Tag Archives: 52Nudges

Nudging: Get to know one great female artist

Backstory: I don’t recall what originally inspired this nudge. Maybe it had to do with wanting to look outside my comfort zone for creative inspiration. Now that I think about it, I recently encouraged a client, who was experiencing some burnout, to take a break from writing writing writing! He had fallen into a rut of forcing himself to churn out pages or a set word count, so I suggested he go to a museum and take in some visual art for a change. Or just get outside and take in some natural beauty. He reported back that he returned to his desk with renewed energy and ideas for his work. Huzzah!

So maybe this week I’ll wander a local museum and stop whenever I’m attracted to something. Or maybe I’ll check out some books about an artist or school of artists from the library.

I do need to acknowledge this nudge is not about revisiting my favorites (Monet, pretty much all the Impressionists) and focusing on female artists. As I think on this, I’m leaning toward getting to know a new-to-me visual artist, but for you it could be a musician, actor, or other entertainer. Or a poet, essayist, or novelist.

Have fun with this!

Nudging: Memorize a poem

Backstory: I almost used one of my passes on this one. Just not feelin’ it. Then I reminded myself that one of the goals of this 52Nudges program is to push myself a bit when I feel uncomfortable.

When I did this nudge in round one, I memorized my favorite Shakespearean sonnet, #29:

“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes….”

It was actually pretty fun to re-stretch my memorization and presentation muscles. So here we go again.

Meanwhile, this is a good opportunity to remind everyone that you don’t have to do exactly what I do. Make your own list of nudges and draw one at random each week to do in tandem with me. Or just read along, be impressed when I slay a big nudge (or laugh with me when I “fail”),  and take in inspiration whenever it strikes.

Nudged: Make a list of cities I want to visit, pick 1 to explore

Backstory: Back in my single gal days, for years I dreamed about going to Italy. Every time the new Backroads‘ catalogue arrived in the mail, I ripped out the pages describing the walking tour of Tuscany and pinned it to my wall. One day I decided I had wasted too much time dreaming and was ready to do something to make it happen. Almost a full year in advance, I booked the tour and put down a sizeable deposit. Then every spare dollar went into a savings account so, by the time I boarded the plane, everything was covered.

This nudge is in part inspired by the success of that planning and adventuring. Today I can’t kid myself about swinging a big deposit (if you can–go for it!), but I can start visualizing my next trip and motivating myself to make it happen.

Once I’ve made my short list of cities, I might go to the library and pick up history and cook books. I might check out cultural music online. I might add a language app to my phone and start practicing the words and phrases I’ll need to be a respectful traveler (please…excuse me…thank you). Or maybe I’ll put together a list of movies set in that city and begin “seeing” myself there.

What I know for sure is I’ve been bitten by the travel bug and I’m starting to itch. I’m looking forward to exploring where I might go.

What Happened: I started by looking up the “best cities in Portugal to visit” and discovered Lisbon, called the “postcard-picture capital”. OMG, gorgeous! A “sea power”, Portugal is known for its temperate climate, beautiful beaches, fishing industry, and port and madeira wines. Sign me up!

But first I needed to look into Buenos Aires, Argentina. Friends who have visited describe it as the “Paris of South America”, featuring spectacular architecture, delicious foods, and world-class culture. I researched online and discovered it is home to a diverse immigrant population with a multitude of languages and has the largest Jewish population in Latin America. This “sexy” city hosts more than 300 plays every weekend and all sorts of cultural and music festivals (the International Jazz Festival that includes dance classes caught my eye). It also has so many libraries and bookstores (734 bookstores, “more per person than any other city in the world”), it is called the “City of Books”. Sounds like my kind of town!

Buenos Aires is also known for it’s beautiful gardens, including its Japanese Garden, which…wait…. Oh, wow….

The Ah-Hahs: For those of you who have been following 52Nudges for a while, you may recall my trip to Portland, Oregon, a little over a year ago. While there, at the recommendations of friends and family, my husband and I explored the fabulous Japanese Gardens. We were blown away by it. Then at one point we looked at each other and asked, “Don’t we have one of these at home?” Yes. Yes we do, just 15 minutes from our house. (Read the Nudged post here.)

I still have not been there.

So I kind of kicked myself as I worked through and processed this week’s nudge. Right here, right now, I have access to great architecture, world-class museums, food from just about every culture, language schools, cafés set up for sipping while people-watching, gardens and paths for walking, and just about everything else I’m hoping to find through travels beyond my own city’s borders. Why is it that I feel the need to search for things I already have here?

Postcard by RetroMail available on Zazzle.com

And then…and here’s where things get goosebumpy…

Why is it I feel the need to search for things outside of myself when maybe, just maybe, everything I need to feel fulfilled is already within me?

Why do I feel the need to do more, do differently, try, achieve? What if…what if for a while I am just still and allow myself to be fully me?

Like with every nudge, I never know where it’s going to take me. This one really surprised me, and I’m grateful for it. Maybe this was the ultimate nudge I’ve needed all along.

I’m still processing this, and don’t know how it will play out. I’m calm and excited at the same time.

Meanwhile, if this week’s nudge led you to plan the Trip of a Lifetime, I hope you’ll send me a postcard. 🙂

 

 

52+: “Every day is a great day.”

It’s true that I created the 52Nudges as a way to push myself into new adventures and experiences. So it’s especially gratifying when I learn that someone else has had success with one of the nudges.

I recently received a blog post from McClairie Group, in which executive coach Charmaine McClairie wrote:

After a holiday visit to Paris, my favorite of all cities, I am renewed and refreshed, and I’ve made an important decision. I’ve decided that every day in 2020 is a great day. Any day that I’m on this side of the earth? Yes, it’s a great day.

It’s a decision prompted by Kathleen Guthrie Woods and her 52Nudges, a wonderful initiative that encourages us to challenge ourselves weekly.

This Nudge in particular resonated with me – a Nudge to reserve time to just be. Be still, be quiet and do nothing. It reminded me of the hours and hours I spent in Rodin’s Garden when I lived in Paris earlier in my career. I would stop there on my way home from work, sit on one of the many park benches and soak in this incredible city. The art. The culture. The people. To sit and just be in one of the most beautiful spots in the world was truly transformational for me.

Thank you, Kathleen, for reminding me of the importance of sitting quietly and doing nothing – even in Paris.

Charmaine McClairie enjoying Rodin’s Garden in Paris.

I have a huge smile on my face as I read this, and I am inspired to greet each new day as a great day. Thank you, Charmaine!

P.S. If you’re ready to nudge your career to the next level (or up several levels), check out McClairie Group’s website for insights, solutions, and upcoming events.

Nudging: Learn something from a YouTube video

Backstory: This nudge is inspired by part from when I taught myself how to whistle through my fingers by watching YouTube videos. My main inspiration, however, came from our friend, who we’ll call “Mr. Fab.” A few years ago, in his late 50s, Mr. Fab decided to learn how to cook. His wife is an excellent cook, so he had no need to add this to his skills set, he just wanted to try something new. And not just “How to scramble eggs.” The first meal we had with him was a roasted suckling pig. Bam! He learned how select his protein, prep and cook it, and carve it, all from watching videos online.

When I drew this nudge early this morning, I didn’t have to think long and hard about what I might like to do. I want to learn how to make pretty patterns in our coffees, like those cool people do at cool coffeehouses. So here’s this morning’s cup, as a baseline (i.e., just a mocha).

Tomorrow I’ll set aside time to search for and watch instructional videos. Fun!

What might you learn this week?

 

52+: On Going Gray–and Owning It

If you’ve spent any time in 52Nudges, you know that I am a huge fan of people who summon up their courage and create changes in their lives.

Suszi McFadden is one of those brave people I’ve been watching quietly from the sidelines for a while. Full disclosure, we’ve been friends since the early 1980s, a friendship that has grown closer now that we are adults and live about an hour apart. Leaving a corporate career to go out on her own as a photographer was a big step she took several years ago, and it’s been exciting to watch her succeed. But it was her decision recently to ditch the hair color and allow her natural gray* to grow in that held my fascination. Would she stick to it? Would she wear it well? If she can do it, can I…?

To get my answers, I nudged myself to “Interview someone I admire”.

Suszi is about two years into the transformation process. “I am loving the gray!” she told me. “I want it to gray faster!”

Suszi began coloring her hair when she was 16. “It was my form of creative expression,” she said. “I did the ’80s right, from perms to seven colors of shadow on my eyelids—at one time. Do you remember my brush with a ‘Flock of Seagulls’ haircut?” she said with a laugh. “Yeah, that was BAD!”

Over the past few decades, she has tried on every shade of red, from copper to burgundy, and had “one ill-fated dance with blonde”. After “one complete disaster doing it on my own”, in which a peroxide accident left her with a skunk stripe and leopard spots, she committed to paying a professional stylist to do the coloring correctly.

Full color. Photo by Ashleigh Taylor Henning.

But the maintenance took a lot of time and work, not to mention expense. In the last phases, she was going for brighter and brighter, ultimately sporting a bright orange. “But I was graying at a rate like a five o’clock shadow,” she said. “I kept asking my stylist, ‘Can I do it yet?’”

The “yet” was important. It’s one thing to transition from mostly gray to all gray, she explained to me, another to transition when there’s just gray at the temples. You have to have “enough” for the transition to succeed, otherwise it can be difficult to maintain the gray.

“I wanted it to be more about making a statement as opposed to looking like you’ve let yourself go,” Suszi said, and with her stylist’s advice—and with her nephew’s bar mitzvah on the horizon—she went for one more round of color.

Finally her stylist agreed she had enough to get started, and her expert advice and attention was crucial. “It was hard going from bright orange, and it was hard with straight hair,” Suszi said, having noticed that women with curly textured hair could better carry off the layers of colors during the transition. “So I cheated.” Not wanting to wait for it all to grow out on its own timetable, she had her stylist bleach out all of her hair, then tone her a warm gray. “I literally went gray overnight,” Suszi says, “which was super fun.”

Initial Bleach. Photo by Andy McFadden.

But it didn’t last. She was still “more pepper than salt”, so the dark hairs turned yellow over time, and in different lighting, such as fluorescent, it wasn’t pretty. “I joked I had to walk around in my own lighting,” Suszi said. To compensate, Suszi kept going shorter. “Previously, whenever I was bored, I colored my hair,” she reminded me. Now she makes a creative statement with her sassy pixie cut.

It’s impossible to miss the growing trend on going gray. “I feel like it’s everywhere, and I think it’s stunning,” she said. “A lot of actresses have made it glamorous, including Helen Mirren, Emma Thompson, Gillian Anderson, and Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.” We can add Sharon Osborne and Jane Fonda as other recent converts.

For Suszi, the change is less about the outward appearance and more about the internal feeling. It’s about women owning who they are. She explained how she came to this. “I got my photo taken about two years ago, to experience what my clients experience. The photographer asked me to send photos I found online, photos I found inspiring. All of them were of older women, significantly older than I am, 70 to 80 years old. They were owning their style, their look. Quirky or classy or eclectic—just all in!” she said. “I want to be that person: 100% all in!”

This recent photo says all that to me. Strong, gorgeous, 100% Suszi.

All natural. Photo by Patricia Gonion.

* I noticed Suszi used the terms “silver” and “gray” interchangeably as we chatted, so I asked her about this. “When I talk about it, I say I’ve ‘gone gray’,” she said. “I consider myself to be gray because there’s still so much pepper in my hair. I think of ‘silver’ as all white.” Some of her friends, she said, push back and insist on “silver”, feeling it’s a more empowering term. We both agree that we should use whichever term feels right to the individual.

 

Suszi McFadden takes photographs of families, kids, and adults, and captures the best of women in all stages of life. Check out her work at https://suzmcfaddenphoto.com/. To see her more creative work, including shoots with professional models, follow her on Instagram @suzmcfaddenphoto.

Nudging: Go to the beach

Backstory: When I was compiling The List for nudges, I thought about skills I want to learn, activities I loved doing as a kid and might enjoy doing again, and all sorts of things that have fed my soul in the past and might still work their magic on me today. This week’s nudge falls into that last category.

I grew up on the beaches of Southern California. I body-surfed, explored tide pools, cooked meals over fire pits, and sometimes just sat and watched and listened. The beach is where I went when I needed to clear my head, rest my body (or sometimes reboot it with a strenuous workout), and refuel my spirit.

I’ve now lived in Northern California for over a decade and I have yet to walk on the beach closest to my home. It’s cold here! It’s windy! It’s not the same!

Lately I’ve felt a longing to get back to the beach. I’m so glad I pulled this nudge this week. It’s time.

52+: On Courage

A friend shared this link with me this morning, an inspiring video interview featuring record-breaking astronaut Christina Koch. I stopped in my tracks at the headline: “Do what scares you”

Did she just do a nudge?! 🙂

(We actually did that nudge back in November, and you can read the completed nudge post here.)

Courage seems to be  theme in my life this week. Two days ago I attended the Naturalization Ceremony for my dear friend Lisa, in which she and 1,253 others took the oath to become American citizens. Being in the audience of supporting friends and family members was an emotional and inspiring experience, and I cried my way through a couple of kleenex.

Keynote speaker California Secretary of State Alex Padilla congratulated the new citizens on their courage. They left behind friends and families. They made difficult choices and took big chances, all in an effort to create better lives for themselves.

Maybe you and I haven’t done anything as dramatic as walking in space or leaving our homelands, but I believe we face every day with courage. For some of us, it’s as “small” as getting out of bed despite many legitimate reasons to stay buried under the covers or deciding to have a positive attitude no matter the obstacles. This might be the day we decide to pick ourselves up (again) after a disappointment or loss in our professional or personal lives. We might embrace someone just as they are or say goodbye to a relationship that is no longer healthy. Maybe this is the day we summon up all our bravery to say YES to something new or NO to something we need to let go.

Whatever is happening in your journey right now, I hope you’ll pause and acknowledge your courage. You are doing great things. And I congratulate and celebrate you.

 

Nudged: Splurge on something for me

Backstory: When I pulled out this nudge this morning, my first thought was CHOCOLATE CAKE! 🙂 That’s really not what I want for myself, for I know I won’t feel great after a slice (and certainly not after a whole cake).

My original intent for this nudge was to break one of my “rules” and get something that’s way outside of my comfort zone. Something extravagant. Something expensive. (And that’s where I’d be breaking the rule.) But I included in my notes that if finances weren’t up to the challenge (and they’re not), then I would get creative.

So maybe this is the week I give myself a home spa day. Or maybe I buy just one chocolate truffle from the fancy chocolate shop I’ve been meaning to visit and really savor it. Or maybe I see if that beautiful lingerie shop is having a sale and I can find something silky and lovely without blowing all of the grocery money.

The point is to give a special gift to a special person: me.

How might you treat yourself this week?

What Happened: I gave myself a $10 limit. That’s what my budget would allow, and I certainly came up with other “needs” for it, but I felt this was important to do for myself.

So…did I want a thing? Or did I want an experience? Did I want something I’d consume, or something built to last? I considered a bunch of options, and kept coming back to one: I love having fresh flowers in my home. On my nightstand and dresser, on my desk.

Since this was a splurge, I talked myself out of the more practical (and long-lasting) carnations and hydrangeas and went for one of my favorites:

Feminine, elegant, lovely. (And within the budget.)

I smile when I see them.

Nudge accomplished.

The Ah-Hahs: The tricky part for me was having to talk myself out of spending the money on other things we needed. There’s always a bill to be paid or a gift to be purchased or a donation to be made. You know what, every so often it’s good and right to appreciate myself with something beautiful.

Nudging: Splurge on something for me

Backstory: When I pulled out this nudge this morning, my first thought was CHOCOLATE CAKE! 🙂 That’s really not what I want for myself, for I know I won’t feel great after a slice (and certainly not after a whole cake).

My original intent for this nudge was to break one of my “rules” and get something that’s way outside of my comfort zone. Something extravagant. Something expensive. (And that’s where I’d be breaking the rule.) But I included in my notes that if finances weren’t up to the challenge (and they’re not), then I would get creative.

So maybe this is the week I give myself a home spa day. Or maybe I buy just one chocolate truffle from the fancy chocolate shop I’ve been meaning to visit and really savor it. Or maybe I see if that beautiful lingerie shop is having a sale and I can find something silky and lovely without blowing all of the grocery money.

The point is to give a special gift to a special person: me.

How might you treat yourself this week?

P.S. Hey, Valentine’s Day is this Friday! I hope you do take this opportunity to shower yourself with love and appreciation. xoxo