Tomorrow we head back to Cape Town… for a few months. We’ve come to think of our lives in 6 to 9 month “phases” that correlate with a move to another continent. For years Andy and I have had very different change cycles (He’s definitely a Revolutionary and I’ve always been an Evolutionary), but these days we’re finding that we both feel comfortable making significant changes in our lives every 6 to 9 months or so. One of the things that makes it easier for us to regularly make big changes as well as the little tweaks that have kept us aligned with what we love, is the regular “review and redirect” process we use. So if you’d like to align your life more with what you love, or get better at making big changes, here’s how we do it, along with a bit of an insight into the big and small changes Andy and I are making right now.

1.) Review

While I don’t subscribe to the traditional methods of setting SMART goals (How to live without goals), Andy and I regularly review our lives and check in that we’re doing and being what we love, or busy creating a way to do and be what we love. We have a clear sense of what’s important to us in life, and what sort of experiences we want to create. We keep our review process simple, with just one question:

“What’s working well for you?”

Notice that we don’t ask, “What’s not going well for you?” Most of us have been taught to focus on the bad stuff and what’s not going well, when we’re doing a review, but it focuses you on what you don’t want, rather than what you do want, and we end up criticizing rather than celebrating. What you focus on grows, so focus on what you want. When you focus on what you do want, that often takes care of what you don’t want and what’s not working well anyway.

So, as we get ready to move on to Cape Town, Andy and I have been having review conversations. Sometimes we sit and chat about it in a focused way, and sometimes it’s just a theme that runs across a few conversations and is integrated into our daily lives. We’ve had an amazing time in London, and been able to get a lot of what we value and hoped for out of the experience. Some of the highlights and what’s worked very well for us over the past 9 months have been:

• We’ve loved the opportunity to meet some wonderful new friends who live in London, through workshops we’ve attended, through Andy’s work, and through the online communities I hang out in.
• We both were very impacted by the impro storytelling workshop we attended, and we’re keen to learn and practice more in the storytelling domain – especially in the area of impro storytelling.
• We made good use of the access to live training with some of my favorite teachers, including Jamie Smart, Martha Beck and Nick Williams. We’ve both really enjoyed getting to know Nick, Martha and Jamie and we’re very excited that Jamie will be joining us for our building project in South Africa at the end of the year. Nick will also be in South Africa in October, running some live workshops, and Martha still runs her African STAR retreats in South Africa a few times a year. I love that some of my favorite teachers have a special heart for South Africa!
• We had a great time on our cycling holidays. We toured the Coast to Coast with our flatmates and Andy’s brother, who visited us from Cape Town, and we did a weekend bicycle tour of the Isle of Wight. It was great to take such active holidays, switch off our brains and give our bodies a good workout! And the scenery was awesome – especially in the Pennines area.
• Our trip to the USA in July and August was a major highlight for us. I attended the Martha Beck Coach Convention and got to meet all my online coach friends in person (I was especially thrilled to meet Pam Slim, Michele Woodward, Laurie Foley, Jennifer Voss, Koelle Simpson, and too many others to mention). I’m very grateful to be a part of the very supportive Martha Beck Coach community.
• While in the USA, we also took a roadtrip through Utah, Wyoming and Colorado, and I got to meet a few of my location independent online friends in person (Cherie and Chris of Technomadia and Carl Nelson from Slacker Reform), which was great. I loved, loved, loved the Utah countryside! I was also really pleased that we got to spend some precious time with my brother and his family, who live just outside Chicago. This trip was especially significant for me because it was my first “working holiday,” where I was able to test out my ability to continue my coaching business whilst traveling most days. I was very pleased at how well it went, and thrilled when my coaching clients said that they felt like I was still in London.
• We’ve both stretched our legs a lot in our work. Converting my coaching business into a location independent business was a big change for me, and I’m really pleased with the amount I’ve learned this year in areas I knew almost nothing about a year ago. I have a clear sense of direction for Mine Your Resources and I’m happy with the consistent momentum I’ve developing in my blogging, teleseminars, the Bottom-line Bookclub monthly program releases and the other programs I’m developing.
• I’m really enjoying the amazing peers I’m connecting with through my work. Recently I articulated my intention to find some of my “right people” to collaborate with, and start doing more joint ventures. I’ve loved being a part of the locationindependent.com community as one of their Resident Life Coaches, and thoroughly enjoyed interviewing experts for my monthly teleseminars and authors for the Bottom-line Bookclub, and I’d love to do more collaborative work. I’m excited about some new connections I’ve made and let’s just say, “watch this space!”
• We’re very pleased that we’ve been able to knock a huge dent into our mortgage on our properties in Cape Town. This has given us the financial freedom for Andy to take a “mini-retirement” for the next 4 months while we’re in Cape Town. He’s looking forward to learning how to use his new camera and he’ll be taking a 6-week roadtrip through South Africa and planning his building project for December.

One of our mantras is, “Never leave the scene of a success without taking some evidence with you,” and chatting about our successes and what we’re grateful for with each other is a way of affirming and celebrating them, and mentally taking the evidence with us as we move on.

2.) Redirect

While review is a process that focuses on the past, redirection is about looking into the future and clarifying what some of your intentions are for the future. The question we like to ask is:

“What would you like to experience more of, and what are you looking forward to?”

Here’s what we’re wanting to experience more of and looking forward to in this next phase:

• Spending lots of time with our close family and friends. Our parents and most of our siblings are all in Cape Town, and we’re looking forward to meeting our new baby niece. We’ll be going back to a busy social calendar, but we’re looking forward to it. We do miss them all while we’re away!
• Outdoor braais in our backyard! For the non-South Africans out there, a braai is a barbecue… except better. We make our fires with wood rather than coal or gas and part of the pleasure of the whole braai experience is the several hours of standing, chatting around the fire before and after we cook our food. If you’ve never had a real South African braai experience, then do add it to your list of things to do before you die!
• I’m looking forward to playing in my garden again! Serendipitously, our tenants gave notice, so we’re able to stay in our little cottage in Harfield Village, which we’re very excited about. Our tenants have sent us photos of the garden, which they’ve looked after very well, and we’re arriving in the Spring, just as the garden is starting to thrive. If you’re looking for me, I’ll be in the garden…
• I’m looking forward to the mountain and the sea. Every time we leave Cape Town, we realize how much we take the beautiful mountain and sea for granted when we’re living in Cape Town. This time we’ve sworn we’ll do more hiking up the mountain and swimming in the sea! I’m looking forward to my regular runs along Seapoint Promenade and the Muizenburg Catwalk.
• I’m going to play with clay! I’m really feeling the need to make art-making a greater part of my life. I’ve been obsessed with the idea of sculpting with clay again. I’ve done clay work before, and it’s not the sort of art-making that’s conducive to traveling. It’ll be ideal to play with clay again while I’m in Cape Town, where I can leave my sculptures in my garden or give them to family.
• Work-wise, I’m looking forward to getting out from behind my computer. I’ve been so focused on learning about how to make my business location independent, and establishing myself online that I only did one live talk this year. I’ll be scheduling more live talks in Cape Town.
• Expanding the Bottom-line Bookclub offering. Thank you so much to all of you who gave me feedback on the Bottom-line Bookclub – it’s really helped me to develop clarity about what to focus on and where to take it next. Within the next month or so, I’ll be launching a full membership site for the Bottom-line Bookclub and making the Bottom-lines available to purchase individually. I’ll also be adding a Premium level of membership, with some additional value adds based on what you said you wanted. As a thank you to my current members of the Bottom-line Bookclub for being early adopters, you’ll be upgraded to the Premium Membership (which will be a higher price point than the current membership), but you’ll get to keep your current membership rate for life. I’ve got some exciting titles lined up for the rest of the year, including Daniel Pink’s newest book, “Drive,” which is due to be released in December.
• Some of the other small, but important, things I’m looking forward to in Cape Town: the smell of cut grass on a hot summer evening, perusing the funky second-hand shops and coffee shops in Kalk Bay, being able to buy biltong, hearing the wide variety of different South African languages and accents, my gran’s awesome peanut butter biscuits, summer outdoor concerts at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, South Africa’s laid-back dress style (flip flops at weddings!), walking along the Greenbelt pathways in Constantia, hiking to the top of Lion’s Head Mountain and looking over the city on a full-moon night. (For those of you who are considering Cape Town as a location independent destination, look out for my chat with Lea and Jonathan Woodward in their monthly location independent podcast next month.)

But Cath, isn’t it delusional to focus on only the positive stuff?

Yes and no. There are two stages to making stuff happen:

• Deciding WHAT you want, and what you’d love to experience more of in your life.
• Creating a plan for HOW you’ll make it happen.

While you’re deciding what you love and want (reviewing and redirecting), suspend the critical, negative voice in your head, so that it doesn’t limit you and cause you to settle for something else that you don’t want, just because it seems more “reasonable.” Once you’ve listened to your heart on what it wants, then commit to that – even if you don’t yet know HOW you’ll make it happen. Then, as you start considering how you’ll make it happen, brainstorm all the stuff that could go wrong, and all your greatest fears. Write down everything you can possibly dream up. And then, when you’ve found all the problems, gaps and potential pitfalls, start working on solutions for each problem, gap or pitfall, and let that develop into your plan.

Stay agile by reviewing your life regularly

This review and redirect process is short and sweet enough that we could even do it daily if we wanted. I’m not really into the idea of setting regular review dates – I prefer to just review when I feel like it. But if that helps you to put it in your calendar to review once a week, then do it. If you’re reviewing and adapting and redirecting on a regular basis, you’ll find it easier to stay aligned with what’s important to you, you’ll get more comfortable with change in general, and you’ll find it much easier to make major changes when you want to make major changes.

So I’d love to hear from you in the comments below: what changes are you making right now? And what processes do you use for reviewing and redirecting your life?

Agile Living Blog Carnival

I’ve had some really great submissions to the Agile Living Blog Carnival already. If you’d still like to submit a post, there’s time – the deadline is 1 Oct and I’ll be publishing your articles on my blog on 6 Oct. Submit your post to the Agile Living Blog Carnival over here.

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