Michelle Cederberg - Live Out Loud

“Failure is usually from want of energy than want of capital.”

~ Daniel Webster

How would your life change if you had more energy?  What would you do differently if you weren’t always so tired?  It’s a Catch 22.  Exercise gives us more energy but we need energy to exercise and because we don’t have any we choose the couch instead.  BUSTED.  If this sounds like you you’re not alone, and I want to hear from you.  READ ON:     

 

Imagine your perfect energy-filled day.  You wake up before your alarm and feel refreshed and excited about the day that lies ahead.  You’re up early enough that you don’t need to rush out the door, so you make a proper breakfast and enjoy the morning with your family.  As you glance at the newspaper headlines you make a plan to walk the dog before you leave for work, and remind yourself to pack your lunch and a bag for the gym.  You have a noon workout scheduled with a friend.  You’re excited to get to the office so you can finish that proposal you’ve been working on, and begin preparing the presentation that will help sell it.  You love your job.  You work hard at it, but you also value time with family and friends so you created a schedule that allows for maximum productivity without the long hours.  You get more done in four hours of work than most people do in a full day.  It’s amazing what you can get accomplished when you’ve got energy and clarity on your side.  You leave the office before rush-hour and have time to spend with your kids before making a nice dinner together with your spouse.  Since you don’t have to bring your work home with you, the evening is about family, friends, fun, and relaxation.  You’ve got your health, a sense of life balance, and energy to spare.  Life is good.  Actually, life is GREAT! 

 

“HA!  Are you kidding me?”  You get up early only because you have to.  You don’t have time to eat breakfast.  You commute to work in your car every day for at least 30 minutes in each direction and mainline coffee from morning until 2pm. Around 9:00 a.m. you grab a doughy treat at the coffee place near your office.   You sit at your desk for the better part of 8 hours a day with the occasional stretch for the phone, or ‘anaerobic burst’ to rush for the elevator at quitting time.  Lunch requires a trip down to the food court so you get a bit of exercise then, but you don’t have time to workout.  You don’t have the energy either.  By the time you get home you can’t see straight for exhaustion so if you had a dog it would be overweight too.  Your kids know not to bug you because you’re usually tired and irritable, or snoring on the sofa before dinner.  If you are involved in activity with them it’s usually sitting at the side of the playground watching them climb and play.  You channel surf for a few hours after dinner then fall into bed by 10:00 pm dog-tired, still wired, and wishing for a magical solution to get energy now.”

 

Which description is more like you? 

As frustrating and depressing as it may sound, far more people identify with the second scenario over the first.  We’re tired, wired, and ready to drop.  These days we’re working more than ever, spending less time with our friends and family, and inevitably watching our health and happiness drift away.  We are far more familiar with stress, sleep deprivation, fast food, and lack of exercise than we are with health, vitality, and vibrancy.

 

BE IN MY BOOK!  I want to hear your stories, struggles, strategies and successes, with exercise, health, and taking care of yourself!

Here is what I’d like to know?  If you’re currently not taking care of yourself the way you should, what are some of the major reasons why?  Click here to complete a short NEED ENERGY survey.

 

If you are able to keep yourself on your self-care priority list I’d love to know the strategies you use or your story about triumph over struggle.  Click here to complete a short GOT ENERGY survey. 

Read JACKIE’S story below!

Thank you in advance! 

WHATEVER IT TAKES (Jackie’s story)

A woman from a past audience shared her struggle with finding time to exercise.  Jackie was a single mom to two school aged kids and also worked full-time as a paralegal at a busy downtown law firm.  Her mornings were filled with getting the kids off to school, she often had meetings through lunch hours, and she usually had to leave the office right away at the end of the day, to beat the traffic and pick up her kids.  Apart from getting up at 5:00 am (a move she simply wasn’t prepared to make) she couldn’t figure out how to fit in fitness.  After hearing my presentation on overcoming barriers to exercise something clicked for Jackie.  At that presentation she remembered me saying “10 minutes of doing is better than the hour you were thinking about doing, so just get moving.”  She started using her coffee breaks to go for a walk - twice a day, 10 minutes each time.  At first she was surprised by how tired she felt walking just 10 minutes, but then she hadn’t been exercising at all, and 10 minutes was more than she was used to.  She kept at it and within weeks she was adding in stair climbing and even jogging into those 10 minute efforts.  She started calling her breaks ‘get moving’ sessions to motivate herself to get to it on days she was talking herself out of it.  A sign above her computer said “Get MOVING Jackie!” in bold print.  On days she didn’t feel like walking she’d tell herself out loud “Get MOVING Jackie, it’s only 10 minutes!”  She began to really look forward to her exercise breaks not only for the energy the movement gave her, but for the sense of satisfaction she felt when she was done.  She said the walks gave her way more energy than a coffee and muffin ever could.  Over the first 2 and a half months of her new exercise regime Jackie dropped 12 lbs, felt more energized at work, and even had the get-up-and-go to add in a couple of after dinner exercise efforts with her kids.  She even started dating again.  Some of her co-workers have started to join her on her daily walks now too. 

No one says exercise has to happen in giant leaps in order to be effective.  Jackie embraced the Whatever It Takes mentality and look where it took her!  

Michelle Cederberg, CSP (Canada’s Newest Certified Speaking Professional)

MKin, BA Psyc, CEP

Helping people with full schedules and a long list of responsibilities maximize their personal energy.

“The name of the game is taking care of yourself, because you’re going to live long enough to wish you had.”

~Grace Mirabella

Feel great again. Find a way past fatigue and low motivation and start living a life full of energy.  If not now, then when? I know you’re tired and you have no time, but you really what choice do you have?  If you constantly put yourself last on your priority list exhaustion will eventually lead to ill health and unhappiness…and where’s the fun in that?  

Last week I was interviewed for an article in the Calgary Herald about investing in yourself.  The reported wanted me to share ideas on how readers could invest $100 per month in putting themselves back on their own priority list.  Here’s the segment of her article that shares my thoughts on that front:

If I had a hundred dollars (with apologies to the Barenaked Ladies) I’d . . . what? What could a person do with an extra $100 a month?  The Herald explores a trio of possibilities, with a number of side options, on how to invest a monthly windfall.

Invest in yourself

Got your debt managed? Take that extra $100 a month and buy some precious time — with a personal trainer, at a course or hiring a babysitter.  The returns will be tangible to you and possibly to your bank account through increased focus, energy and motivation, says Michelle Cederberg. While the author, speaker and life coach points out people don’t necessarily need money to invest in themselves, directing $100 a month toward something that will put them back on the priority list can help.

“The biggest gift that we need to give ourselves is a little bit of time in our day,” Cederberg said. “Most busy people will say they don’t have the time, energy or motivation to partake in anything that’s not on their to-do list. It’s usually the tasks related to self-care or leisure that get deferred.

“Really it is a matter of buying time each month, however that looks.”

Cederberg spoke from a busy air terminal in Orlando, Fla., on her way home to Calgary from a national speakers association conference.

She noted many Calgarians were running on empty (and being less productive) because of lack of exercise, sleep and because of a poor diet.

The trend can change by giving oneself higher standing in the daily list of must-dos, Cederberg said. And a shift toward self-care doesn’t have to be monumental. In fact, the motivational speaker recommends taking small steps to begin with.

“When people are in sales or doing anything that requires client work, if you’re not feeling good about yourself, that’s going to impact your bottom line,” she said. “If we prioritize ourselves and feel better about ourselves, we can put that positive energy into work and better our bottom line to make more money.”

Want to read the whole article? Click here

Investing in yourself ...  the idea is simple but it’s certainly not easy.  Let’s work on that together.

Free coaching

This week I want you hear from you.  Send me an email telling me what you want to improve in your life.  Tell me why that goal is so important to you, what’s getting in the way, and what it might take to kick into action. I’ll email you back.

Reduced rate coaching

Want some more help?

Ask me about one-on-one Skype or phone coaching to set your plan and get it in motion.

Summer Support Crew

Strength in numbers!

Success increases with accountability, and who better to keep you on task than your own friends.  This summer I’m challenging you to create your own ‘to do’ support crew with people around you who have the similar goals.  I’ll help you on your way by hosting a private webinar for you and your friends on the topic of your choosing, and follow up with each of you for a one-on-one half hour coaching session.  The more people you round up, the lower the per person fee.  Email me to find out more!

Michelle Cederberg, CSP (Canada’s Newest Certified Speaking Professional)

MKin, BA Psyc, CEP

Helping people with full schedules and a long list of responsibilities maximize their personal energy.

Summer Accountability Experiment… continued

 

“Nobody can do it for you.”

~Ralph Cordiner

…though sometimes I wish that they would.  We all have tasks we’d rather not do, it’s true.  If you’re like me you’ll procrastinate the doing in hopes of gaining more energy or enthusiasm for the task, but in the end that just amounts to wasted time.  Let’s face it; unless you’ve got unlimited resources and have servants and staff at your beck and call, you’ve always got something that needs doing in your business or life.  Eventually delay leads to necessary action so why not get to it before the eleventh hour?   Nobody can do it for you.  Do it for you.

 

If Your Life Sucks It’s Your Fault.  Oooo that’s not nice of me to say, and yet if you meet me in person you’ll observe I’m anything but nasty, and in your face.

 

As a motivational speaker, personal trainer, life coach, and everyday optimist I genuinely care about helping people push past barriers and reach new heights in their health, happiness, and success.  I’ll admit I have been feeling frustrated lately though.  We’re a nation in a lifestyle crisis battling poor health, low energy, and lack of fitness.  We’re out of control with diseases of lifestyle, living with high levels of stress, and resigning ourselves to low levels of happiness.  You tell me you want more energy, better health, and less stress but in the fallout from long hours and busy schedules action is replaced by complaints of no time, energy, or motivation to create the change so desperately desired.  Smart enough to care, but too busy to do anything about it.  If any part of this description sounds like you I have one question for you.  What are you going to do about it?

 

Sometimes the barriers seem too big to get past but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.  Over the years I’ve posed the question to myself time and again over challenges I’m having in my business and life.   “What are you going to do about it?”  I rarely like the answer.  “You can sit there and feel sorry for yourself or you can do something.  Anything.”  I write this blog entry then, not as an all-knowing, super-expert, brilliant perfectionist who has it all together but from personal (sometimes painful) experience gleaned through a high and low “life sucking” journey that began for me as an early adult and culminated in clarity and higher levels of happiness the year I turned 40.  At many points between then and now my life SUCKED … or at least I thought it did.

 

I’ve battled low self-esteem, weight gain, cigarettes, failed relationships, so many failed relationships, discontent with my work, discontent with my health, disbelief at my low bank account, and disbelief in myself. 

 

I’ve struggled through trying friendships, crippling co-dependency, people pleasing, fear of failure, and fear of success.

 

I’ve almost quit, never started, and sat down and cried more times than I can count.

 

Through it all I wondered “When is it all going to stop being so. much. work?“

 

I probably hit my low point in the fall of 2001.  I was 32 years old, single, working at a job that didn’t pay me what I was worth, I was a personal trainer who had gained weight, I was stressed out, type A, hard to be around.  I was probably depressed and I was most certainly unhappy.  When my latest relationship with another mediocre mismatch came to a crashing halt I wrote myself a big old reality check.  “This can’t keep happening.”  I had to get to the root of my discontent and low self-esteem.  On the outside I ‘had it all together’ but on the inside I was questioning everything.  In my mind I was a huge fraud.  I was an unmotivated motivational speaker.  I was an unhealthy health expert.  I was a life balance strategist who had no life balance.  I couldn’t do anything right.  No wonder my life sucked!  I figured I could keep repeating the same patterns and continue suffering or I could get help.  I started to see a counselor.

 

Through several sessions I spilled my guts to her.  “Why does this keep happening to me?  I’m smart, I’m funny, I’m fit and attractive, I’m fun loving, easy going, financially stable, I’m hard working … blah, blah, blah …”

 

In my mind, if I was all those things then the world around me was at fault for not recognizing my worth and making me successful and happy.  In truth, I had been qualifying myself with these descriptors for years but deep down I didn’t believe any of it was true.  I had to get to the core of why I didn’t value myself at a high enough level to push through the fog and chase the silver lining, and until I did my life would continue to suck. 

 

Change began for me in small steps and was preceded by the very humble realization that I am, was, and will always be the common denominator in every aspect of my life that sucks.  That was hard for me to admit.  If something was wrong with my life I needed to take control and create change.  If I hated my job I needed to fix it or walk away.  If I was dissatisfied with my health I needed to quick drinking so much beer, stop eating chicken wings, and get back to working out.  If I was striking out with relationships I needed to learn to love myself better first.  Nobody could do it for me.  I could avoid personal responsibility and keep blaming other people, tough circumstances, or the environment, for my misery but that wasn’t getting me anywhere.    If I didn’t have the time, energy, or motivation to do any of that work my only choice was to stop complaining about how much my life sucked and suffer in silence.  I didn’t like that alternative. 

 

Perspective Switch

I’m not sure why it took me so long to flip the switch, but I guess when you’ve run into enough obstacles you quit stumbling around in the dark and begin fumbling for the light switch.  Mine was a simple perspective switch.  If I was the common denominator in every aspect of my life that sucked couldn’t I re-frame and instead be the common denominator in the development of a happy, abundant, successful life?  Sounds good to me…

 

Yeah so you’re …

 

Single and unhappy

Married and unhappy

Too skinny

Too fat

Broke

Hate your job

Out of shape

No time to exercise

No time for anything

Stressed out

Husband is lazy

Hate your wife

Hate your life

Stuck in a rut

Have no education

Boyfriend is a jerk

Girlfriend is crazy

Choices are limited

 What are you going to do about it?

If you want change, start by changing your attitude.  Nobody can do it for you.

 

It sure is simple but it’s certainly not easy.  Let’s work on that together.

 

Free coaching

This week I want you hear from you.  Send me an email telling me what you want to improve in your life.  Tell me why that goal is so important to you, what’s getting in the way, and what it might take to kick into action.  I’ll email you back. 

 

Reduced rate coaching

Want some more help?

Ask me about one-on-one Skype or phone coaching to set your plan and get it in motion.

 

Summer Support Crew

Strength in numbers!

Success increases with accountability, and who better to keep you on task than your own friends.  This summer I’m challenging you to create your own ‘to do’ support crew with people around you who have the similar goals.  I’ll help you on your way by hosting a private webinar for you and your friends on the topic of your choosing, and follow up with each of you for a one-on-one half hour coaching session.  The more people you round up, the lower the per person fee.  Email me to find out more!  

Michelle Cederberg, Speaker, Consultant, Coach, Author

 

An article with this headline appeared in today’s Calgary Herald and it really got me thinking.  It reported that the oldest baby boomers showed little interest in leaving the workforce even before the economic downturn descimated their savings.  Financial necessity has made retirement even less attractive. Still, experts believe deferred retirement is more about baby boomers wanting to stay engaged.

 

Whatever the motivation for staying employed, gone are the golden years of retirement, when one would adopt a life of leisure and enjoy the fruits of years in the labour force.  These days we’re literally working ourselves to death.

 

While an older ‘willing to work’ force will stave off an anticipated shortage of skilled workers as boomers age, it could also mean more health problems and higher benefit costs, and employers may be compelled to confront the “very delicate” issue of dementia on the job - especially if health and wellness continues to take the back seat among working Canadians. 

 

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m all for having a choice ‘to work, or not to work’.  The problem lies in the choices we then make as busy, working Canadians ‘to exercise or not to exercise’.  Health Canada statistics suggest that it’s during our prime working years (between the ages of 18-59) that lack of time, energy and motivation sap efforts at getting and staying healthy.  If boomers are in fact delaying retirement in favour of work, I expect the above age range will expand to include 60+ and we’ll see a further increase in sedentary rates and diseases of lifestyle across the country.

 

Work is a necessary part of life, but if it impacts our overall health and enjoyment of life we have to ask ourselves if the long hours and extended working years are worth compromised health? 

 

I regularly present life balance and stress management seminars to busy individuals in big organizations, and since work is non-negotiable, your health should be too.  I encourage workers of all ages to re-prioritize health practices like exercise, eating healthfully, and getting enough rest amidst the busy schedules demanded by today’s employers. 

 

GET TO IT

No matter how busy you are, you have the responsibility to grab hold of a portion of each day where you put yourself first.  Get over “I’ll get to it when…” by simply making a commitment to begin.  The clincher is you needn’t go big to experience success.  Remember these two truths:

 

1)       It’s not the doing that’s tough, it’s getting to it!  

2)       Doing on any level is better than thinking about going BIG.

 

Once you commit to spending even small amounts of time on daily health practices, you’ll find more time to build the possibilities.  Create the habits that align with energy and vitality, and be ready when the momentum of your actions starts to pull you toward new levels of health, self-esteem, and productivity.  It will happen, and I promise you, it is wonderful.

 

My new accountability journal will help you have better work-life balance, finally fit in fitness, increase your energy, and love your life!  Email me here to learn more, or click here or on the image below to purchase.