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By Nacie Carson, on June 30th, 2009
5 Tips to Leveraging your Time this Summer:
Have Fun and Create Prosperity
Shannon Bruce, PCC, CPT
What’s the song you’re singing this summer?
Are you singing “let’s go surfing now,” or are you singing “but there ain’t no cure for the summertime blues.”
When you read the complete lyrics to these two songs, you’ll notice a stark contrast between where each focuses. One is all about having fun and enjoying the summer while the other is about missing out on it because of work.
What if there’s a summer song that is about having both?
Is it possible to experience both fun in the sun and thriving work that’s scheduled around what matters?
The answer is a resounding “Yes!” and it’s what I love about my Uncommon Life…I get the freedom to choose and the flexibility to create the life I desire.
In my personal experience and in coaching fellow Uncommoners there is a point of balance between “the fun” and “the work” that will allow you to enjoy your summer and experience prosperity simultaneously. Below you will find five tips that will help you leverage your time as you hum a fresh and new tune this summer. Read the Rest of Uncommon Knowledge with Shannon Bruce
By Nacie Carson, on June 27th, 2009
Hey Uncommoners! The second episode of The Life Uncommon Podcast series is up and ready for your listening pleasure. The topic of this episode is Life Boards. A Life Board is the Uncommon version of a dream board, vision board, or goal board. It is basically a visual representation of what you want your Uncommon Life to look like,and the goals you are working toward. For how-to info on making your Life Board and more on why it is essential to your success, check out the episode!
To listen to this episode, simply click on the hyperlink below. An MP3 player will open within your web browser and the episode will play.
Episode 2: Life Boards
Leave your comments and thoughts about keeping your goals visible here, and tell me about your experience! Or, feel free to send me a picture of your life board at Nacie (@) TheLifeUncommon.net to share it with your fellow freelancers!
By Nacie Carson, on June 25th, 2009
Apparently today is a bit of a death day. In case you’re the last person in the world to hear it, Michael Jackson died today at age 50 of a heart attack. Farrah Fawcett, iconic actress from the ’70s also died today at 62 from cancer.
Yet death has been on my mind all day today for a more personal reason: it is the one year anniversary of the death of my friend, Christina Feeney, who died at age 19 of an aneurysm.
 My last picture with Feeney, April 2008 The anniversary of her death has been looming in my mind for several weeks not only as an event in its own right but also as a kind of benchmark for my own life. Earlier this month, I reread the blog post I wrote on the day she died and very keenly remembered my own situation last year. This time last year I was still wracked by indecision over quitting my job, TLU was little more than a month old, and I was totally consumed with digging myself emotionally and spiritually out of the lifestyle hole I had made for myself.
The truth is, the day that Feeney died was the day I decided I had to change my life.
Maybe that is why I think about her so often. She and I were friends, but in truth I never felt closer to her than after she died. We had waitressed together and for years at an Italian restaurant here in Boston, and the entire staff of the restaurant - waitresses, bus boys, managers, and cooks - was very close. We partied together, were in each other’s business all the time, fought and made up, had affairs and scandals within the group, and still somehow managed to remain a team, both on the floor and in the back of the house.
In the context of the group, Feeney and I were friends. We would joke and banter, and in her I found someone who was bright, smart, funny, honest, and confident in herself. being around her made me feel more confident, as did her easy praise and intense loyalty. As a college student, I would waitress only during my summer and winter vacations, and Feeney was always the first one to make a big deal of my return with a huge smile, a big hug, and a delighted laugh.
Outside work and work parties, we didn’t spend time together. She was younger than I, and we both had our own circles. I don’t think I ever even had her phone number and I know for a fact I she never entered my mind outside of the Bertucci’s context. Yet in death, she has become a regular fixture in my thoughts. Read the Rest of Death, Benchmarks, and the King of Pop
By Nacie Carson, on June 23rd, 2009
For those of you who don’t know, I have hypothyroidism, also known as low thyroid function. Hypothyroidism itself is very common in the slight degree - over time, it is typical for thyroid function to decrease making a person’s thyroid hormone levels dip into the technically “hypo” range, which shows itself as a bit of sluggishness, a little weight gain, and some depressed mood. Most people are right as rain with a little synthetic hormone to help the thyroid do its job.
However, I enjoy the condition in a bit of an extreme as my thyroid gland was totally removed in 2003 due to Graves Disease. This means that if my medication isn’t exactly calibrated, I get to experience such wonderful symptoms as constant fatigue, muscle aches, lack of energy, depression, and decreased motivation. The kicker is that my meds will never really be exactly calibrated, due to the constant shift of other factors in the body like hormones and dietary intake.
I have come to understand, as many other “hypos” have before me, that I can’t rely on my synthetic hormones to make me feel normal. While the medication will help get me part of the way, the rest of the responsibility lies on me to make sure I am eating the right foods, drinking the right liquids, and exercising appropriately to help my body out in every way I can to be at peak performance. Unlike you lucky ducks out there who have normal thyroid function, I need to be consistently disciplined with these things because my body won’t fill in the blanks.
But of course I haven’t been, because I am a 20-something woman who loves french fries and sugary foods. And I’ve paid the price - over the past few months I’ve felt my energy seep away, my motivation dissipate, and a desire to sleep 14+ hours a day slowly take hold. Read the Rest of Temporal Organics
By Nacie Carson, on June 18th, 2009
If I asked you to list some of the things you love, what would you include?
There are some things I could tell you that I loved right away without thinking much about it:
- Diet Pepsi
- all music by Tori Amos
- antique maps
- french fries
- paintings by Vermeer
- the color green
- orchids
- bright early mornings (which we haven’t had many of this month!)
While these things make me smile and feel happy, they are also important aspects of my authentic identity. The things you love (note: we are not talking about people here, just things) are part of who you are and how you define yourself both internally and externally. In order to really know yourself - really be authentic - you need to have a firm grasp on what really has meaning to you.
I started thinking about the relationship between what you love and authenticity last night as I was flipping through my DVD collection. At the back of the big CD binder I keep all my discs in, I found my collection of X-Files DVDS. Read the Rest of What You Love
By Nacie Carson, on June 12th, 2009
Last night I had the pleasure of being interviewed about The Life Uncommon on the popular BlogTalkRadio program, “The Wellness Experience” with Njideka Olatunde. We spent a lot of time talking about how to identify your uncommon vocation, discovering your purpose, and how to overcome and become aware of the social programming that is hindering your ability to move forward. You can listen to the who program here.
Social programming is something I’ve been reflecting on quite a bit over the past few weeks (when I haven’t been thinking of time management!). From such an early age the structure of what we should want, what we should feel, think, wear, and do with our lives is embedded in our psyches. One of the worst indications of this programming is the emphasis placed on “status” symbols (think Mercedes, Tiffany’s, Gucci).
The truth is we really aren’t aware of how deeply such structuring affects us. I still catch myself doing or thinking things not because they are authentic to me and my values, but because I think I “should” be doing them.
One of the things that we talked about on the show last night was how to challenge this program, and the best answer I can give to you is to just constantly ask yourself “Why.” Read the Rest of Interview on BlogTalkRadio
By Nacie Carson, on June 10th, 2009
Today while researching time management and organization techniques, I came across this wonderful quote by Steve Jobs:
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Couldn’t have said it better myself…though I’ve tried often (see the rest of this website for examples)!
This quotation really resonated with me, because time skills are so important to living uncommonly, and lately I’ve been needing to brush up on my skills. That first line, Your time is limited, hit a soft spot in my armor and has helped me crystallize some of the random concerns about time that I’ve been feeling over the past few weeks.
As cliche as it sounds, it always seems there is never enough time to do what I want to get done. One of the major reasons I left the rat race to begin with was the sense that there was no time to pursue the things that were really important to me, and now that I’ve been free and clear of the hamster wheel for 10 months (can you believe it?) I feel like I spend too much time looking back over my shoulder at the days and weeks that have passed thinking, “huh, where did that time go, and what have I got to show for it?”
So now I’m on a mission to beef up my time skills and the search for the ideal system is on. Read the Rest of Tracking Time
By Nacie Carson, on June 5th, 2009
Good afternoon, friends and Uncommoners. Today at our sister site, Want To Freelance, weekly columnist AC Gaughen produced a really important - and pretty scary - article that I wanted to pass on to all of you called The New Shark in the Water.
This article deals with the issue of actionable law suits against bloggers, and since I know many of the Uncommoners out there run their own sites or blogs, I wanted to make sure you had this information so you could protect yourself against this disturbing trend that is apparently gaining momentum. So thank you, AC, for this great article - this is must-know information! Read the Rest of Bloggers Beware
By Nacie Carson, on June 3rd, 2009
I can’t remember which Andrew Lloyd Webber musical used the lyric, “Sometimes it’s very difficult to keep momentum if it’s you that you are following,” but I remember that I really like that line!
Whether you are in the process of identifying, transitioning, or living your uncommon life, keeping your motivation level high is a full time, yet absolutely essential, job. After all, to strike your own path you need to have the will to beat back the brambles and underbrush in your way.
Motivation is a key skill that every Uncommoner needs to be proficient in because the truth is when you’re out there living by your own values the only thing you can count on to keep moving you forward is your own internal drive.
One of the biggest mistakes people tend to make is to depend on the reinforcement of those around them for their motivation. That’s not to say that there won’t be positive reinforcement from others, but more to the point that it won’t be consistent. Take my father for example - he is a great man who wants nothing but the best for me, but his support of my writing career tends to vary depending on a variety of indirect factors like what season of the year it is, how nostalgic he is for his own youth, and if he has met any “successful” writers lately. Sometimes his support is like a burst of sunshine…and sometimes it is like a thunderstorm. Therefore, I can’t look to his encouragement to motivate me.
However, I’ll admit that it took me a long time to free my sense of motivation from his inconsistent opinion of my choices and goals. I then tried to transfer the responsibility of motivation to my mother, then my boyfriend, and then finally realized that the problem wasn’t the individual person, but the action itself. Depending on someone else to be your source of motivation is going to inevitably fail because the people around you - like you - see the world through their own lens with their own agenda, which means they can never be 100% unbiased with you and your situations. This does not make them bad people or mean you have a crappy support system, it just means you need to place a stronger emphasis on your ability to propel yourself then their ability to propel you.
Another big mistake we all make when seeking a source of motivation is negative financial incentives. A negative financial incentive is using the threat of not having enough money to pay for something to make you earn more. How many of you have used this motivator? I have, and admit that I sometimes still catch myself doing it. I say to myself, “Come on, Nacie, you need to write three more of these articles to make enough for the rent.” The result? I write the three articles, but each word I type makes me more and more resentful and I refuse to type another word after I am finished. So much for going above and beyond!
The inconsistency of other people and the collateral damage to your work mentality make either of these sources for motivation poor choices if we really want to be successful. The only source of drive you can count on is that fire, that passion, that burns within you. And like a fire, your internal motivation needs to be constantly tended and nurtured.
So here are the top 5 tricks I’ve learned to feed the flame of your motivation and keep it burning bright day after day: Read the Rest of The Top 5 Tricks to Motivation
By Nacie Carson, on June 1st, 2009
Do you have a clear idea of what type of work you want to pursue in your uncommon life? Have you identified your uncommon vocation?
The official description of The Life Uncommon is a lifestyle design community that helps individuals identify, transition, and succeed in work they love. Yet it wasn’t until last Friday that I realized my articles over the past few months have been rather negligent toward the members of the community who are still in the “identifying” phase. So for all you fledgling Uncommoners out there who are still seeking to define your uncommon vocation, this one’s for you.
Last Friday, I met with a friend of mine for lunch, who openly admits he never reads the site so I feel fine relaying this story (if you are reading, hey B!). Between bites of his roast beef and tomato sandwich, he chatted happily about goofing off with friends, chasing the ladies, and his plans for the summer. However, when I asked him about how his job was going, his enthusiasm downshifted to business mode and he proceeded to analytically describe various aspects about his current position.
After listening for a few minutes, I asked if he had plans to stay at his current job for a while. His response was again more head than heart, and he spoke about business school and what would look good on a resume.
“So eventually you want to go into your own business?” I asked.
He looked at me a little puzzled, and then took another bite of his roast beef as he shrugged his shoulders. When he had finished chewing, he said:
“Not everyone has a passion like you, Nacie. There isn’t one thing that I’m just dying to do, and I don’t know if there ever will be. A part of me wishes there was, but a job is just a job.”
Oh contraire, my friend… Read the Rest of Identifying Your Uncommon Vocation
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