KindEdge is a Do-able Path Forward for Your Dreams
If you have a thing trapped in your head—a more purposeful way of using your strengths, or an alternate means of expressing your passions–you have an emergency on your hands.
I’m dying. So are you.
The precious few minutes you’ve been gifted to use up here on Earth are forever counting down. But time can be your greatest ally if you wrangle it strategically. By tethering your ideas and goals to time, it pulls you forward. The key is to commit to take action on your aspirational ideas In Real Life.
It seems simple: set a goal, fill out a project plan, and your dreams will manifest. Right? Wrong. If it was that easy, you’d have realized all your dreams by now. What is the hidden barrier? The invisible, sabotaging barrier is change. As adult life gets in motion our minutes are usurped and earmarked to everyone and everything around us. That which exists now stands in the way of a new life that could exist in the future. All the trains have left the station and they seem to have no planned stops.
The KindEdge Concept: Push hard, but don’t break
With a life already in motion, we get strapped down to one way of living. Our “muscle for change” atrophies. KindEdge is a toolbox of bite-sized actions that build up this muscle for change and develop the clarity needed to make new, tough choices without regret.
Edge
No matter how much detail you document in your aspirational project plan, you will always hit an invisible wall if you stay too comfortable. To make change stick you must push hard to your uncomfortable edge and strengthen your muscle for change.
Kind
Big change is a long game. The process must feel rewarding enough that you’ll return to it each day. You’ve got to dig in new grooves and patterns. Doing hard things with visible, pleasurable rewards each day is the key.
Welcome…
Thanks for joining me. I’d like to share a bit about how KindEdge.com got started. KindEdge is a suite of tools I built for myself. They enabled me to fundamentally transform my life and I now spend every minute of my day differently, with greater purpose, and by design… my design.
I’d always wanted to do things differently, but every train in my life was already in motion and my days and minutes were already promised to someone or something. Twenty years of self-help books and guru guides did little. I was inspired, but even my detailed excel spreadsheet plans were no match for the way life, kids, family, and business seem to hijack your intentions.
Big change in little steps
I finally saw what was missing in all the self-help inspo was exactly what I did professionally for large global companies: change management. I took the approach I use with my clients and applied it to myself. Rather than trying to catapult myself across an abyss, I pieced every decision and related action into distinct activities, each achievable in one sit-down, even if that one sit-down moment in my week happened to be in the emergency room on a Sunday night after my child was injured in a weekend soccer tournament. Even if my brain was drained, I could fill out one “decision worksheet” and I could place one next step on my calendar. The chain was unbroken and progress began to happen in real life.
Small steps enable you to back up and redirect
In addition, this bite-sized approach ensured I could always back-up if I determined a given trial or experiment wasn’t the right fit for me. I enabled change without failing any existing commitments to my family, my employer or my community. I simply began to make new decisions, and new agreements to sort of re-fit my promises to my newly-defined life. This was all much more real and achievable vs. the “quit your job in a day and rip your kids out of their lives when you suddenly realize you have no income” mindset.
Change doesn’t stick until you see that every part of your life must support it
They key to doing those things, including having those tough renegotiation discussions is being very clear on what you want for you future. It’s more than vision board woo-woo, it’s about being absolutely sure that the FEW things you are choosing are going to make you secure in GIVING UP the millions of other options life will throw at you.
I learned along the way that you can’t have a big goal without having extreme clarity on the lifestyle that goes along with it. You are not some who workouts out at 5am and writes from 6am – 7:30am if you sometimes go out partying until 1am. New Year’s Day I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the door of my gym when they opened because I’ve tried out all the ways, and the way that works for me is front-loading the good stuff, and that’s working out and writing, every day.
KindEdge Change is 360 Degrees
If your goal is to train for an Iron Man, have you decided how to redefine your friendship with your poker night friends? If you want to travel the world, what happens to your love of having pets? If your goal requires focus and time, what tough conversations will you need to have with siblings and family regarding care of an aging parent? If your goal requires you to be energized for frequent travel and public speaking, have you planned out time for physical workouts to support that lifestyle into old age? This became “KindEdge360.” One big goal means making hundreds of important choices for 360 degrees of your life. And you need to be at peace when you respond to friend who says “Haven’t you been to the new night club yet?” No one cares about your goals but you. It is you who needs to be at peace with what you un-choose along with your choices.
By building a process-oriented series of bite-sized steps I could make some progress in even the most hijacked days. The visible progress brought me clarity in a way no other program had.
The end result was a simple process that could help anyone
Over time I amassed an entire suite of tools that guided me through complex life changes in bite-sized, concrete steps. I realized that in the boxes of worksheets and guides, I’d documented a repeatable process that could help anyone at some point in their lives.
Key Learnings Along the Way
With every step I share important anchoring concepts I learned along the way. For example, I learned that change is a muscle. You must start small and repeat it often, even if uncomfortable, to build the muscle for asserting any changes without apology. When I documented my change journey in micro steps, I could see exactly where I’d get stuck: in asserting my changes to others and renegotiating assumptions. I practiced working through my discomfort in many areas of my life. I began flexing my muscle for change on little tasks, like having a conversation with my credit card company to change my billing date to better align with my financial logistics, or changing my gym to have access to fitness class schedules that work for me vs. twisting my morning schedule into a pretzel for a gym whose class times are inconveniently staggered.
Once I championed a few tough conversations, the big asks felt de rigueur, easy. I now work out my muscle for change every day and everything just seems to feel smoother. I’m constantly adjusting the people and environment around me to fit what truly works for me.
This is just one concept and one example of how I discovered that in order to pile-drive my big goal through life’s chaos, I needed to master many new concepts. If it was going to stick, I had to tune-up absolutely everything in 360 degrees, from how I think, to how I manage my health, to my goals, my relationships, my environment, and the elements that I allow into my daily arc.
To successfully, sustainably insert just one new goal in your life requires a change to everything if it’s going to stick.
Below are links to help you dig into this KindEdge tool. You are free to jump right into Step 1 to get change started now.
About Mary Sue
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Here’s to you!
Here’s to you stepping onto a kind, sustainable path that pushes you to your edge and carries you over that invisible threshold of resistance. Over time, by connecting these many small steps, you will achieve big results… in real life. The minute you get in motion, you begin to unlock the alternate ending to your life.
