Design Yourself

Happy New Year! Anyone else feeling a little slow as they turn the page on the calendar? In this week's mini-episode, Sharon invites you to stop and wait a second. Don't set your annual goals. Don't commit to your 2018 resolution. Don't dive right in. Not yet. Instead, wait a second. Take a moment of pause before you dive in. Follow your energy. If that takes you to goals and resolutions and plans. Awesome. Go with it. But if your energy is calling you to stop for a moment, this week's episode will applaud you for doing just that. Welcome to the start of something special.

• Feeling inspired to ease into your 2018? Listen to episode 4 of Design Yourself to get tool and resources for taking breaks
• Ready to dive right in and get to resolution making and goal setting? Listen to episode 28 of Design Yourself for support in getting down to new year's business.

From Sharon and the whole team at PRS, we wish you a very Merry Christmas. To celebrate the holiday we bring you a special mini-episode filled with love, cheer, and a fitting e.e. Cummings poem. Here's to a strong finish to 2017; we look forward to being with you in the new year.

"Little Tree" by e. e. cummings

It's the end of the year and the holiday season is in full effect. Today Sharon shares 10 questions designed to help inspire you to move through the holidays with intention and choice. Explore your own answers and hear Sharon's personal reflections for each of these inquiries. (Hint: What involves crab marching, a refrigerator, and lots of Christmas lights? Sharon's fondest holiday memory this year!) From Sharon and the whole team at Point Road Studios, we are wishing you a peaceful and joy-filled holiday season.

1. What are some of your fondest holiday memories?
2. Are there any old traditions that you want to let go of or new ones that you want to start?
3. What's most important to you this holiday season?
4. What are you most excited about? How can you soak those moment up?
5. What emotion or emotions will serve you as you move through the next week?
6. What 2-3 experiences do you want to sit back and enjoy?
7. What MUST DOs are draining your energy? What opportunities do you have to delegate, get done quick, or revamp your approach?
8. What would bring you relief to move from your TO DO list to your DON'T DO list?
9. What gift would you most like to give yourself this holiday season?
10. What gift would you most like to offer those around you (your loved ones, your community, the world)?

• Listen to the original Finding Your Holiday Spirit episode 26
• Festival of Lights at Watkins Regional Park (Upper Marlboro, MD)
• Visionarium (Cincinnati, OH)
• Join Sharon at the Point Road Studios Visioning Pop Up at the Visionarium on December 23rd
• Asana

2017 is coming to close and that is the ideal time to step back and reflect on what this year has taught you - epistolary style. Sharon shares insights and writing from the annual letters of Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates and then offers up 7 steps to support you in creating your own Annual Letter. From evergreen support systems like setting clear boundaries and clarifying key measures of success to creative prompts like channeling your inner Gabriel Garcia Marquez and writing stream-of-conscious style, this episode is sure to getting you thinking about what this year has offered you and give you some good momentum as you look to the year ahead.

1. Set Boundaries (e.g. To whom are you writing? What is your focus?)
2. Start Writing Stream-of-Consciousness Style
3. Circle Back to Your New Year's Resolution/Intention/Theme
4. Focus on Key Measures of Success
5. Notice Your Successes, Surprises + Failures
6. How do these insights inform what comes next?
7. Determine What Is Needed Now

• Bill and Melinda Gates' Annual Letters
• The Gates' Annual Letter 2017 – with letter to Warren Buffet
• Design Yourself 28: New Year, Same You
• Design Yourself 52: Checking in on New Year's Resolutions

The marking of time is an important and valuable ritual. And this week's episode will provide you a simple tool to do just that. "Walking around the sun" is a birthday tradition in Montessori education. Every classroom can put its own unique spin on this special occasion, but the core set up is the same. A candle lit to represent the sun, cards with each month named fanned out around the "sun" to create a blueprint of the year. Each birthday child stands up in front of their classmates and then walks around the sun for each year lived, reflecting on what they were like that year and how things have changed today. To mark the 5 year birthday of her business, Point Road Studios, Sharon walks around the sun and shares with you what she has noticed and learned along the way.

• Montessori birthday celebrations
• Podcast episode with StoryMineMedia
• Podcast episode with Emmanuel Yamoah
• Annual Entrepreneur's Getaway retreat (Here's how you can design your own retreat.)

Psst – want to leave a review for Design Yourself, but feeling a little lost technologically? I feel you. Here's a step by step overview to make the process easy whether you are using your desktop or mobile device.

As we enter into the end of year sprint, Sharon wanted to bring back one of her very first podcast episodes. In this Encore Episode, Sharon talks about why stepping away from your computer and taking a break is one of the best things we can do for ourselves - and our work too. The end of year often seduces us into a flat-out sprint. It's the last month to get your annual goals accomplished. It's a rush of finishing out current objectives and planning for new ones. And on top of that it's parties and sales and celebrations and just so many damn commitments. But it doesn't have to be. Let this week's episode be a reminder to you of the importance of stepping back and taking breaks - with several jumping off points for how you can make this practice your own.

• Where do you get your best ideas? The shower? Running? I bet you won't say: Sitting at my desk. Those breakthrough moments are unlikely to show up while you are pounding away for your umpteenth hour at the computer either. Point is: We need breaks.

• Here are just a few of the benefits of taking breaks: Allows us to recharge; Creativity flourishes away from our desks; We get new perspectives on old problems; Clarity of focus when we return to our work.

• I find that anytime you are looking to make more space for something new – whether a behavior, habit, or hobby – it's helpful to be able to understand that thing. Distinctions are a great way to do that and it is in that spirit that I discuss in this episode three types of breaks.

1) Short, Every Day Breaks

2) Vacations/Minibreaks

3) Long Breaks, e.g. sabbaticals

• Of course it's one thing to start to see what different options are out there for taking breaks and quite another to actually start taking them. For this reason, the episode concludes with some practical tips for taking breaks.

1) Integrate short breaks into your everyday routines

When we dream about taking a break, it usually doesn't include something like taking a deep breath, standing up from your desk and stretching, or taking a walk around the block. But really these short breaks are the kind of daily practice that can bring peace and a sustainable pace to our lives. Sure it's not as dreamy as jetting off to the shore of Nice, but I promise the impact will be felt every single day. Plus learning how to appreciate the sunshine on your lunch break is very good practice for being able to shift into the vacation mindset when you do head off for longer adventures.

Did you know that in 2016 55% of Americans left vacation time on the table? Don't be that person. (You can learn more about this issue over at Project Time Off. Psst – it's not just bad for those of us missing out on vacation; it's also bad for the businesses who employ them.)

Listen to the Note To Self interview with NPR's Eleanor Beardsley on tech etiquette. It reminded me again of the cultural differences at play when it comes vacation. Eleanor is based in Paris and I was shocked to hear that she never gets out of office messages from her colleagues in France. There is a deeper assumption that work can continue when they are gone. She laughed about how stateside we can write these out of office messages when we step away for even a mere afternoon. Fascinating. And so darn true.

Sometimes longer pauses are delivered to us when we didn't ask for them. Think jury duty, being sick, or caring for someone in need. Other times we can carve out special pauses like a sabbatical or year of traveling around the world. I personally loved my month-long break spent on the Camino de Santiago when I was nearing my third-trimester of pregnancy with my first. (A little insane in retrospect, but a lot amazing too.)

May you each be filled with gratitude and peace as we move into the end of year holiday season. In today's episode, Sharon shares 10 questions to inspire you to step into your Thanksgiving (and beyond!) week in an intentional way. She also offers up her own personal reflections for each question, just as she did in Episode 22, the original Let Us Give Thanks episode. In additional to having space for your own reflections, you will also learn about the power of repetition and sitting with one thing over an extended period of time (whether a question, a physical practice or an idea). This is a great episode for anyone who is looking to reset before the holidays, who is curious to know more about what Sharon is up to or who is game for some personal reflection.

As you reflect upon the 2017 year, consider…

1. What makes you happy?
2. What have you overcome this past year?
3. What are you most proud of professionally and personally?
4. Consider something that has been difficult for you this year…what have you learned from this situation?
5. What's one thing that you could let go of that would bring you a greater sense of peace and gratitude?
6. What are your greatest gifts?
7. If you could give one gift to the world, what would you want it to be?
8. If you could give one gift to yourself, what would you want it to be?
9. What's one thing that you would like to give to somebody this week?
10. What are you thankful for?

• Curious how Sharon answered these questions the first time around? Check out Episode 22, the original Let Us Give Thanks show
• Here are the two yoga studios Sharon referenced: 1) Bikram Hot Yoga; 2) Down Dog Yoga
• Brene Brown's book, Braving the Wilderness

Psst – want to leave a review for Design Yourself, but feeling a little lost technologically? I feel you. Here's a step by step overview to make the process easy whether you are using your desktop or mobile device.

Creativity, resilience and a darn good sense of humor are at the heart of Katie Blattner's story. In this week's episode we learn the story of the seamstress and entrepreneur extraordinaire behind Three Little Birds Sewing Co., a place that is part fabric shop, part instructional space and part community hang out. It's not quite the career and life she imagined for herself when she majored in chemistry with plans for med school. And then life stepped in. Through its lovely and sometimes heart wrenching turns, Katie adapted. Her optimism and bold decision making are sure to inspire you, whether you're looking to create your own brick and mortar space or just trying to find ways to spark a little more creativity in your every day. "Take the positive things that happen in your life and let them be the driving force....if you lead with the positive and use the negative as a learning or as a speed bump rather than a wall I think that you can really live the life that you imagined for yourself." - Katie Blattner

"One of my biggest fears was that someone else was going to open this business and do the exact thing that I wanted to do before I did and that I was going to really regret it." – Katie Blattner

"I kind of felt like now or never. There is only one way to find out. And I kept saying to myself, what's the worst that could happen." – Katie Blattner

"You can't miss what is in front of you…because you are so focused on what is not even here yet." – Katie Blattner

• Ginger Root Design
• Tanglewood Works
• Sohy Collective

Visit the brick and mortar shop:

5132 Baltimore Ave, Studio B

Hyattsville, MD 20781

Visit the website

insta: Three Little Birds Sewing Co.

Facebook: Three Little Birds Sewing Co.

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 202-246-5396

Ever found yourself wishing for a job that just felt like you? That felt like you'd found a work home? If you are anything like host Sharon and this week's guest, Jennifer Bangoura, the answer is yes. We spend so much of our waking life at work that it ought to be an endeavor that feels meaningful - whether in the work itself or what the work creates for the rest of your life - and ideally both. Jennifer shares her own journey from the Peace Corp in Mali to working as a project manager to starting a photography business to landing her dream job. She shares how marrying someone from another part of the world and becoming a mom changed her. She shares her struggles and how she has seized opportunities as they've emerged all with an lighthearted optimism that you are going to find infectious. "A well designed life is being grateful for the present and reflecting on what brought you there and being excited about what's coming ahead and expressing it." - Jennifer Bangoura

"I don't need to turn my whole life upside down to design the life that I do want to have." – Jennifer Bangoura

"Of course you can do other things, but it's scary and it's not secure and it's not the job that you know exists and is out there." – Jennifer Bangoura

"I want to support kick ass, bad ass women who are just doing there thing…and I want to be one of those kick ass women." – Jennifer Bangoura

• Little Free Library
• Meet Blake Sloane who first introduced Sharon to Jennifer
• 2U
• IREX
• World Resources Institute
• The Advisory Board Company
• Atlas Corps
• Tanglewood Works
• Love Languages
• Hyattsville, MD
• Shea Radiance and founder Funlayo Alabi
• Three Little Birds Sewing Co.
• Being Boss podcast episode with Jessica Lauren of No Real Jewelry

Jennifer's photography website

insta: @jennifer.m.bangoura

twitter: @jmbangoura

In today's episode Sharon shares some of her transformational reading experiences and a way for us to think about the things that shape us (be they books, experience or people). Hear what children's book characters have stuck with her and which one actually changed her. (Hint: She's a very skilled teacher!) Listen as she reads from Lydia Davis and talks about why she really appreciates reading prose written by poets. For anyone who loves books or is thinking about their own story (for a job interview or for fun!), this episode is for you.

"There are worse things to do when you're in grade two than to spend your time building a dream." – Iggy Peck

Miss Nelson is Missing

The Great Gatsby

Heart of Darkness

Wild Iris

Praise

Proofs and Theories

Twentieth Century Pleasures

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Domino, The Book of Decorating

Design Mom

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Freedom

This is Water

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Iggy Peck, Architect

• Nanowrimo
• Bernstein Bears
• Frog and Toad
• George and Martha
• One Morning in Maine
• Bridget to Terabithia
• Franny and Zooey
• A Separate Peace
• Remodelista