Lighten Up - from the inside out

Even before HTH gave me the words for it, Lighten Up was always a "sum of all my actions" activity. It was about doing things to be consistent with my ideas and philosophies. Call it the outside in or behavioral psychology approach to life - change the behavior to make your life better.

But I am at the point - on many fronts - that I really need to spend some time thinking about what I want to do next. And that means spending some time thinking about what I actually think. And, yes, that can be recursive and strange. To keep from getting lost in it, I needed some structure for this part of the process.

So, I'm taking a class led by Pam Slim. She is a local (yes, she lives here in Mesa) consultant who works with people transitioning out of corporate life. I've lurked on her blog for years, but had never commented or participated. But I signed up for her "What Should I Do With My Life" class. The class is based on Martha Beck's Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant To Live. I have resisted this book for many years. As most of you know, I'm a bit of a contrary. And anyone that thinks that they can tell ME how to claim the life I was MEANT TO LIVE? Well, clearly they don't know me very well! But I singed up for the class, so I'm reading the book. And it turns out that I could've saved myself a lot of work if I had read this sooner. Go ahead - click on the Amazon link and page through the first few pages. Martha's conversation with Melvin the middle manager made me laugh so hard that I knew that I could read the rest of the book.

We had our first class last week, so I'm not entirely sure that this will be true, but I think this might naturally lead to the next stage of Lighten Up. Stay tuned - I think it's going to be interesting!