We just finished a really fun time in my sales organization - I had a great quarter at work and I feel really proud of where I am. I had my final interview for the job that I've been interviewing for, so I will keep you posted when I find out if I get the job, but either way….it felt really good to want something and really desire for movement in my life and take more of an inventory of what I've accomplished and, um, that's what I wanna talk about today.

 

Let’s talk about how to get better about doing an inventory and understanding how an inventory can help you and how you want it to work in your favor. 

 

Before I do that, tickets for The Others' day Brunch are on sale. If you have been thinking about coming to Chicago and celebrating with us, it's gonna be on May 13th.

 

It's a Saturday. The Saturday before Mother's Day. Tickets are on sale. 

If you go to my website, lana mankowski.com/othersday, or of course you can always DM me on Instagram, lana.mankowski and I will help you get your tickets. But it is going to be a beautiful day for women who either don't have children or maybe they don't have a mother figure in their life, or they're missing their own mom this year.

 

The Others' day Brunch  is gonna be an opportunity for you to surround yourself with women who are seeking that same connection, and it doesn't mean that you have to share your story while you're sad. While you're there, you can show up and share if you want to. If you don't want to, that is great and just feel appreciated and loved and I'd love for you to be there.

 

So let me know if you have any questions about that. We also do have some ambassadors doing local events in, we're calling them Sister Cities. So if that's something that you're interested in, um, becoming an ambassador in your city and getting a group of women together just casually either for coffee, maybe sit down for brunch, we would love for you to reach out and let us know if you want too create connection in your own local community and be part of our Ambassador Program and I'll send you the application.

 

So that's what's, what's going on. But now what we're gonna talk about is as we think about the start of a new quarter, so Q2, we're 1/4 through the year, and I want us to get back on track with where we are with the word that we chose for the year. If you. I haven't been listening to the podcast that long, you will want to go back and listen to Episode 68. It's called, Choosing Your Word for the Year, and I'll talk you through the exercise of choosing a word that is representational for how you want to go forward in 2023. So I have, um, if you're watching on YouTube, you can see my flip chart with my word for the year, which was ownership.

 

If you went through and chose a word for you, now is a perfect time for you to go back and decide what are the things that you chose that you wanted to have ownership for, or you wanted to have more control and whatever your word is, more compassion, more love. There's  feelings that you wanted to have.

 

And so my word, I wanted to have a feeling of ownership, but when you choose your word and you do an inventory and say, How am I going?

 Am I aligning with this word? Does this word still feel good to me?

It's really important to decide, do you still want to feel that way in your life and in your intentional way of being in 2023?

 

And if you do, are you bringing that into your daily life. So we did this today in my thrive after infertility Saturday cohort. We took an inventory. 

Where are we as we're moving through this program? 

Are we in alignment with where we wanna be? 

 

So same thing. Are you in an alignment with the way that you want to feel this year?

 

And if you're not, I think it's normal  you might wanna judge yourself and say, oh, you haven't done enough, been open enough. You haven't focused on this enough, and that's okay, but you don't have to do it from a place of judgment. Maybe you think -  

I'm gonna focus on this a little bit more.

 

I'm noticing that there might be some things I want to try, but I haven't tried them yet. 

 

When you give yourself this freedom to feel like something isn't wrong with you, that you haven't done it, Then your brain gets off this defensive way of being, of wanting to judge yourself. And you say, Hmm, like for me, with ownership, how have I taken ownership of my career?

 

And I can sit and I can say, Hmm, I interviewed for a job. I put my name in the hat. I made myself known in my intentions known to people in my sales organization. So for me, I feel like I'm trending on that. So maybe. See some of the ways that you want to show up, feeling that way in your life and just start to ask yourself.

 

Maybe list them out. 

Career 

Relationship, 

Future

Story. 

 

Those are mine. But when you think about yours and you list them out, how are you trending? If you haven't even started working in the category that you have pre-identified, that's okay. Just say, is this something I wanna focus on?

 

Maybe this. Is this something that I'm gonna pay a little bit more attention to and then decide yes or no. And if it's not right for you to do this month, maybe ne next month when you do a reevaluation or when we, when we go into Q3, we can do this. So I always find that it's important to check back in with yourself.

 

When we think back to who we were in early January when we chose this on episode 68, that was what, January 3rd do we want to go back and just say, Hey, how am I doing? How do I feel? Am I taking the actions? That are going to make me feel as though I have more of this in my life. And so this is the magical work that we do and thrive after infertility.

 

And I'm so proud of the women that I've been working with. They show up every week and they're open and supportive and just very much like willing to have the discussions about things that for so long we might have judged ourselves for feeling and we didn't talk about them.

 

And so showing up every week, and especially today, like being able to say, how are we doing without judgment? And are we trending in the place and towards the place that we want to be? So I offer that to you this week. Take an evaluation of your word for the. Go back and listen to episode 68. If you haven't chosen your word for the year and start today.

 

Don't feel like you're gonna be behind schedule. Just start today and see what you can come up with. So have a beautiful week. I love you. And remember, it's never too late to discover your meaning. I'll talk to you next week.