life coaching

The Importance of Serving Others

Living my life by being of service is a huge component of my sobriety.

At one time it looked like raising an extensive amount of money for organizations whether through organizing a gala, a book sale, or a 5k race in my neighborhood. But as my (service-based) business has grown, I don’t have the time for those larger events anymore. What I do have time for is living my daily life in line with being of service. And so do you, trust me!

When we live life with service at the forefront of our actions we are exuding kindness. As an added bonus compassion starts to show up in our lives too. Service or also called volunteering doesn’t have to be dishing out food at a food bank or selling cookies for the school bake sale. Think outside of the box of what you traditionally thought of as service or volunteering. It can be something much smaller.

For example, if you have a dog you are most likely already carrying poop bags on your walk. Why not fill one up with the trash that you see in your neighborhood as you go on your walk? If you love animals, how about fostering a four-legged pal while you are still working from home during the pandemic. How about the neighbor that lives alone, invite them to sit on the porch and chat (socially distanced of course). No awards will be given but the impact you will make on your community, your friends, your family, and yourself will be bigger than any moment at a gala.

My family has been in a quarantine pod for quite some time now. We have dinner once a week and hang out. It has definitely been a lifesaver during the pandemic. This past weekend we took one of their kids, they have two, for a sleepover at our house. The kids are at the stage where it seems as though they are constantly bickering, it’s something that the parents have mentioned to us. And I remember my own kids reaching this stage as well. With my kids, it seemed like I was constantly playing referee and finding myself saying, “Please just play with him for an hour!” to my older son. I also vividly remember when my older sister was no longer interested in playing Barbies with me and didn’t want me around. It’s a stage that all siblings tend to go through when the older one is in the preteen age and you can suddenly see this big divide in their maturity.

Gretchen and a family friend, the pre-teen girl that she wants to be a role model for.

So we took just one kid and it felt so good to be of service in that way, for her. To allow her space to simply do whatever she wanted to do for the weekend, to not have to compromise with a younger brother, to just be. We colored together for hours, went for walks, looked at flowers. We didn’t do anything super incredible, we are still living in a pandemic and not everything is open or safe to go to. But just holding space for someone else, it’s such magic.

For me, it also is about being a role model for this young girl. Most importantly it’s about being a role model who is sober. Now it’s not that her parents are heavy drinkers, they are not! (We honestly wouldn’t be friends if they were.) But I think about myself at that age and she is reaching the age, that for me, was when underage drinking happened. 13 years old. Thinking about that and seeing myself in her…I want to give her what I felt like I needed at that age. An adult, who wasn’t my parents, that I could look up to. Someone that could show me being happy and living authentically doesn’t have to go hand in hand with drinking or doing drugs.

Start by thinking about the last time someone did a kind and gentle act for you. Maybe it was a random phone call from a long-lost friend or maybe a neighbor stopped by with some baked goods. Maybe someone offered you some plants that they had extra of from their yard. These are all ways in which we can think of reaching out with kindness and being of service in our lives. We can be of service in a variety of ways from four-legged to two-legged teenagers to your elderly neighbor down the street. We can step beyond our own world of needs and we can give love and kindness to someone else. Go ahead, give it a try!

Do You Have a Choice to Make?

Coaching

When I was a little girl I dreamed of owning a dance studio.

I spent a lot of my childhood in a dance studio taking classes and I admired the owner, Fran Peters. She was strikingly beautiful with her dark spikey hair and heavy eyeliner. She was soft and caring when she wanted or needed to be with a young dancer who was crying because she was nervous about going on stage. She was detail-oriented in her instruction paying close attention to perfect pointed feet and fingers wide in jazz hands yet firm with her older students who whined about period cramps.

On more than one occasion I heard her say to her instructors and staff whether about dance choreography or showing up on time to do their work, “my expectations of you are high because my name is on that sign!” As a small kid, I didn’t understand the statement and couldn’t comprehend, at the time, what it meant or the weight of responsibility that having your name on a sign as the business owner truly would feel like. I may not have understood but it has stayed with me over the years. I think Fran set the bar high not just for her staff but for herself. And I see myself doing the same thing.

I had an opportunity at the end of college to fulfill my childhood dream. I was teaching at a dance studio outside of Pittsburgh and the owner approached me about being a partner and taking over the dance instruction at the studio. She wanted to step away from the hours at the studio and spend more time with her young kids. She would handle the business and I would run the studio. I thought long and hard about it but ultimately I turned it down because at that time I had dreams to live in New York City and be involved in theatre. Which I did.

We are all given these moments where it feels like a huge choice needs to be made, the path in front of you divides. You could go in either direction, you can’t quite see the outcome but you know that choosing the path will redirect your life. The seniors in high school are possibly going through it for the first time in choosing where they will go to college.

Maybe you are feeling the heaviness of making a choice with the covid mandates being lifted in your state. The path in front of you is divided and a choice must be made. Have faith that even once the choice is made, you can change your mind and you can pivot to go in a new direction or circle back to where you were. You can come back to that original dream and modify it slightly. I did.

Since 2009 I have owned and operated a yoga studio, Bee Yoga Fusion. I don’t teach dance anymore but I do teach yoga and fitness on a daily basis. But every day I feel as though I am dancing on my mat. And I think Fran Peters would be proud of the businesswoman I am and the high standards that I hold for myself and my staff too.

What choices are in front of you right now? Are either of them tied to your original dream or are they knew dreams that feel a bit intimidating? Allow yourself the space to create openness within your body; go for a walk, take a yoga class, do something that moves you so that you can release some of the tension you are holding on to. Move your body first and then come back to the decision that needs to be made with a clear mind. You can do this, even if it feels hard. You can do it!

8 Simple Steps to Create a Social Media Content Calendar

Behind the Scenes, Small Business

As a small business owner, it can often feel overwhelming with the number of hats you have to wear in order to run your business. Let’s not let social media and content creation be one of those stressors!

Plum Paper planner with social media strategy highlighted in the monthly calendar.

Are you a small business owner? Or are you in charge of posting on social media as part of your job description? Maybe you started writing a blog in the new year and already are a bit overwhelmed with keeping to a schedule. I want to share with you my tips on how to create a social media content calendar that is low stress and fun to do.

I’ve tried several different digital social media planners over the years, some were free and some I paid a yearly fee for. There were many features that I liked about them but lately, I’ve been yearning to pull away from the phone and computer and go back to basics a bit with pen to paper. I find it calming to open up my paper planner in the morning and write out my goals for the day, my schedule, as well as my to-do list.

Step 1: Print out a monthly calendar or begin working in a paper planner. This year I am using Plum Paper. I like that I can personalize the daily pages and customize the planner to fit my needs.

Step 2: Identify the topics that you want to talk about. I believe that five topics should be the max so that your message comes across very clear to your audience. Allow them to get to know you and understand what your brand believes in. This helps to keep you streamlined on the content that you create and alleviates the need to post something just for the sake of posting. You want your posts to be important to your audience. There are enough selfies already in the world! Bring value to what you post online.

Step 3: Now for the fun part! Color coordinating your topics. I like to use Zebra Mildliners , they are easy on the eye to look at and I can quickly see at a glance the topic that I should be posting about on the particular day. Designate a color to each topic and create a “map” off to the side of your calendar so that you remember what color goes to what topic.

Step 4: Decide where you will post the content based on where your audience interacts with you. Do you have more than one place in which you are creating and posting content? Divide each square into the number of places where you post content. As you can see in my picture above, I post on Bee Yoga Fusion Instagram, Gretchen Schock Wellness Instagram, and here on this blog. So I divide each day into 3 separate blocks.

Step 5: Determine how many times in a week that it is possible for you to create and post original content. Is that three times a week for each? Or do you think you could post daily on one platform and then less so on another platform? Set your goal for the number of posts per social media location or website.

Step 6: Then take your color pencils or markers and begin at the start of the month. Using your topic map start with the first color and then move on to the next filling in the squares with alternating colors. Some people choose particular days of the week in which they will talk about a certain topic or theme. I’ve done that myself and found it a bit stagnant for me in my creative process. Instead, I focus on the goal of the number of posts a week per social media location or website and less about hitting a particular day of the week with content. I like the variety of alternating the topics regardless of the day of the week. Make sure to give yourself days off!

Step 7: Now that you have your color blocks filled in, look at your calendar and the pictures that already exist on your phone and spend 30 minutes deciding on content that you will share for the upcoming week. You don’t have to write the actual text for the post but maybe you already have a picture or an idea of what you will want to write about. “Favorite” your pictures so that you can easily find them on the day of your post.

Step 8: Stick to the plan! Everyday open up the calendar and see what you should be posting about so that you stay focused on your goals and your brand message.

Word of the Year

Coaching, Movement

Every year I choose a word and I allow that word to come into all aspects of my life. I start with it in my daily meditation practice, reciting the word to myself serval times before settling into the quiet and stillness. And then it becomes a mantra of that year for me.

Tattooed on my arm is the word embrace, the first year that I did this practice of choosing one word, was 15 years ago. This was the year in which my oldest son was diagnosed on the autism spectrum. I chose the word: EMBRACE so that I could embrace this diagnosis, and I could embrace what parenting was going to look like for me. Learning about the various therapies and discovering where he would fit in the world and accepting that some things were going to change.

I want you to choose a word for you today, that you want to bring into your year.

We give words power, we can call them “bad words” or “inappropriate words”….you know the ones I am talking about! But they are just words. Because they are a cuss word or they’re associated with a derogatory label or term, as a society, we have given them power. So I want you to choose a word today, and we are going to give it power in your life. The word that you choose will have a higher frequency. This means you are sending that energy out into the world and in return, that same frequency will be returned to you.
What will your word be?

Enjoy this FREE yoga class to connect to the creation of your WORD OF THE YEAR by bringing it into your yoga practice.

The Importance of Letting Go

Coaching, Minimalism

Let’s think of our life from beginning to end as a journey. And throughout each of our individual journeys, we all at some point have struggled with the decision on what to continue to bring along with us on this journey and what to leave behind.

I have moved a lot, and completely by choice. I’m not in the military, jobs have not forced me to move. But in the last 26 years, I have lived in 16 places. That’s averaging a year and a half at each location! I really just like the process of moving, of starting fresh in a new place and purging the stuff in my life.

In the process of moving, and maybe even now with the pandemic and feeling as though you are stuck in being in the same space. Maybe you are looking at your walls and all of your possessions and wondering, do I really want all this stuff around me all the time?

During the pandemic, I know several people who have “Marie Kondo” their lives. Holding each item and asking if it brings them joy? And in the question of- does it bring me joy- we make the decision to either continue to bring it along with us on this journey or leave it behind.

Sometimes it feels hard to throw or give items away. It’s as though by giving away that teapot somehow it means that we are throwing away all the memories of sharing tea with friends. We give these physical items in our lives power, as though they are our memory keepers and we know that that is not true. The teapot doesn’t have that special power.

If we don’t purge some things in our life occasionally we begin to feel weighed down, it becomes almost as though we can no longer see anything new because all we’re seeing is old. All we’re seeing is old memories, old things we’ve carried around from place to place. And when we create a bit of space, space for the eye to drop into nothingness. We begin to lean into the possibility of change and lean into the possibility that maybe something could be different and that it will be for the good.

I’m not suggesting that we have to pack up our houses and move. I promised my wife we’d never move again, that this house is the last house. But just as we purge our closets of clothes that no longer fit or are outdated or as we go through papers and shred years of old documents and bills, we need to also really look at our habits. What can we get rid of that is no longer serving us well? Maybe that is the scoop of ice cream every night before bed. Maybe it’s the two glasses of wine after dinner. Maybe it’s the hours spent on Facebook.

As we embark towards the beginning of a new year. Let’s start to look around. Let’s look at the things that we are continuing to carry on our journey. Let’s look at the inventory, not just in our closets and around our houses but really take the time to look at ourselves. What can we dispose of that is no longer serving us? What habits can we get rid of, so that we can continue on our journey, lighter and more in line with who we want to be on a daily basis?

Empathy, Compassion, Truth, Hope.

Coaching

The words that have been sitting in my heart and mind from President-Elect Joe Biden’s speech on Saturday night are Empathy, Compassion, Truth, and Hope.

These are words that you hear me routinely speaking of within the yoga classes that I teach because they are part of the foundational principles that guide the practice of yoga.

Empathy requires the skill of being able to listen. Our yoga practice gives us this amazing opportunity to shut our mouths and be quiet. On our yoga mats, we learn what it’s like to have emotions that flutter up within us. To have moments of discomfort, or uncertainty, and to not be able to crack a joke about it, or haggle the teacher or dismiss it. Instead, we are to simply be present in everything that comes up for us during this time on our mats. The rule in a yoga class is that you are not allowed to talk. So we’ve gained this additional tool in our toolbox, of being quiet, which allows us to learn to practice empathy towards ourselves.

We learn how to listen, to ourselves, and to our bodies and to our minds. And from that practice, we then also sweetly fall into compassion. When we let go of that negative voice within our own minds or the storyline that we’ve been subscribing to for so long, whether it’s because someone else told us that we are to be that way, or you’ve just fallen into a habit. It’s in that moment of letting go of the negative internal voice that we offer ourselves compassion.

Truth is a big one in yoga, Satya in Sanskrit. It’s one of the guiding principles of my life. Learning how to stand in your truth, to speak your truth, and to live by the truth. It’s hard and sometimes it takes sacrifice. Sometimes it means standing alone or standing with the less popular group. But believe me when I say that standing in truth and aligning your life by the principle of truth is what will lead you into an amazing transformation within your spirit.

I myself, just speaking candidly, would like to see us get back to that period of time in which the Office of the President was respected. That people on both party lines aren’t cracking jokes and making fun of the person who is the leader of this country. My heart has been sad about that during the last four years. Whether or not I agreed with President Trump and his policies, the title of President deserves respect. And in turn, the person holding that office should be representing this country with dignity and treating all people with respect.

Regardless of what little circle we filled in with our black pens on our ballot sheets, whether our person won or our person lost, we can all stand together in truth,

Which then leads us to hope. We, as people, are more alike than different. We all hope for safety, for equality. For all people, regardless of the colors of our skin, or the gender that we identify or don’t identify with, regardless of who we love, or how we’ve decided to live our lives. We all hope for safety, equality, kindness, and love.

So let’s take one of these words today with us. Pick your favorite one. Empathy, Compassion, Truth, Hope.

Write it on a piece of paper or post-it note and put it somewhere in your house so that you see it every day for the rest of this week. Let’s use that as a reminder to keep cultivating our practice of yoga. To take this practice off of our mats and out into every aspect of our worlds.

If you haven’t yet listened to Joe Biden being interviewed by Brene Brown on her podcast, Unlocking Us, I highly recommend it.
https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-with-joe-biden-on-empathy-unity-and-courage/