Reflection and reassessment seem to go hand in hand with life changes, for example, becoming a parent or getting laid off. We look at what we've lost, rather than what we have. And we may realize that we had an amazing journey and forgot to take time to enjoy it.     It's often easy to get so caught up in the "busy-ness" of life. We're so focused on chasing and wishing that we neglect to pause and take stock.   November is the perfect time to do just that: take another look at our ordinary -- our everyday -- and value it. It's perfect not because of Thanksgiving, but because it's close to the end of the year. It's often the busiest month for many. So it's the perfect time while racing the clock to appreciate what we have. To take the Have Not Want Challenge.   Will you be joining me for the 2015 Have not Want Challenge?  

November is the perfect time to reflect on what we have and to appreciate those in our lives who support us. Before we get caught up in the pressure to buy things advertisers and the media say we need to be happy, let's spend the next thirty days focused on defining our needs, truly seeing the extraordinary in our everyday, and adopting a mindset where we look for the positive in our daily life.    

Often what we say is important to us differs from where we spend our time. It's only when look back later do we see any disconnects. Writing in a journal and/or compiling lists are popular ways to chronicle one's life, but lately I'm preferring more visual snapshots. When it comes to reflection I have a hard time pausing long enough. In mid-March, I recognized the value of keeping a journal and decided to chronicle my journey of re-starting my business . Yet, while I realize it's important, I've averaged about two to three entries every other week.   Instead, I find myself turning more and more to my iPhone and to Instagram. My new found preference for visual "scrapbooking" of my life is surprising as I've always been one to prefer prose, wanting to examine a character's motivation and life story in excruciating detail. Maybe it's a result of becoming a parent, long uninterrupted stretches where I can ponder life and write about have become...

We're often quick to frame a pleasing-to-look-at shot on Instagram and hit Share without much thought. But, it is not until we learn to look--really look--that we can appreciate what's right in front of us. That's the premise of this month's Elevate the Ordinary Instagram Challenge: Reframing Your Perspective to See (and Attract) the Positive.   " Photography is about vision -- real or perceived. Before we take the camera out of the bag we must first learn to look at what we are seeing, and to see at which we are looking. " -Dale Wilson, " For Beginners - Learning to See "   Looking requires us to break down our surroundings into fundamental shapes and colors. To abstract them from expectation. To observe from all sides: above, below, under, next to. And to re-envision them.   This is the approach I take with both my My Ordinary 365 and The Scene Today Instagram Series. And why I'm challenging you to join me this month for 30 Days of Elevati...

Each day dawns with endless possibility. And, for many of us an equally endless to do list. We know we'll never accomplish all the items, but that doesn't stop us from trying or racing through our day with our heads down, oblivious of what's going on around us. Pausing for just a few seconds and actively seeking out one good thing can change a day from drudgery to joy. " We want to develop the habit of searching for, and discovering, something to appreciate about every person, situation, or experience we encounter ." -Jonathan Wells, " Allowing Appreciation to Change Your Life ," Advanced Life Skills For 2014, I decided to challenge myself to capturing one photo of the seemingly ordinary that makes my life extraordinary (link opens an Instagram gallery). At the end of each month, I pause and I go through the moments and reflect on what was important to me. In January , most of my moments were of family and food. This trend continued in February and i...

So many spend their lives comparing themselves to others, missing out on the ordinary moments in their lives that make an extraordinary tale. For 2014, I started an Instagram challenge, My Ordinary 365 , that focuses me on my life, not the lives of others.     On January 1st, I started exploring the beauty of the seemingly ordinary in my life to reveal the extraordinary. I decided to capture these moments with my iPhone and share them on Instagram. Some days I have more than one moment I want to share, other days it's hard to find one.     The exercise of finding what's good in my life is an important one. One that I first learned of when attending Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting Program . For one week, our instructor had us document one positive experience. I was in the last trimester of my pregnancy and was focused on all of the negatives. The exercise turned my thinking around and helped me to realize whether we have The Good Life or not is in what ...

If I'm not creating, I get stabby. I'll jump down your throat. I'll sulk. If as an adult I could get away with it, I'd stamp my feet and scream until I got my way. But, I no longer have time for any of that.   Rather than focus on what I couldn't do, I decided to look at what I could do. I could commit to 20 minutes three days a week to create: a 20-minute practice in seeing.     How do you fit a creativity practice into your routine?  

Most days twenty minutes to myself where I can just create is a luxury. Crafting prose to complement a series of photographs is a seemingly impossible task, one often accomplished over the course of a few stolen moments throughout the week. However, I still find time to create. Recently through the "viewfinder" of my iPhone and published via my Instagram feed.     I can't believe the summer's almost gone, and that there's only a week left in the Find Your Voice workshop . It seemed like just a few days ago, I was hosting my Girls Night In Thai Cooking Class and packaging it into an online Thai Flavors: Introduction class for Atly's launch at ALT SF. But flown it has. So I've snatched moments here and there to whet my appetite for making.   One of the best sessions I attended this past January at ALT Summit SLC was the Makers Gotta Make: Fine-Tuning Your Creative Process for Success roundtable co-lead by Sandra Harris from Raincoast Creative Salon and...

Do you let your fears get in the way of your living a full life? I do sometimes. (I think we all do at one time or another if we're honest with ourselves.)   An underlying theme that surfaced in many of the sessions at ALT Summit SF last week touched on this. More than one speaker encouraged us to embrace our fears and not overlook small signs of success.     Good things just happen when you face your fears . - Aaron de Simone, I Heart Luxe Don't be afraid to show your personality . - Cathie Toshach, Bing Step out of your day-to-day . - Rene Tom, Makeshift Society   I've worked with and for many entrepreneurs. At some start ups, we tackled our fears head on; we recognized there were naysayers and we plunged on ahead anyway. At other start ups, we got mired in self doubt and succumbed to a whirlpool of indecision and restarts.   What are your fears? Are they rational or irrational?   Out of the six plus start ups I've worked for, none have avoi...

Everyone says the best camera is the one you have with you. And, that camera is usually a phone. But, even though your go to camera is a phone, you still need to regularly back up your photos.   You do have a back up plan; don't you?   Apple makes it easy for us to become complacent. How? Syncing our photos across devices: our iPhone, our iPad, our MacBook Pro. With services like MobileMe and now iCloud, it's easy to assume those photos live in the cloud and are backed up by others. Wrong assumption. At least, in my case. For some photos, I have thumbnails in iPhoto, but, no image file. For others, nothing. Our mini-moon in Calistoga; gone. A super secret wedding in PDX at Voodoo Donuts; gone. All discovered MIA when I went searching yesterday for a photo of a cup of hot cocoa. (I *really* need Adobe Lightroom, but I'll save that discussion for another post.)   You'd think after experiencing a hard drive failure and near miss loss of all my photos that I'd be b...

We share our apartment with a four-legged ball of fur - a Maine Coon Cat named SpriteKat. I take that back, she grants us permission to live in her domicile. SpriteKat has been in my life since 2006, when I dreamed her into existence. I wrote down the description of a cat I wanted into a lease and within a week, I found SpriteKat (the living replica of the cat I described) on a rescue site. She was abandoned by her first owners when they moved and had been living on the street for approximately six months, without any front claws. When the first shelter in Modesto found her, her fur was a tangled mess. She was transferred to San Carlos, a no-kill rescue facility, and adopted. Unfortunately for her, her first forever home tried to sell her on Craigslist. Luckily for me the rescue facility found her again. Why did I fall in love with SpriteKat? Her personality. Every morning at the rescue facility, the workers would find her out of her kennel, curled up on the front desk. Replaying the v...

I'm addicted to Instagram - an iPhone application that lets you take photos, transform those photos using filters, and then share them via Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr. Initially I had no insight into how well or how poorly my content was performing. Now, I can get statistics for my Instagram content with Iconosquare (formerly Statigram) .   Iconosquare gives you a few features you don't get with Instagram, the ability to see who followed you recently, who unfollowed you, which fans follow you that you follow back, and more. You also get recommendations about when to post.   Reviewing Your Most Popular Content In the Viewer (the default view), you can organize your photos by Likes and by Comments Received. This ordering allows you to see which photos are getting liked or commented on, and if you chose, influence the direction of your future content.   You can also quickly scan through entries into Instagram Challenges or your uniquely tagged Instagram series. ...