Michelle LaBrosse Blogs

Rekindling my enthusiasm for my teen-aged company – who knew yoga would show me the way….

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

Today is a double header.  My happiness focus is on being enthusiastically engaged and today the focus is on enthusiasm.  What a great day to roll out a new idea. Yesterday in several conversations with my closest friends and colleagues, I realized I have grown less than enthusiastic about various aspects of my business.  So I am making a commitment to become enthusiastically engaged in every element of my company’s performance in all realms.  It is my choice to stop the demeanor of the haggard parent of an entitled teenager. I sometimes adopt as the leader of my 15 year old business.

To that end I am enrolling these closest friends and colleagues, some of who have known me for three decades, on my “board.”  But instead if having a Board of Directors or Board of Advisors, I’m assembling them into a Board of Enthusiasm.

It’s time to rekindle, revitalize, and renew the enthusiasm I had for this incredible business my team and I created.  I’ve used the veil of entrepreneurial fervor and the love of the next big thing to shore up my less than enthusiastic enjoyment of the day to day requirements of the business.  While I enjoy the thrill of the startup as much as the next entrepreneur, I can channel this into various performance enhancing efforts of my business as it moves through its teen years into mature adulthood.  I did after all actually enjoy the teen years of my now launched adult children.  So I know I can do this, it is fun, and it is oh so worth it.

One of the things I’m enjoying about my happiness yoga flow daily practice is it grounds me to a healthy routine even when I’m traveling.

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

I’ve kept to my commitment to do the Happiness Yoga Flow every day – now on day 6.  This daily practice is giving me an extra oomph – like this morning I got up and it was the first box checked off for the day.  I felt so virtuous.  Then I hopped to and met my adventure buddy at her gym for water aerobics.  I am excited to prep for the weekend inspired eagle yoga and gastronomy retreat – but first, things first – do my happiness practice.

Part of my Happiness Practice today is to reflect on how my enthusiastic engagement impacts others.  I recently  read an article about how to avoid bad bosses.  It listed five characteristics of bad managers and what to do to ferret these types out if you are in an interview.  I realized I had all five characteristics.  I’m thankful I run a boss free zone business.  I’m a teacher and a writer – not a boss.  Then I saw this quote by Thich Nhat Hahn – “When someone congratulates you or criticizes you, you can use this mantra. I have weaknesses in me and I also have strengths. If you congratulate me, I shouldn’t get lost and ignore that there are negative things in me. When we see the beautiful things in the other person, we tend to ignore the things that are not so beautiful. We are human, so we have both positive and negative things in us. So when your beloved one congratulates you, and tells you that you are the very image of perfection, you say, “You are partly right. You know that I have other things in me also.” In this way, you can retain your humility. You are not a victim of illusion because you know that you’re not perfect. And when another person criticizes you, you can also say, “You are partly right.” (Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Love).

So while my enthusiastic and engaged approach to life may inspire others, I’m not the best boss on the planet according to conventional boss standards.  At least I’m happy. Do I have a responsibility to become someone I’m not though to meet some “boss standard” so others are more satisfied with how they have to associate with me?   I do not think so – it’s more important I am true to who I am.

My adventure buddy Barb is sideways over this latest requirement – pulling me out of the doldrums because of this current tax shituation.

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

Being happy while well rested is pretty easy.  Finding my way to happiness exhausted with extensive time pressure and then hearing about a tax problem from 2013 finally resolved not in my favor – well then it’s time to pull out the silver lining aspect of finding my way to happiness.  Today’s theme is responsive.  So, I need and want to be responsive to whatever is showing up.

One of the silver linings of the tax shituation is my assistant emailed me the initial value and it was 3 times higher than the final hit. So now I feel lucky it’s the lower amount.  Plus I’m told we still need to find more deductions. So I’m not sure it’s worth even getting worked up about it all now.  I’m at a bar writing this with my adventure buddy Barb (a medicinal visit to recoup from the tax news).  Still time to do the happiness yoga flow – I’ve switched to seltzer water.

My day included delivering my latest completed Christmas hat as part of a visit to have my Apple IPhone programming genius fix my iPhone.

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Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

I’m taking my knitting gig on the road so now I have my hat designs on my iPhone. This is the design for the current hat I’m working on. Everyday I am either creating or reinforcing a habit – I like this hat habit – for now.

This is day three of me doing the happiness yoga flow every morning.  Considering I created this yoga flow, I know how to do it.  So I can do it anywhere . But doing it every day, well I don’t always do it everyday – but now I am – even today as a travel day where I’m in Juneau at a hotel waiting for my plane to leave in the afternoon. I did yoga in jeans and my hiking boots – just to see what it would be like. I’m very much enjoying creating this new habit  The new habits I’m creating here though are not just doing the happiness yoga flow every morning, but it’s also approaching everything I do with enthusiastic engagement as it makes whatever I’m doing so much more energizing.  All I need to do the happiness yoga flow is the action of doing it – wherever I am, whatever I’m wearing – yoga mat, or no yoga mat.
A few weeks ago I was watching the movie on Yogananda. As I was doing yoga today, I remembered a line from that movie – something about how practicing yoga does not require you to give up anything – you may over time choose to only do those habits that help you.  Being in this hotel last night, while setting up the computer onto the TV to watch a show from Amazon Prime, the TV was on a channel with a TV Christian Minister.  In the past, I would have had a negative perception of this type of programming. I took a minute last night to see this show through a new perspective (this was spontaneous and not forced).  What I saw was a man attempting to bring comfort to others  through his religious beliefs. I saw a shade of goodness I had not noticed before. There are all types of things in life that can annoy – my new habit of enthusiastic engagement – it’s taking me in some directions I had not anticipated.  I much prefer seeing goodness of what is going on around me rather than railing about what is wrong or bad about it.

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

What I’ve learned today – when a rental car company wants to hit you with a huge one way drop off fee, check out how much less expensive it is to do the same trip with a Uhaul. Granted you’ll have to drive a moving van to get to where you’re going, but you could make some extra cash on the adventure by moving someone’s stuff too.

Had to hit the ground running AFTER I did my yoga practice today.  And I swear, I checked the ferry schedule three times – once when I made my tickets, once a couple weeks ago when I was concerned and once when I got here – yup – all said the ferry left Haines at 7 AM on Tuesday Dec. 1, 2015.  Arriving in Juneau in plenty of time to make the 2:20 PM flight to Seattle.  So my friend calls and asks what I’m up to today – leisurely last day in Haines.  I said – “yeah I’m catching the ferry at 7 AM tomorrow to Juneau.”  He says, “You sure?  That is the standard time it leaves Juneau for Haines.”  I say, “Yup, I know, I checked it three times.”   Well he checks, nope, it’s going the opposite way.   The ferry is leaving at 6:30 PM tonight to get to Juneau.

What did I learn?  Well first off, thank god I woke up thinking I had a leisurely day ahead of me. It made my new morning yoga routine so luxurious and peaceful.   I also learned – there is something messed up with the Alaska Marine Lines website (or how I’m using their website).   And for things as important as what time is the ferry leaving – CALL THE FERRY TERMINAL.

I also learned that if you need to drive from Seattle to Portland and drop off the rental car, the cost Budget Rental car quotes on the phone to do this is $650. (Reserving it online on the Budget site yourself saves you a handy $500 – WOW).  And if you rent a Uhaul, besides having to drive a 10′ box truck, you only pay $167 for the same service – whether you call them on the phone or do it yourself online. The added benefit of the Uhaul –  when you arrive in Portland you get a whole day to use a 10′ Uhaul truck.  And the Uhaul dealer is only a mile from my house, whereas dropping a car off at the closest drop off location airport is an hour round trip ordeal with either tying up a friend’s time or figuring out how to take public transportation or a cab home.  Even though the Uhaul could stimulate all types of “Uhaul date” type jokes, I’m leaning that way.   I still have a day to see if anyone wants to pay me to move anything from Seattle to Portland so I could possibly even turn a profit on this new found insight……

Michelle – Focus – Enthusiastically Engaged

Here is my first hat. Since it had a Christmas theme, I gave it to Kate early. I made it to match her puffy winter coat. She was so gracious and genuinely seemed to appreciate it. (Kate is an advanced knitter and has won blue ribbons at the SE Alaska State Fair with her knitting projects).

As I was doing the Happiness Yoga Flow this AM, I contemplated how my confidence improves when I am enthusiastically engaged. Lately I’ve been knitting hats for friends and family.  This is something new for me.  I learned how to knit when I was a kid on our long family camping car trips around the country every summer (my parents were teachers so every summer we’d take off).  In college, I was into knitting sweaters with lots of little characters on them – at the time I was calling them Icelandic wool sweaters – but I’m not really sure the name of the style.  Beside the odd pair of mittens here and there and Christmas stockings for the girls when they were babies, I have not knitted much in the past thirty years.  But I wanted to get back into knitting and make the same patterns on hats (a lot less knitting then sweaters).

I’m developing more capability (and confidence) for designing and knitting hats – it’s what I’m enthusiastically engaged with in the moment.

About a week ago, I went to the yarn store in Haines to get started.  Teresa who runs the store told me to design the hats on a spread sheet.  She gave me a couple patterns to get me going with creating my own.  I made the first one and got into the swing of things.  I’m pretty absorbed into knitting these hats – this is what I refer to as being enthusiastically engaged.  What I’m noticing is how my confidence is increasing the more I do this.  So for me, just being enthusiastically engaged helps me increase my confidence in whatever it is I’m pursuing.

I’ve been wanting to learn how to use the program “In Design” by Adobe – but their graphic user interface is so foreign to me.  In the past, when I tried to figure it out, I got supremely frustrated.  I do not have much confidence at all in my abilities to learn this.  But as I reflect on what I’ve just learned with this renewed interest in knitting, and how captivated I am with my current knitting projeccts, I’m realizing, yes I can learn how to use In Design too.  So being enthusiastically engaged in one activity, increasing my confidence in that activity, does help me get more confidence to learn new skills in other areas as well.

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

Sorry Madison I did not put this in a tube. Well at least now we know it doesn’t travel so well just rolled up.

Background on the Happiness Challenge – Almost five years ago now,  I realized if I did gentle yoga on a daily basis it would help me age better.  I got the idea from a friend who was comforting me about my very athletic 77 year old mother having fallen and not being able to get up.  She told me it was common for people to be challenged getting up off the floor as they aged.  (We were to soon find out though that this was not my mother’s challenge – she was diagnosed a month later with inoperable brain cancer).  But the seed was planted – I wanted to stay flexible, limber and capable to get up off the floor as I got older.

I did not realize yoga was also going to be the way for me to transition to life without my mother. My mother was my best friend and helped me raise my daughters ( I became a single mother when my daughters were 3 and 5). So even in my 40’s, she was still the runway in my life.  When she was gone, I had lost my runway – it was a tough transition.  (I am not sure if anyone has an easy time with this transition). Yoga helped me create a home inside myself – it helped me create my own runway.  It also helped me find my way back to happiness.

I got the idea during my yoga teacher training to create a gentle yoga flow that could exercise every muscle and put weight on every joint.  I started teaching it and then created a yoga mat with all the poses.  After several iterations, we settled on calling the yoga flow – the Happiness Yoga Flow.  It only takes about a half hour to do – it includes a breathing meditation.   But it’s only one part of happiness.   So I created a couple of online modules about how to connect with yourself and the world around you in a way that increased happiness and combined this with a two day yoga retreat.   It then occurred to me to make it a stand alone online class – the whole program.  About the same time, I had started on a 66 day challenge to learn how to love and accept myself unconditionally as I have been challenged for decades with a negative perception about myself because of what I weigh.  I figured for happiness, this was also a good thing to do – make daily challenge to become happier. It had to include daily yoga, but also a daily contemplation related to a theme – grounded in what helps people be happy (it’s unique for each person).   As part of the 30 hour online Happiness Project Class, our students evaluate what is happening when they feel happy.  For me one of the things happening is I feel enthusiastically engaged in life.

My birthday twin and director of digital marketing, Madison, created a poster with the happiness yoga flow on the side of it.   I’ve enclosed a picture of mine (it got a bit crumbled on my trip to Alaska).  We used the Inspired Eagle cards to create the daily contemplation word.  Several of our co-workers are doing the happiness challenge with us and we are all going to be sharing what we learn on the Cheetah Learning Blog – www.cheetahlearningblog.com.  I will be sharing my insights here (as well as a shorter version on the Cheetah Learning Blog).