Design Yourself

Altitude Summit is a conference for creative entrepreneurs and social media influencers. It's bright colors, fashionable attire, gorgeous location and - best of all - a fantastic community gathered to learn and grow together. Sharon attended this year for the first time and was blown away by the experience. She gets why 85% of attendees have come back more than once. In today's episode, Sharon shares a glimpse into the experience of Alt Summit 2018 with headlines from talks that inspired her, ideas that stuck with her and the lessons she is carrying with her from this amazing experience. From What Not to Wear's Stacy London talking about the Evolutionary Woman to Liz Forkin Bohannon bringing new insights to Design Thinking, prepare to have your socks knocked off. This is a great episode for anyone looking for some fresh perspective and inspiration or who might just be curious about what all the Alt Summit hoopla is about.

"The bigger takeaway I had was that the ideas will iterate and grow with inspiration. For me it wasn't about having a clear understanding for the sake of getting an A on the test. It was about asking myself what small nugget would inspire in me a new way of doing. Or better yet, a new way of being."

1. An Okay System You Use is Better than a Perfect System You Don't Use
2. Choose inspiration over ideas
3. Be a beginner
4. Take care first
5. Keep It Simple
6. Follow Your Wicked Problem
7. The Power of the MVP

Resources and Links

• Altitude Summit
• Melissa Sanabria's blog Pretty Little Rowhouse
• Melissa Sanabria on Design Yourself
• Stacy London
• Stacy London On Her Year of Going Broke
• OG Bloggers who ran the Work Smarter, Not Harder session were Jaime Derringer of Design Milk, Joanna Howley of Jojotastic, Kelly Beall of Design Crush
• Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
• Stacey Ferguson of Be Blogalicious
• Bethany Tran of Weft & Warp Branding
• Liz Forkin Bohannon of Sseko

This week's episode introduces our March theme, Center. After a hard-driving February, Sharon was ready to return to her own center. If you've ever found yourself working hard to achieve a goal that your own sense of wellbeing takes a backseat, perhaps you can relate. Learn how the Altitude Summit, a conference for creatives in Palm Springs, helped kickstart Sharon's own centering practice and 5 simple ways that you can find your own center every day. Sharon shares her favorite meditations tools, talks about the power of being thankful and tipping generously, asks herself (and you!) what wicked problem are we trying to solve and more. This is a great episode for anyone wanting to listen to tap into your inner wisdom or regain a sense of wellbeing. "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." Mark Twain For show notes visit www.pointroadstudios.com/podcast

Things don't have to be complicated. Ease is possible. And this week's episode embraces this possibility. Sharon shares why more is available to us when we scale our potential through systems for support – more impact, more joy, more peace, more! She also discusses her favorite tools for bringing beauty and ease into her life and her business. From productivity management to video chat platforms to delegating to a virtual assistant, you will hear about tons of resources that you may choose to add to your own tool belt. Plus learn about why the most important "resources" are the real live human beings who make up Sharon's tribe, partners at work and creative community. This week's episode is a great prompt for anyone who is looking to grow and scale at home or work. It's also a great fit for anyone who values efficiency and the power of getting things done.

Plus Sharon kicks off this week's episode with a personal update on how her "focus on Focus" has gone this month. If you've been wondering what she's been up to, this is a great lens into her world.

"You can't jump to a system without knowing what's needed. When, and only when, you get clear on what's needed, you can move into creating a system to get that support with ease."

• Lessons learned from February's theme of Focus
• Why having systems around your support makes such a huge impact
• What some of Sharon's favorite systems are

• My Tribe (Family, Friends, Soulmates) – The people who know you best and love you just as you are. Vulnerability is always welcome in this circle.
• Partners in Work (Business Besties, Mentors, Trusted Clients) – The people who you can call about work and ask for help, to brainstorm ways to improve, for growth – in your bottom line and also in your own humanness.
• Creative Community – The people and places that inspire you to think differently.

Sharon's Go To Tools for Life and Business

• Zoom
• Virtual Assistant (like the kind you can hire through Zirtual)
• Asana
• G Suite
• Podcasts – Here are the ones on Sharon currently tunes into: Young House Love Has A Podcast, Being Boss, The Lively Show, HBR Women at Work, How I Built This, A Well-Designed Business

Other Business Admin Tools

• Lastpass
• Mailchimp
• Dropbox
• Soundcloud
• Wave apps
• Hootesuite

• Fortune article on "How Asking for Help Actually Helps You"
• Great article about past Design Yourself guest Emmanuel Yamoah which noted that when it comes to teams 1+ 1 = 3
• Sharon likes Asana, but has also tried Basecamp, Trello, Todoist
• Sharon's favorite creative communities include, Sohy Collective, WeWork and Creative Mornings

This week Sharon's very special Grandma passed away peacefully while sleeping in her own home. In honor of her legacy, we decided to interrupt our regularly planned scheduling with this encore episode. With light hearted humor (hello, chickens!) and a deep well of grace, Sharon opens up about her own observations on the topics of death and grief. This is not a show designed to give you the answers on what's right or wrong when it comes to these gritty topics. Instead it's one person's reflections and observations as she comes to appreciate not just what's possible in this life, but what's possible when we honor the full life cycle. May this be a helpful resource to those who listen.

• The inspiration for this episodes' title? Anna Sale's podcast Death, Sex, and Money, which is all about the big choices and hard questions that are often left out of polite conversation.
• If you already know the podcast or just find you want to learn a bit more behind its managing editor and host Ms. Sale, I can highly recommend episode 94 of Grace Bonney's After the Jump where she interviews this podcast hero/childhood friend.
• Check out Mason Jennings' song Instrument.

"I want to be an instrument of your love" "I want to live my life a brand new way…"

• Read more about the 5 stages of grief (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance).
• Sharon's short meditation on chickens, inspired by a coaching client and fellow chicken lover:

I wake with the first movements of day

Birds call out and I stretch my wings

Dust and worms and bits of green

Clawing and scratching and running towards life

No fence can keep me in

But home I'll return as the sun sets

What fences will I build?

Which ones will I tear down?

• Sharon closes this episode with a reading from The Chicken Chroniclesby Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and spiritual guide Alice Walker . Her reading is from Chapter 18, "St. Michael."

Goals, goals, and more goals ya'll. Having a great idea is one thing, but figuring out how to make that idea come to life takes a whole other skills set. This week's episode dives into the practical side of how to set big and audacious goals and then execute the follow through to achieve success. Learn about the difference between lag and lead measures, why focusing on inflection points is so critical, operating with the Pareto principle and more. Plus Sharon explains how setting goals for business and life follow the same key tenants. So whether you want to hit an ambitious revenue target or buy your first home, the process to get there is the same. This week's episode is perfect for anyone who is ready to get tactical on how to make your vision a reality. It is also a great primer for anyone new to a leadership role who is a looking for a quick primer on how to achieve results.

"As leaders – both at work and in our personal lives – we must shift from letting others define success for us to putting our own measures in place. The question then is how."

• Setting goals in business and setting goals in our lives are more similar than you think
• The difference between lead measures and lag measures
• The importance of inflection points
• The connection between goals and vision
• Define and celebrate milestones along the way

• StrengthsFinder
• Pareto Principle
• Design Yourself episode 5 will help you see what you want with "A Vision Meditation"
• Design Yourself episode 31 on the belief that "There is Nothing Stopping You"

This week's episode introduces our February theme, Focus. You'll learn how Sharon chose this theme despite some initial resistance as well as tools and frameworks for sharpening your own focus. You will hear how to bucket out your own areas of focus, practical tools for rethinking your schedule, how to shape your own goal setting retreat and more. This week's episode is great for anyone who is feeling lost for where to put down roots or who is overwhelmed from trying to do many things at once.

"Focus is what we pay attention to. A small act with the most consequential of results. Where we choose to focus drives not just the outcomes we achieve but the process for how we get there and how we – and those around us – feel along the way."

Consider what 1-3 buckets of focus are critical for the results and impact you want to drive in your life. Here are the 3 areas that Sharon is focused on this month.

• Goals Setting
• Quality of focus
• Support

"Like so many things in life, it wasn't so much about finding the perfect new thing so much as peeling back the layers – of clutter and expectation – to get to the core of what really matters."

Consider: What do you want to achieve? How will you get there? What support do you need?

Create: A list that lays out what you will "Pick Up" and what you will "Put Down." You may add, like Sharon did this month, what you will "Delegate" and what you will consider for "Later."

Past: Look at schedule what notice what you see. What does it suggest about your priorities? What are jazzed to see there? What's missing? What on this snapshot brings you energy? Consistency? Do you follow this plan?

Present: For one week, create a daily log each day that lays out what you focused on that day. Write is down at the same time each day and use 15 minute increments to block out your activities. At the end of the week ask yourself what you've learned through both the daily of experience of paying attention to how you are using your time and by reviewing you data that you gathered at the end of the week.

Future: Draft your ideal week. Lay out what are you doing each day. Do you follow the same routine 7 days a week. How much space do you like to leave open? When you put everything down how does the whole week feel? Edit and adapt until you come up with a week that knocks your socks off to imagine.

Sit down in a chair. Both feet firmly on the ground. Allow your mind to drift in and out of focus. Choose a path: Either focus on emptying your mind of the thoughts as they arise. (e.g. Put those thoughts on a cloud and let them float away. Or on a log on a river and let them float downstream.) Or choose to follow your thoughts from one to the next, allowing them to interact and spark other thoughts as they emerge.

Set a timer and stick to your allotted time. (1 minute is great for beginners. You may enjoy working up to 10 minutes, 30 minutes or longer.)

Being in our bodies is a gift. Whether you choose meditation, running, yoga, throwing paint at the wall or getting out into nature – focus on moving and appreciating your body.

• In episode 76 of Design Yourself, Sharon introduces the Design Myself challenge and January's theme of Rituals
• Rocket Fuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want from Your Business
• The Coffee Bar (Washington, DC)
• Here is the free guided meditation that I mentioned Design Yourself guest Joanna Andreae created.

The idea of leading slower, less cluttered lives is a deeply resonant concept right now. With good reason. With the barrage of information and stuff at our fingertips, minimalism holds a calming appeal. The shadow side of this trend is that it can leave us paralyzing to pick anything up. The episode addresses this conundrum head on. Host Sharon talks through a few core concepts that unpin her "Picking Up Philosophy" and then offers up a How To Guide for Picking Up. From learning how to say yes with intention (ahem exercise your ability to say no ahem) to recognizing seasonal shifts, this episode shares many tools and lens for how you can think about the things you carry. "What we choose to hold with us, what we choose to pick up and carry, makes up the landscapes of our lives. The greatest gift is learning how to curate this bundle for each season. To decipher what to hold and when to let go – and when we are ready for something new." – Sharon Lipovsky

Understand your values

Honor your values in what you hold

Remember that we carry far more than stuff

1. Start Fresh
2. Get Inspired
3. Pick Up Only What You Love
4. Say Yes with Intention
5. Set Boundaries that Honor Your Values
6. Learn to Trust Your Impulses
7. Recognize Seasonal Shifts
8. Stay True

• Visionaries and Voices and its progressive learning studio and retail space the Visionarium which is getting a lot of deserved press lately like this
• Design Yourself 53 with Julia Lipovsky of Visionaries and Voices
• Artist Kevin White who made the painting featured in the cover art
• Still no photo dug up of me skydiving, but if I find one, I'll post it!
• Values Exercise

Letting go is a critical process to clear the path to whatever it is that you really want. In this week's episode, Sharon shares 6 steps you can take to ease you through the act of letting go. You will learn how to tap into the power of the present, honor your emotions (especially the tough ones that like to show up and tell you to hold on!), make room for what you want, see things with a different perspective, and find your inner compassion and gratitude. Sharon also shares some of the common road blocks to letting go like perfectionism and resentment and how to keep going in spite of them. This is a great episode for anyone looking for tangible ways to let go and move forward. Whether you are simply getting organized, looking for more simplicity or ready to release something long held, this week's show is for you.

"I never thought I'd have so much to give up; that the view from this side of my life would be so precious." – Philip Schultz, Magic Kingdom

Instead of dwelling on the past or getting lost in the future

Be where you are. Let go of the distractions and anxiety and fear. When we see what is needed right now, in this moment, letting go is abundantly more ease-filled.

"If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the futre. If you are at peace, you are living in the present." – Lao Tzu

Instead of pretending your emotions don't exist

Negative emotions – like sadness, anger, or frustration – often emerge when we want to let go of something that we've been holding for a long time. The impulse can be to run from them. Or ignore them. Anything to not feel them. But shutting our eyes to our feelings gives them strength. By honoring how we feel, by letting these emotions breath, they tend to disippate. And we come back to neutral – a far more conducive place for letting go.

Instead of cramming what you want on top of everything else

Most of us have been trained to learn new things. A new concept, idea or practice. A new hobby or relationship. The learning is additive in nature. We expand our capacity and potential through this new thing. To do this we flex our intellectual learning, which is full of possibility and potential. The shadow side is that we keep adding and adding and this can lead to overwhelm and a feeling of constant distraction. Focus feels impossible. Sometimes we've got to let go of thing/s to make room for what we really want. We need to peel away the layers to find the core of what we want to highlight. It's often already there, but is dimmed by the noise of what surrounds it. This kind of letting go requires us to flex our emotional muscles. It requires an emotional nimbleness and fitness that we can cultivate the same way we do with our bodies and our minds.

Instead of putting up blinders

Transformation is often prompted by a new way of seeing. The first step in any kind of change is seeing what is already there. In this way we can look to the possibility of there being another way. You may seek the support of a trusted friend or mentor for this new perspective. You may look to the wealth of content shared in writing or events or on podcasts. Or you may look inward through meditation or journaling. You may also seek the professional expertise of a counselor or coach or spiritual guide. Whatever way you look, know that a new perspective can often be the spark to guide you in the process of letting go.

Instead of holding to resentment or perfectionism

It's one thing to honor the tough emotions – I am feeling ANGRY! – but it's another thing to hold genuine compassion for those people who are driving us nuts. But there is magic in empathy. When we can really step into someone else's shoes without any judgement, without any should's or but's, and hold compassion for their perspective, we are given a true gift; the gift of letting go to what has been, the gift of releasing our own narrow worldview. Compassion for others is the pathway to this kind of letting go. To get there, we also have to hold this same compassion for ourselves. We are all beautifully, imperfectly human. When we can appreciate and honor our foibles, a world of new opportunity emerges.

Instead of counting your infractions

Gratitude. There is a reason it's having a hey-day right now. When we give thanks, it's very difficult – perhaps impossible – to hold on to negative energy. Through appreciation, through the counting of our blessings we bring ourselves back to the present and into a grounded space where letting go is easier. Ask yourself what you are thankful for. See what emerges. And then ask again and what else? What else? What else?

• Sharon opens this podcast reading the poem "Magic Kingdom" by Philip Schultz, which can be found in his 2007 book Failure
• Design Yourself 57 Make Magic

There's something about the start of the new year that makes you want to start with a blank slate, right? Cue the queen of decluttering, Marie Kondo, the Japanese organizational consultant behind The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. In this week's episode, Sharon takes Kondo's framework for decluttering your home and talks about how it can be adapted to living the life you really want. She reviews why it can be hard to keep your life in order in the first place and offers up tools and resources to overcome those challenges. From simplifying to being still to appreciating what's already there, this week's show has a little something for everyone. This is a great episode if you are looking for a little more peace and calm in your life and will be especially fun for all those who have been inspired by Marie Kondo's approach to home.

"I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, the modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought, or thoughtfulness." – Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust

This was a fun episode to create for host and KonMari method fan, Sharon. See below for the 5 ways that Sharon has adapted the Marie Kondo framework to apply to how you lead your life

Marie says: Why can't I keep my house in order?

• We inherit mindsets and behaviors from others (often unknowingly)
• We don't want to hurt people's feelings
• We are moving so fast and consuming so fast – it's beyond the speed of thoughtfulness
• Life is a moving target – it's not like decluttering your house; it cannot be "finished" in a weekend
• But we can create wins and we can keep our energy positive

Marie says: Finish discarding first

• See what you want in your life
• Everything that you need is already available
• Be still
• Avoid rushing, adding activities and other distractions

Marie says: Tidying by category works life magic

• To get focused, ask yourself these three questions:
• What do you want? Pick a specific arena.
• What will support me in getting there?
• What next?

Marie says: Storing your things to make your life shine

• Simplify
• Appreciate
• Let Go of unwanted baggage each day
• We don't get to choose what happens to us, but we do get to choose our emotions

Marie says: The magic of tidying dramatically transforms your life

• See what you want
• Let go of distractions
• Joy in simplicity
• Be a host for gratitude
• Practice empathy
• Set boundaries
• Be the container for what you really want

• Marie Kondo
• KonMari method
• The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
• Design Yourself Episode 45 Marie Kondo Your Business

This week's episode introduces our January theme, Rituals. These are the actions and behaviors that we do regularly, invariably, without having to think about it. You will learn about why Sharon is introducing themes in 2018 (sneak peek: to avoid the end of year burn out and blues), why rituals is our starting point this year, and how to see, evaluate and simplify your own rituals this year - and beyond! You'll get tips on how to bring your current rituals into focus, how to determine what needs weeding and what needs cultivating and learn how to do all of this with ease and a healthy dose of fun. This is a great episode for anyone looking to move through your year with intention and to find ways to bring ease for how you move through your everyday routines.

"Rituals are like a uniform for your actions. They are something that we do everyday without having to think about it. There is incredible freedom and potential offered up in this way of being." – Sharon Lipovsky

1. See what's already there
2. Weed out what's unhelpful
3. Notice what's left
4. Determine what's missing (if anything)
5. Remember that rituals aren't sexy
6. Choose thoughtfully what new rituals to cultivate
7. Commit to the practice
8. Let them carry you
9. Create a system to evaluate and change

• Design Yourself Episode 47 with Jon Flannery
• Design Yourself Episode 45 on how to Mari Kondo Your Business