Life plans

Happy labor day.

An office supply store has a promo this week, 250 free business cards. I started playing with it, and what came out was a business called The Uncommon Zone (gee, wonder where I got that from). I may be trying to make it be too many things for too many people, but what I’m coming up with for the motto (what your business is about) seems to be going toward Helping you to be uncommonly good, or Helping to bring out your uncommon good.

It feels like the beginning of the development of my life plan, which I want to include a lot of things, true–editing, health and nutrition, spirituality, coaching. And I may be trying to do too much with one card, but it’s worth a shot.

I guess what’s bothering me is the motto. “Helping” seems weak to me–I want to inspire people to do what’s going to help them the most; maybe it’s breaking out of self-destructive eating patterns, maybe it’s exposing them to ways of thinking they never knew of before, some of it may be following intuition (either mine or theirs). I want to give the feeling of energy, inspiration, delivering what they need (whether they want it or not!), making lives better. This is also getting me thinking more and more about the Duke Integrative Health Coaching program, but that has to be at least awhile in the future, some of the issue at least being, how would it work so it’s worth the training costs. I need to build up the skills and knowledge first. (And that’s one of the reasons I’ll be on my computer at 11:56 pm tonight, when Westchester Community College drops any people who haven’t paid for A&P 2 and hopefully I can slide in; if not, it’s a nutrition class. The other reason is that I slept until 9:30 this morning, and no way will I be ready to go to sleep before midnight!)

So what would the skills and knowledge entail? Some alternative health training–some people have mentioned acupuncture, Chinese medicine, things like that, but that doesn’t feel right, at least not now. I’m thinking yoga teacher training, starting with the first level of 200 hours training. Another possibility is herbs–there was a woman in a yoga weekend I did who is an herbalist, and I want to talk to her about it, maybe see if I can train with her. There was also another woman at the weekend who does spiritual work, and her partner is a naturopathic doctor; I had an initial strong negative reaction to her until I examined it and it boiled down to envy because of what she was doing and how centered she seemed with it. And she’s cute and slender and doesn’t look like she’s anywhere near the 50 year mark, which I think she turns in October. Anyway. And maybe I will end up doing at least some ayurvedic training, starting with a weekend introductory workshop.

I was out with a friend this weekend who works down in the financial district, IT person in a big law firm. I’m not sure whether he likes what he actually does; I know he doesn’t like the supervisors and politics he has to work with. But he’s come to terms with it; he makes enough money to enjoy life, but the thing that bothers me is that he doesn’t enjoy life 8 hours a day. And that’s what I don’t want to settle for. He said that some people get to do what they love, but it’s really a recent concept in our culture–that you should love what you do–and that may be true, but I see it as a healthy evolution. You can love it for any number of reasons–what your company’s goal is, the people you work with, the actual job tasks. I want to be doing something that doesn’t make me want to procrastinate, something that not only makes me feel good but also makes other people feel good.

So there’s my current life plan. Any thoughts on the motto?!