Challenge Accepted: Turning Off the Switch & Set Boundaries with Your Community

by: Yvette Valdenegro

Are you looking for a challenge?

Take a whole evening with friends, family, or your favorite networking group and challenge yourselves NOT to say ANYTHING about work, spouses, partners, and kids. The topics should remain around YOU! Yes, just yourself, as in you, the person. Share anything and everything about you. Discuss your favorite things, goals, dreams, hobbies, likes, dislikes, etc. Be a good listener and let others talk about themselves too. Notice how challenging this can be for yourself and others. Talking about ourselves can cause social anxiety, and genuine fear is attached to speaking to others in a social environment. For most, however, the struggle to feel comfortable talking about ourselves is considered improper and bad-mannered.

We have stifled memories of a parent, teacher, coach, friend, sibling, etc., aggressively telling us to stop talking about ourselves. Those memories tell us talking about yourself is braggadocious and self-centered. Of course, we can think of an example or two of people we can place in the arrogant category of bragging. All the other people we know are just sharing about life. Sharing, expressing, and describing ourselves to others is a healthy notion. We are individuals with ideas, dreams, likes & dislikes who see this amazing world from our perspectives. Talking about our views can open up other thoughts for those listening. Inventions, experiments, ideas, and monumental changes have occurred because people shared.

Next time you are in a social setting, try taking the challenge. Encourage everyone to put faulty thinking away and consider the truth about themself. The truth is everyone is interesting, not a burden to others, and can be just the spark someone else needs to hear. Instead of doubting yourself, welcome the opportunity to meet someone new and for your brain to relax and have fun.

YGC Relationship Coaches:

Yvette Valdenegro

Geovanna Burgess White

@ygcollaborations

Watch & Listen to the REdesigning Your Relationship Podcast Here:

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’Tis the Season to be Fiercely Focused

by: Yvette Valdenegro

July is often the time of year to celebrate, have huge sales, or begin planning for the upcoming holiday season. July is the midway point from the post-holiday season rush to the beginning of starting all over again. So too, can July provide a season to become, maintain, or expand in our businesses, career, goals, and relationships. When approaching the thoughts of devoting and cultivating growth in your business, careers, goals, and relationships, why not do it fiercely focused?

Take the time during the hot summer days to be heartfelt and intense about who you are and the results you want to see. The easier route for summertime is to take a mental, physical, and emotional vacation from anything to do with work or relationships. There is always a time for relaxing. However, avoidance, laziness, and hoping things get better are not a part of taking a vacation from the realities of work and relationships. If you want to keep the flame burning hot during the summer, then we give these suggestions for turning up the heat:

• Refresh, change, and make sure your vision is clear.

• Make your goals for yourself and your career the center of interest in all you do.

• Make shifts or adapt to anything hindering you from seeing clearly.

• Make the time to concentrate and stay focused on the above three suggestions.

Looking for other women in the podcast world who are turning up the heat and helping women in business? Then we would like to introduce you to Kari Andrews & Courtney Clouser, of Fiercely Focused Podcast. They love to spill the beans on all things business, badassery, and bottom lines. We had them as guests on our weekly podcast, REdesigning Your Relationships, to talk about their journey, separately and together as professional businesswomen. Kari & Courtney mentioned they began the podcast out of a mutual passion for helping women. However, these ladies also talked about how much grit and hustle it takes to develop a podcast. In the long run, no matter what, they advise you to do it. Just do it and do not wait for perfection because no one is perfect, and if you wait, you will never begin.

This Episode was a two-part podcast series.

Listen to Part 1 on REdesigning Your Relationship Podcast

iTunes - Apple

Spotify

Part 2 on their Fiercely Focused Podcast, where they interview us. Both episodes flow from one to the other yet allow listening to two different styles & focus surrounding women in business.

iTunes - Apple

YGC Relationship Coaches:

Yvette Valdenegro

Geovanna Burgess White

@ygcollaborations

More Tools & Resources:

Blogs

Podcasts

Website

What does Life-Work Balance Really Mean?

by: Yvette Valdenegro

Work-life balance is a reoccurring trendy play on words we hear repeatedly. What does it mean? We know what work means: any activity involving mental or physical effort to achieve a purpose or result. In other words, any action toward your goals. These goals can be broad answers for everyone, but for the sake of our topic, let's stick to work as describing the work we set out to accomplish each day: work that provides a lifestyle, shelter, food, and essentials to live. The definition of life means your existence as a living being. As a living being, you grow, reproduce, do functional activities, continually change, and then encounter death. It seems such doom and gloom and depressively to the point. The progression through life will occur whether you want it or not. If you are alive, then life is happening. Others have tried to stop life or slow it down, but none have been successful. Since we know life will happen and we have accepted this to be accurate, the best option is to embrace it yet make choices to make it what we want.

Most of the job force community uses the term work-life balance when describing the time spent between work/career and our personal lives. We envision hours, numbers, calendars, and a clown (us) walking the tight rope of life, swaying back and forth, gripping on for dear life, balancing every move, hoping not to fall again and again. Trying to balance life & work can be stressful, continuous, and lead to health complications and resentment. For some reason, we train ourselves to equalize the work-life balance like this tight rope. We use all our strength not falling to one side or the other, doing all we can to stay precisely in the middle, wearing ourselves out—such a vicious cycle.

We think managing our time better, controlling time, and making time is the answer to all our problems revolving around work-life balance. Let me be bold and say that we don't have the 'godly' capacity to manage, control, or make time because time already exists. Time has occurred, is occurring, and will continue to occur whether we do anything about time. Interestingly, we try to control time when it already will exist and happen no matter how we try to change it. We choose what we do with our time; therefore, we have control over the outcome of our time used, but we will never control time's existence. We can organize our actions every minute of the day, but how do you determine how much time to spend on work vs. life? First, we would like to point out we prefer to say Life-Work Balance vs. Work-Life because life is YOU, the human soul living and existing, while work is something you have chosen to do within this life. Your life came before your work. Unfortunately, as adults, we lose sight of this and place work above all else. We place a higher value on work and the time spent on work. We understand the importance of work providing a lifestyle, shelter, food, and life essentials. We also know the hours in a day spent on our work will exceed the hours spent on so-called life, but you can't manage your life-work balance perfectly. The goal is to work toward a life-work balance lifestyle. You can let go of the tight rope act, the stress, and anxiety and walk toward a balancing act of a lifestyle worth LIVING.

So many plays on words, but the reality is understanding your thoughts around time, life, and work. Do you have any thoughts you notice that refrain or hold you back from success, growth, and change? Are you constantly stressed about how much time you spend working while your life continually suffers? Are your friends and family resentful of your time spent away working, not being at home, consumed, and interrupted with work?

Where do you begin the process, how do you unravel those years of thoughts, and what do you do when the same thoughts hinder you no matter what you do? Understanding the use of time as a choice and acknowledging some thought processes mandated undeservedly in your mind is a great place to start. You may have years of mindsets and thoughts you need to uncover and change. Secondly, make yourself your priority in the grand scheme of life. Your life is your own and no one else's. Every choice you make surrounding your quality of life will affect you first, then those around you will be affected. Both of these suggestions are easier said than done. Untangling deep-seated mindsets and thoughts is no easy task and will require motivation, goals, and a clear vision. The vitality (life) and energy (work) required to balance your chosen lifestyle can and will happen. Take the first step! Please make an appointment today for our complimentary connection call. We will help you unravel undeserving thoughts and balance your life-work lifestyle.

YGC Relationship Coaches:

Yvette Valdenegro

Geovanna Burgess White

@ygcollaborations

Watch & Listen to the REdesigning Your Relationship Podcast Here:

YouTube

iTunes- Apple

Spotify

More Tools & Resources:

Blogs

Podcasts

Website