Interview with Gary Newton

A few months ago I sat down with Gary and we talked about his role as a life and business coach. We probably ran overtime, and definately covered some interesting areas, but we shed some light on the mysteries of the coaching profession.
Then I spent HOURS editing! haha

You can find the entire interview and introduction over at Inspiration Unplugged.

http://inspirationunplugged.com/kaye-waterhouse-interviews-gary-newton/

To be honest, I may have been a little selfish in my endeavour to interview him, as Ive always been interested in Coaching so it was a way of having my questions answered. Hopefully you find it helpful too! 

My name is Kaye and I eat Tim Tams at midnight

With my ever expanding network and ever decreasing time, I like to play 'stacks-on!' with the things that fill (and fulfill) my life.  Ive been invited to write on the community blog Writers Rising, which is an absolute honour  :o)

Follows is my first post, but make sure you head on over there and check them out... there is some serious talent to roll around in! And read, of course.
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In the darkness of the closed door and drawn blinds, my face glows in the warmth of the monitor. Its sweet touch tickles my chin, my nose, and my brow before sparkling off my eyes. It’s still late (although maybe now it’s early) and I’m still typing. Finally.


Ive been dying to write now for weeks. But every day the monitor growls at me and falls back to sleep – unenthused with what I offer to the mercy of the keyboard. Its not enough. Once upon a time I toyed with being a ‘writer’. I entertained the notion that I could write always, effortlessly, and continually and maybe, just maybe, make ‘a living’ from my pursuit. But perhaps I was guilty of dividing my attention elsewhere, second-guessing any talent (see what I did there?), and jumping on the merry-perfectionist bandwagon driven by dear old friend, Procrastination. Whichever way, Ive got plenty of excuses lined up as to why Monitor and I do not cooperate more often than we do. Oh but when we do its glorious! But mostly we are a bickering belligerent old couple. And I begin to resign myself to the fact that I can never create nor direct my desire to write… it happens when it happens. And that’s why my title generally reads, ‘Design student slash professional slash model’, more often than ‘Writer’.

I recently visited a life coach. That should sound empowering, but in my control freak/highly self-sufficient mind, to say that aloud is like standing up in a room of equally bedraggled and ashamed faces to say, “I ate an entire box of Tim Tams last night at 1am while everyone else slept”. Everyone has been there, but no-one wants to be brutally honest with a stranger. So as you can imagine, its a little confronting to say the least. Oh don’t get me wrong, aside from the nauseating anxiety thrashing around in the pit of my stomach, my coach is very good(!). But I had much difficulty trying to articulate in words and on paper what my ideal/dream life could have in it. Quite clearly the only thing I knew for certain when he asked me what I would attempt if I knew that everything I did would be enough and perfect was, “Something else”. But I don’t think I even told him that. I thought about how much I tried to squeeze into my life every day and thought, do I really have to write? It takes up so much of time, it doesn’t achieve anything, there are no rewards, benefits, goals or recognition (not by my measuring stick anyway). Had I made a mistake entirely with any pursuit of this vision thus far?

Intense right?

Yet, ultimately the moment I was drawn back to my slightly obsessive and yet truly sporadic jaunts through the land of language, I stopped thinking about all these things. There was only one thing I felt as I poured whatever thoughts I had onto the screen (Im a bit new-fashioned that way, I rarely use a pen). And it was joy. And the screen beckoned me into its purring embrace.

I had stopped measuring my writing by the good old joystick (and Im not talking about circa-1998 Nintendo64). I was looking at the ‘things’ I could get for my efforts, rather than taking the one thing that I knew was guaranteed… Joy. Why would I ever do something I didn’t want to? And similarly, why wouldn’t I do something I enjoyed so much?? It may be sporadic, it may be obsessive, and it may rob me of my sleep at obscure times (she says, dimming the lights on the bedside clock that grin in agreement) but it’s FUN. I work two jobs and study a degree qualification – writing is my solace, my therapist, my meditation and my medication, my joy, and my fun. And I don’t do it for anything else.

My name is Kaye Waterhouse, your newest addition to Writers Rising. I am 25, living in Melbourne, Australia. Quite possibly everything you’ll ever need to know about me, you’ll find

Here; http://www.klarityandkaos.blogspot.com/
Here; http://www.designfits.wordpress.com/
And here; http://www.inspirationunplugged.com/

And subsequent entries at Writers Rising. Im thrilled to join you   :o)

K

Gratitude should be a verb

Reposted from my entry at Inspiration Unplugged

Gratitude should be a verb, not a noun.


In primary school, we were taught that nouns were ‘people, places, and things’, and verbs were ‘doing’ and ‘action’ words. Sure, the act of ‘expressing’ gratitude is a verb, but gratitude is a constantly evolving and growing and fluctuating process, a unrelenting and desirable internal dialogue with oneself, a feeling of appreciation…. a ‘doing’ word.

An associate on facebook posted the following note the other day;

How can we be happy in the moment we’re in if the world we live is conditioned to make us want more.
How can we feel content in life when we are programmed to need more than is realistically necessary in order to feel bliss.
How do we strip our needs back to basics when people who expect the very thing we despise surround us.
Am I born in the wrong time if all I want is to live in a tree yet need to commercialize to climb it.
Is there a happy medium between having nothing and having too much.
How do we move forward when the destination consumes us so much we no longer like the journey.

…and my answer was so simple I even questioned it myself. Be grateful. And for the following days I thought about what it TRULY meant to be grateful, and what benefits one could see by living in a state of gratitude. It just seemed too simple to my over analytical state of mind!

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. Melody Beattie

Last week I had to fly to Sydney to work on a new interior design project for the firm. It involved 10 hour days of data collection on workstyles, on my feet carrying a laptop. At the end of each day I was completely exhausted… too exhausted to sit in my hotel room and work on my two uni assignments, due on the day I returned to Melbourne. Over the weekend, I did fly back, late on Friday night and modeled in two days of shoots from 7am until 5pm both Saturday and Sunday before flying back to Sydney on Sunday night.

It really was disastrous. I got sick, and I couldn’t shake the headaches. I lived on caffeine, and I slept poorly. My school work didn’t get done, and everything that could go wrong with technology, taxi’s, getting lost, etc… did. I couldn’t postpone the photoshoot as I had committed to a team (and to be honest I needed the money and the addition to my folio) and I couldn’t turn the Sydney project down as it my first foray into this kind of project work. And knowing that I was missing classes and submission deadlines was doing my perfectionist head in.

But over the days, as I thought about gratitude, and what drove me to do all these things (simultaneously) I realized I was in amazing position. I had a free trip to Sydney all expenses paid, I got to visit my girlfriend in her new city and explore it myself. I got to be a part of an amazing project and push my career professionally. I had secured a lucrative modeling campaign that enabled me to contribute the first of funds to my house deposit, not to mention expand my network, and I was developing an awareness of what my personal priorities were and should be. It was only the flick of a switch, and when people asked how it was going, I started to say ‘interesting!’ instead of ‘exhausting’.

Gratitude turns our problems into lessons and gifts, failures into successes of experience and knowledge, it makes the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into significant events. Gratitude is a mindset easily flipped into a positive state. You can be grateful for the bad things that happen to you as well as the good. You may be cursing that hangover, but alternatively be grateful for the courage those few glasses of wine gave you to chat up that cute person and get their number. I know I was!!   ;)
The act of being grateful rests on choice. YOU choose whether a scenario is a catastrophe, or a beautiful lesson.

A few months ago I started keeping a gratitude journal following a very dark period of existence. I aimed for three things every day that I was grateful for, even if it was as simple as ‘remembering an umbrella on the day that it rained’ or as obvious as ‘getting promoted’. A lot of the time I couldn’t think of three things… its harder than you think. On those days I wrote down what a stranger may be grateful for…. No queues at the supermarket, a warm bed to sleep in for once, a newborn child. These things reminded me that gratitude was specific yet different for every person, and those who had a lot less (in my eyes) actually had more than enough. Even if I couldn’t find my own positive light at the end of the day, I could at least see someone elses.

Its not a new concept, its not even ‘new-age’. Its just pure fact… if you are truly grateful for the activity, state or object, then what you have (or have experienced) is valuable to YOU, and enough. It is simple economics – supply will never meet demand, and the same goes for the human psyche. The more we learn, the more we realise how much we dont know, so there is always that desire reach beyond. The sad thing is most of us will never touch the wall with our outstretched fingers, because we continue to move it further away. The more money we make, the more things we want to buy, the more we see the world, the more we want to travel, the more opportunities that present themselves, the more we take on and the less time we have, and the more successful we are, the more awareness we develop around how more successful we could become. It is a cycle of events that is unrelenting and expands ripple apon ripple, unless we find one thing; gratitude.

I did it! Written Worlds 2010

Written Worlds Melbourne was a great success. I tend to ramble but hey, thats ok I guess! I had fun and I got to meet some great people. And I realised how truly passionate I am about my writing and content and how much more Id like to write, so Im setting out to put pen to paper alot more often and maybe turn it into a little job on the side.

I met some people who were truly inspired by what I had to say and told me so afterwards. I was really humbled and flattered that they enjoyed my words and were motivated to write themselves by what they saw on the screen from me. It was awesome!

You can download Part 1 of the Podcast here: http://www.freelancerunplugged.com/ (click on "Podcast" on the right hand side) and then choose Written Worlds Part 1 (and keep an eye out for the next parts!).

Written Worlds - Melbourne

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Two days till Written Worlds…. not sure if Im going to pee out of excitement or fear!!

Inspiration

Having been an avid participator in Freelancer Unplugged, a networking forum for freelancers of all professions, I was asked to co-author an Inspiration blog, where all my worldly thoughts could have a home (as well as on my K&K blog). It’s a wee bit of an honour, to be asked to contribute to something that will ultimately help other people by talking about things that Ive been through socially, professionally, and emotionally. Especially when for the most part I just consider them personal ramblings. Its not until someone says to you, ‘Oh hey, I read your last blog post and it made me cry’. That shit really makes you go ‘wow’, its amazing how a few words can affect someone, especially when you are telling the story of their own life and you haven’t even realised it.
Feel free to check it out… and be inspired!!

www.inspirationunplugged.com