Out Of Synch

Any of you who are sci-fi fans will understand the idea of a phase shift in the time-space continuum. To catch the rest of you up, the idea is that there is something akin to frequency that synchronizes all the “stuff” within a dimension. Change your frequency and you’re in a different dimension or maybe at a different point in time.

Phase shift story lines are really cool because then the people or the aliens can be present but not fully visible, kind of like a ghost. But you can’t interact fully with something that’s out of phase with you, so it quits being fun when you decide you want to talk to someone or eat food.

For the past few days, since a little before we left for Orlando on Christmas Day for the soccer trip, I’m having these experiences of being out of phase. I first noticed it a few days before Christmas when I rushed around to get kids’ activities done and send them on their way to spend the night with their grandparents, then sat on the couch eating an orange and feeling pretty tired.

I totally forgot about a telecourse that night I had signed up for, and had been very excited to hear. When I remembered it later, the memory was like something in the distant past.

More to the point, it was like those dreams where suddenly you realize there’s a test you didn’t take for high school or college, and right now you have to go take it and you’re not prepared. The more frequent version for me is being told I have a final in a class I totally forgot about. I think back and remember I went two or three times and thought it was going to be pretty tough so I’d decided to drop it but I never filled out the paperwork. So I’m heading for the final of a very difficult class having no preparation.

I’ve been feeling like I’m forgetting important things and I’ve been feeling like I’m behind on a lot of things. I’ll think there’s a stack of bills I forgot to pay and run anxiously to the study and go through them. Once my heart gave a somersault because I thought I was two weeks past due sending one off until I noticed the due date was in February.

I fell out of phase again this week. I had an invitation to listen to an interview about personal service marketing for coaches on a conference call. I was happy. It sounded like great information and there was going to be discussion with other coaches.

Then one little thing changed in my schedule. It actually freed me up to pay attention to the call fully instead of squeezing it in, but I had some article writing I started doing. About fifteen minutes after the call ended, when I was telling my sons we could go get some dinner, I remembered the missed call. I felt like I was living parallel lives. It was like I had forgotten my “other self.”

I told a friend yesterday and she said it’s because my birthday is coming up. She said it can dissociate people and give us a disrupted sense of time. I don’t remember experiencing this before with birthdays but it’s a pretty cool explanation. She has studied a lot about shamanism, native spiritual beliefs, and ancient religions so her perspective is always mind-expanding!

Yesterday I picked up some paperwork to finish bookkeeping for a non-profit agency project grant. Ugh! Today I finished my on-line course in ethics and my on-line rules exam to renew my counseling license and then submitted my license renewal. With one task completed and the other set to finish, I’m filling much more in phase. I think I need to do one more thing before everything synchronizes again—but I can’t figure out what it is.

Maybe it is my birthday. Not sure. But I’m moving forward in little steps here and there, getting my writing done, and finding out how much I love the structure of biographies and documentaries.

More on that later when I understand it more fully and can explain it better.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Twisting Or Roundabouts?

This week I spent a little bit of time writing for my Blog-Zine, more time planning the rest of this month’s and next month’s Blog-Zine articles, a lot of time reading and watching training DVDs, and a whole lot more time doing things that have nothing to do with my business.

In the “Design your life first, then design your career” model, you start with the kind of life you want to have and the priorities you should honor. From there you find interesting and creative work that complements your life. High up on my list right now is time for my sons’ activities, since my wife is gone from dawn to dusk or later four or five days a week. This week, even though I don’t have my new business up and running at full speed, I was still able to make their activities my priority.

It’s a blessing to know I can give them the extra time once in a while. But I still get anxious when I realize that nothing I did specifically generated new money this week, and my “productive” hours were spent planning, learning, and contemplating.

I still haven’t figured out how to get paid for that. I need to focus on helping other people plan, learn, and contemplate. That’s a paid service!

It didn’t feel like much forward progress. It felt like a lot of waiting. I’m waiting for my web site to be updated when my web master has time. I’m waiting to have more content developed and written so I can offer something—anything—to entice people to sign up to my list and maybe buy a workbook from me.

One of my ideas, which involves packaging training and time-limited Coaching around specific goals and life areas, got me a little excited. When I have been thinking about ways to market Coaching and training to some target groups, it’s felt unclear and I have lacked direction. Having a specific, focused approach for a set amount of time helps me see how to present it. Training and Coaching packages may not produce any more results than offering open-ended Coaching, but it sure helps me “get” the way to start telling the story about what I do!

So maybe it just looked like I was going in circles. Maybe I was seeing a similar view from a slightly different perspective. Maybe there’s a little progress on this journey in there somewhere.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey