grateful for the new opportunity or just relieved to have the choice made for you? New opportunities are not necessarily gifts or omens sent by the universe. They show up when you do good work. You are not being ungrateful if you turn down an opportunity. You will get more offers in the future.

4. Which choice could leave you feeling more lonely, really? Although you may be offered a fabulous new challenge, you want to make sure your support system is intact regardless. It is easier to deal with disappointments when you have family, friends and a coach to reach out to. However, remember that you can deal with loneliness most anywhere so don’t use this as an excuse to relax your fear. Be realistic with this answer; it’s important.

No decision will be perfect. Most decisions seem to work out in the end. You aren’t crazy. You are blessed to have options for your life. So make your choice and hang on for the ride. You could be facing a similar decision next year.

I am a person who thinks I control my time and I have to manage it well. It is times like this I realize that controlling time is an illusion.

I only have control of what I do with time, right?

I am in Copenhagen. My functional notion of time is based on the United States, where time doesn’t change until next week. Europe switched over last night while I slept.

The person who lost out because of this change was my partner, Karl, who waited in Arizona as a slept another hour in Denmark before I was up for our morning/night check in Skype call. Sorry Karl.

I benefited because even though I set the alarm for the amount of sleep time I believe my body needs–and I have this notion I won’t sleep any longer–my digital clock made the change and my biological clock happily overrode my brain. I easily slept for another hour.

In fact, after I finally got up and talked to Karl, I realized I had nothing pressing to do until the afternoon. So I went back to sleep. Glorious!

Once again, I am reminded that time just is. I decide if I don’t have enough time to get everything done. I also decide to forget about time and go with what feels wonderfully right in the moment.

In the long run, the most important things always get done.

If for some reason some of my tasks don’t get done, then I need to look further as to why I am making myself do things I don’t like to do or what made me drop those things to the bottom of the to-do list. Can I plan my life to decrease what I don’t like and focus more on what brings me joy, a sense of purpose, and a feeling that time doesn’t matter?

If I am procrastinating on doing something, what is keeping me from choosing this work? Is it the nature of the work or the people I have to connect with that makes my brain flee to other, possibly time-wasting tasks?

I am making decisions all the time about time. How can I be more aware of these decisions?

Can I take some “should do” items off the list?

Do I have a vision of what I want to create for myself in 3-5 years? If so, do my tasks help me to reach this vision? If I don’t, is it time to create a vision or update an old one that doesn’t serve who I am today?

What I realized while I lie in my bed this morning: Quit trying to manage time.

The better I manage my life, making sure I am healthy, happy and feel fulfilled by my work, the less time is a problem.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. Do you have time to write a comment?

He didn’t live to fit into the system. He lived to create what he thought was possible.

Quoting Stewart Brand, editor of the Whole Earth catalog, Jobs told the Stanford graduating class to “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” How can you live by these wise words especially in times of economic problems and dark omens of the future?

For me, the most significant word is not hungry or foolish, but “stay.”

No person has accomplished great things without a passion for their work and strong beliefs that what they are doing is right and good for many.

And even with passion and conviction, there has to be endurance. I recently heard education expert Sir Ken Robinson say, “We live in a veil of beliefs and values.” If your life’s work is about lifting the veil so others can see the beauty of what else is possible, then you need to know how to persist even when it feels futile.

The Dalai Lama said, “To be born at all is a miracle. What will you do with your life?”

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

If money weren’t an issue, what change would you like to make? What movement would you like to create or add your voice to? What were you once passionate about but gave up hope?

Is there any reason that you would like to say, “Oh yeah, I’ll show you!” Great things have come out of the desire to prove others are wrong about us and our ideas.

Could it be that you haven’t stepped out or you gave up because what you tried didn’t seem to work?

Maybe it’s time to try again. Start small. Prove what you know is right with little experiments so you have inspiring data instead of just an idea.

Find people to work with that support your point of view. Stay away from people who tell you to play it safe.

Steve Jobs left a legacy that I believe is critical for women to live into. We must stay hungry and foolish to create a world where everyone can live up to their greatest potential. Will you join me in realizing this vision?

That is why I haven’t written in a while. And I probably will be barely above silent throughout the rest of the year until this monster project I am working on is complete.

That being said, I read a Harvard Business Review Tip of the Day last week that I had to share with you. It is called, Beware of the 3 Double-Edged Traits of High-Achievers. For those of you who are like me — you love what you accomplish but can get lost in the process — here are three potholes to watch out for on your journey (the quotes came from the tip posted on Sept. 19th):

• Disconnected. You don’t have to do everything yourself. Ask for help. Share what you are working on with others. “Collaborate or you’ll feel alone.”
• Craving positive feedback. Because you love the applause for your good work, you may obsess over criticism, even when it’s included with positive feedback. “Don’t let one constructive piece of input overshadow everything you hear.”
• Discontent. No matter how much you accomplish you have a nagging feeling that you could have done more. You may even over-edit your work just to make sure. “Set realistic goals and take satisfaction in achieving them.”

This tip was adapted from Managing Yourself: The Paradox of Excellence by Thomas J. DeLong and Sara DeLong.

You can sign up here to get the HBR Management Tip of the Day. I get both the Tip and the Daily Stat. In my crazy, busy day of trying to excel at everything I promised to do, I still find the few minutes I need to read these gems.

Even though I wasn’t attached to winning (I represented the older generation), once the ball touched my hands I felt the urge to show off what I knew about bowling. I was never an expert bowler, but I was a respectable league member in my twenties. Never mind that I had not bowled for thirty years. It’s like riding a bike, right?

My confidence quickly melted. I knocked down one pin in my first frame. Six in the next and then back down to two in the third frame. Halfway through the game, my score was a measly 21.

Nothing I did seem to work when I tried to adjust my throw. So I quit being frustrated, laughed at myself and decided to bowl backwards. I moved across the alley and threw the ball from the other side, opposite from where I was used to.

This time, I threw a spare. Then I had two strikes in a row. Then another spare. I ended the tenth frame with a spare as well. I cheered as I my final score of 115 showed up on the screen.

This was a great reminder to me that when I give up knowing, pushing and expecting, magic can happen.

When I quit knowing what to do and believing I know better how things get done than my family, friends and colleagues, I am free to explore and learn. I am free to see new possibilities. I am free to have fun.

What can you give up knowing today?

Life is much more fun and magical when you are curious to learn and experiment instead of already knowing what to do.

This was the announcement I heard as I walked through the airport. About every three minutes, I heard,

“Bend Over, you have a message waiting…”

I smiled each time. Everyone around me laughed and smiled as well.

Many people remarked that “some kids were having fun.”

Yet everyone thought it was funny.

I had just left a plane where I sat next to a young German girl, about ten years old, traveling alone from Frankfurt to Charlotte. She spoke no English. Yet my smiles reassured her. And when she laughed at the cartoons and animated movies during the flight, I couldn’t help but peek at her screen to see what was so funny. I wanted to laugh too.

Laughter is multi-cultural and never gets old. All people laugh at all ages. Even my mother who had lost her ability to speak as her Alzheimer’s advanced still smiled and laughed when I took her to feed the ducks.

Faith can connect and give people hope. So does laughter. I were to put faith and laughter side by side, I would say they are equally powerful. And laughter can be more contagious than faith to those who are resistant. It’s hard not to smile when someone around you is laughing. I believe they both work miracles.

Open your heart today by finding things to laugh at and sharing what you found with others.

And the next time you see the paging phone at the airport, have the guts to pick it up and send a message to Ima Joker.

As women, we are always told to stand up for our ideas and values. I continue to read articles that say women back down too often.

On the other hand, my female clients tell me their problem is picking their battles.

Their problem is knowing both:

1. How to stand up for themselves in a way that doesn’t make other people wrong (unless that is the intention).
2. When to not take a comment or action personally and let it go.

The first problem deals with the tone and reason for standing up for yourself. In working with the archetypes, one of my clients found she identified with the Warrior too often. Whenever someone suggested something that triggered her to react, she took out her sword and cut off their head with her words.

On further exploration, she found that when people didn’t agree with her well-researched work or they kept presenting a different perspective with no attention to hers, her brain interpreted their interpolation as disrespect for her intelligence and a devaluing of her experience.

First, we worked on her awareness—sensing the anger in her body before she opened her mouth. When she could catch this, she would then breathe and choose one word to focus on. In this case, it was the archetype she wanted to develop—the Collaborator.

With this new perspective, she asked more questions before she went on the attack. Then she could determine if there needed to be a comparison of perspectives she could then use to work toward a compromise OR if she needed to take a more direct approach. If she then surmised that her position was not being valued, she could choose to stand up for herself with a more direct message or question to determine why her position was not being taken seriously.

Second, working on her awareness also gave her room to determine if the comment that triggered her anger was worthy of her energy. Some annoying people are not really harmful. And sometimes one question can clarify the true intention of someone’s actions or words.

One of my clients was angry at her boss for not inviting her to a dinner that the rest of the team attended. When she asked about it, he gave her the name of the administrator who created the list. It was an oversight that had no personal meaning. Be careful of assuming the worst.

This leads me to the last tip—assume good intention. Even if you aren’t feeling compassionate, can you first assume good intent? This will open you to being more curious than reactive. From this perspective, you can best choose your battles.

What tips do you have for choosing when and how to stand up for yourself?

I decided to ease up on my social media schedule the past month, so please forgive my silence.

Additionally, I did not have an Internet connection in my room, so I could only read email during breakfast and after dinner. When I finally settled into this routine, it felt so civilized.

Class didn’t start until 10:00 am, even when I taught on-site at a bank. So every morning I had the time and space to wake up after a nice sleep, get in an hour of exercise, watch the news while I dressed for the day, and then call Karl on Skype and answer my email while I ate a full, healthy breakfast. It felt so civilized.

The classes were so refreshing. Everyone was interested in learning. No one checked their email during class. We had great conversations at break and lunch. A few who spoke English connected with me on LinkedIn and Facebook so we could continue learning together in the future at leisure from home. Now that’s civilized.

When I released the need to get more done faster, the need to fill in my time with work and the need to stay on top of everything, I was more effective at what I chose to focus on. And I felt full of energy all day long. Shouldn’t that be our definition of higher civilization?

Working from 10 – 6, or even 9-7 if you include reading email is far more civilized than my normal 5am-hit-the-ground-running until I am too tired to read the computer screen.

It made me wonder if our civilization isn’t crumbling because we cannot enjoy the lives we work so hard to create. We are so buried under “have to’s” and  commitments it’s hard to get a perspective on what is truly important. We don’t see what we miss until it is in the rear view mirror.

One of my clients told me she is always shifting at least five priorities at a time. Shouldn’t the definition of “priority” mean there is only one thing on top? We choose that one thing until we have time for the next priority.

I’ve had a lot to do since I came home but I’m trying to maintain some sense of civility in my life. Hopefully, I’ll add more value to my coaching, writing and dreaming by being more present to each task.

How can you live a more civilized life today?