Cara Lumen | Sing a Deeper Song

Sing a Deeper Song

Alligned Choices

Stop Overwhelm with a Tangible Beginning and End

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The quickest way to get out of overwhelm is to create a tangible beginning and end. Put some boundaries on what you set out to do. Notice how great you feel when you complete it. Chunk your projects into smaller piece so you can see and feel them end.

Set boundaries

Define a few steps you need to take next. A very powerful way to set boundaries is to create in a series. A series has a beginning and end. It has a predetermined size. It is a short enough project to feel the satisfaction of completion. When I started my podcast “Reflections of a Deeper Song” I would have been overwhelmed if I didn’t break the possibilities down into smaller segments.

Cornerstone content builds a strong foundation

As with any project, the foundation is the key component. Why are you creating this? Who are you creating this for? What do they need to know first? What foundational information do you need to provide for them to ultimately get the big picture? The first element of any project is to create the cornerstone content that is the core explanation of the basic elements of the series. This clarifies your project for you as well as for those who will consume it.

Outline your ideas

Step into you beginner’s mind and begin to list the steps needed to understand your message. As you outline, capture those wisps of ideas you need to o bring into physical form. As you capture your ideas, organize them. Keep only the ideas that strengthen your message. Examine your outline for natural learning chunks. Those are the small segments you will work on with a tangible beginning and end that will keep you from feeling overwhelmed.

For instant, I began my podcast with Cornerstone Content just as I would in blogging or teaching a course. That episode clarified the direction of my work and generated ideas for future series. That choice of a foundational series allowed me to easily develop the first series of episodes. That’s it – a beginning and an end. As I work new ideas will emerge but confining my project to s series with a well-defined beginning and end, keeps me focused and assures that I complete my work.

Completion encouraged more completion

The more often I work in a well-defined and focusee series , the more I find my completion and posting rate increasing I have five posts in the Find Your Tribe series. I wrote them easily because the ideas built upon each other. They flowed so easily that I was able to schedule them ahead and suddenly I had free time to focus on another project! See how that works?!

Keep your work short

Writing in a series also helps me develop an idea and still keep my content short. That means I can complete a post more efficiently. I can produce a short video. I can focus on expanding one concept at a time. In this day of information overload, that makes my work more consumable

Keep your To Do List short

I choose “Three Impactful Things To Do Today.” I do them. With whatever left over time I have, I do something else.

My days have a focused a topic: Monday-Articles, Tuesday- Podcasts, Wednesday-Production, Thursday-Courses/Videos, Friday-Loose Ends, Saturday and Sunday – “Me Day.”. Each day Having a specific focus for each day steadily moves each aspect of my work further towards completion.

Having a tangible beginning and end eliminates feelings of overwhelm

Create a tangible beginning, middle and end that can be done in the period of time you have assigned to work on it. If I have an hour, my goal is not to proof an entire ebook, but it could be to edit and proof two chapters. That gives me a feeling of success, of completion, of moving the project forward. End is not “The End”. It is the end of that small chuck that you have chosen to move from the beginning to the end.

“Every new beginning comes from 
some other beginning’s end.” – Seneca

How will you chunk your work down into a tangible beginning and end?
To Sing a Deeper Song consider:

01-How The Deeper Song Community Emerged (podcast, 20 minutes)

02– The Hole In Our Life Called Loneliness (podcast, 20 minutes)

03- Planting Roots and the Fundamental Need for Security (podcast, 20 minutes)

The Set Aside Day

How Not to Make Plans

How to Manage Your Energy to Become More Productive ‎

Nature Does Not Have Deadline, Why Should We?

One Way to End Procrastination 

View Decisions as Experiments, not Final Choices.

COME SING A DEEPER SONG
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Are You Too Old to Change?

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The worst words you can say to yourself are “I’ve always done it that way.” It’s a killer. It stops your imagination. It stops awareness. It stops personal growth. Is that what you really want?

What unconditional positions are holding you back?

A neighbor said she found it hard to cook for one. I suggested she make a big pot of something to cover several meals and she said, “I never eat leftovers.” What happened to a soup getting better the second day as the flavors blend? What happened to being able to freeze individual portions of healthy food for yourself? Her unconditional position left absolutely no room for change.

Another neighbor said, “We learned how to eat as children. There is nothing we need to learn now.” As children, there were not genetically modified foods or pesticide riddled crops to the degree there are now. There is always something new to learn because life changes.

Look carefully at the unconditional positions you hold dear. Are you willing to reexamine and rethink your beliefs in order to move forward from where you are?

What has changed about your life that requires adjustment?

How has your financial position evolved? How does that affect your spending habits? How has your health and stamina changed? How has that affected your activity? How have your relationships evolved? Who is in your life that is supportive and who do you need to stop allowing around you? Life changes, circumstances change. That means we need to change. We need to be willing to adjust our response to the circumstances that show up in our life. There is always something new to learn and explore. Never consider yourself too old to change.

What belief can you release?

Look carefully at the underlying beliefs that hold you in place. What do you think you can still accomplish? Have your goals gotten smaller? Give yourself permission to think big again. What do you think is possible? Look for the beliefs you hold that are keeping you stuck in place.

Stay strong in your difference

I am surrounded by people who think that to age is to deteriorate. That’s not my belief. I find support and encouragement in my belief on the internet. Although I have been a vegetarian for 40 years I am now a vegan. It meant I gave up dairy (I was eating yogurt every day), cheese (I had just discovered Parmigiano-Reggiano) and butter (I did find a great substitute). I tried to bake without eggs and had odd outcomes. I learned that my taste buds can be changed in eight days and soon found that most things I ate elsewhere were too salty or too sweet. I cut back on sugar. I could no longer bring myself to dump a lot of sugar into a bowl and plan to eat the resulting cookies over a three-day period. I gathered concepts, recipes, and encouragement from my like-minded fellow plant-based eaters online. I’m changing and I’m have a great time exploring the new possibilities.

Vegans are only about 14% of the population so this personal choice sets me apart from the people in my community. The fact that I am a metaphysician studying Taoism makes me even less aligned with my present community, but these are my choices. It is my path to explore, my results to achieve. As you make your personal choices celebrate your uniqueness and stay strong in your difference?

How do want this next part of your life to be?

When I was in business, I had plans, steps to take and goals to achieve. In retirement, I get to design this next part of my life and I need a focus. This current cycle of my life is about introspection and figuring out how I can continue to feel relevant in my life as it unfolds today. I need some qualities by which to measure my progress. I have two objectives: one is to deepen my spirituality and the other is to feel relevant. I want to feel I am contributing to others. I measure the success of my days though my expressions of serenity, mindfulness and letting life and circumstance unfold. It’s a tranquil way of life and I’m learning as I go. I have found a relevant way to participate. How do you picture this next part of your life? How will you stay productive? What do you want to accomplish? What is the focus of this next cycle of your life?

How are you willing to change?

Why are people unwilling to change? Are they too lazy, too uninspired, too complacent? Or are they no longer aware they have a choice? Where is the fire, the curiosity, the desire to keep learning? If you’ve lost that, how do you get it back?

Change is made one moment at a time

One choice in any given moment can make a difference. What happens if you stop yourself from a negative comment? How will that change the outcome of your conversation? What happens if you learn to listen to what the people are saying behind their words? What insights will you gain? How will your response change? In an instant, you can decide to change. Maybe you choose a carrot instead of a cookie, walk an extra half block, or give the next person you see a compliment. In an instant, you can create change by the way you think, and the way you act.

Change is an attitude

You are surrounded by change. You are immersed in change. Every moment is an opportunity to make a different choice, act in a different manner, or turn in a different direction. Being old is not an excuse for being opinionated, rude, or unresponsive. It certainly is not an excuse to refuse to change and grow. Old is an opportunity to reflect, to deepen your spiritual connection, and to try to live a kinder life than you had the time or consciousness to live before. Don’t use age as an excuse. Cherish it as an opportunity to change.

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider

04–How to Redefine Yourself and the 30 Year Plan (podcast, 20 minutes)

11-Do You Need a New Tribe? (podcast, 20 minutes)

if I Were a Person Who…

The Cycle of Moving Forward

The Clarity of Starting Over

Wander Beyond All Paths

The Shedding Of Your Skin

Why You Need To Learn to Change

How to Creative Fertile Field for Positive Change

How To Identify and Release Your Restrictive Ways

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What Am I Doing Way Over Here?

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Have you ever unexpectedly found yourself some place you hadn’t indentured to go? How did you get here and why are you here?

As it turns out, my off-track journey ultimately served my original purpose but it took some close looking to figure that out.
1. I set out to create a course, which I’ve done many times before.
2. I was on a webinar that taught me to make a short course using videos. I didn’t know how to make videos but I really liked the short course idea. I took the course.
3. I set up my course in PowerPoint using bullet points
4. I was on a webinar that said images were more powerful than bullet points. I took that course on PowerPoint presentations.
5. I still didn’t know how to make a video.
6. I was on a webinar that talked about how easy it was to do webcam talking head videos and that was the piece I was missing.

My unstructured search for the missing piece was why I ended up three streets over and two blocks down. When I realized how far from my original intent I had moved, I shared it in one of my on-line communities. Some people saw me as being a perfectionist. I wondered if I had simply chased too many bright shiny objects. But the lesson here is that until I found that missing piece (the form of video I wanted to create), I had to keep looking.

What if you don’t know what you’re looking for?

You never know what you are looking for until you find it. Funny, huh. In retrospect, I was looking for how to make videos because I wanted to add videos to my courses. But all the holes in my knowledge base kept showing up – shorter courses, images instead of bullet points, the lighting for a talking head video, and finally, how to record and edit in Camtasia. It wasn’t until I made the decision to do the webcam work that I began to turn back toward my original intention – to create some courses.

The missing piece makes it all come together

The form of the video was the missing piece I was searching for. It was rather like choosing a color scheme to furnish a room. I had to make some basic choices. Once I did, everything came together.

There was some courage missing too

I kept putting off opening up both Camtasia and PowerPoint because it had been years since I’d worked in either. It felt like I would be opening up the door to a dark cave. I avoided doing it.. Where did the courage come from? It was just suddenly there. One afternoon I simply decided to record myself talking. It turned out well. So I went on line and watched a few tutorials on how to edit a video and I did it. Courage and being proactive to find the knowledge you need, both help you get unstuck.

Decisions can change your direction

My original course was eight-modules that are all written except for one module. The short form course is easier to produce and to consume – one point, well presented and you have shared your idea. You have a product. That doesn’t fit my eight- module course concept.

The decision to create short courses created more possibilities. I outlined a series of 22 three-minute videos. Creating those will certainly upgrade my video producing and editing skills and put a good library of easily consumed ideas out there.

The need to learn can change your direction

I never considered the short courses until I came across that first webinar. When I learned the impact of images on the second webinar, I had to get better at PowerPoint. Learning is a combination of mastering the skill and understanding what is possible. We need to take time to learn. The more we know, the broader the range of possibilities. Keep learning and keep it relevant to the project you have in mind.

Look at a decision as an experiment

I just kept exploring until I found the combination that felt right, the floor plan that fit my need, if you will. It’s important to stay flexible and open during the decision making process. Each new choice I made influenced the final direction. Don’t get bogged down in a direction that doesn’t resonate. Step into the scenario, look around, get the feel of it, and see if it meets your needs. Then you can make an aligned decision.

I’m glad I have no timeline for presenting these courses because I would have been a basket case. However, since I’m allowing my life to unfold, it did just that – one organically beautiful step at a time until I reached the decision that allowed me to start back and put the missing pieces into place. I’m sure I’ll have this kind of an adventure again, but now I know I’ll be learning valuable insights to add to the final project.

Where are you? How did you here? Is this where you want to be?

To Sing a Deeper Song Consider:

07- How to Find and Express Your Distinctive Voice (podcast, 20 minutes)

10– What Will Change Because Of What You Are About To Do? (podcast, 20 minutes)

How to Free the Log Jams in Your Life

Take Money Out of the Equation

Your Work as You

How to Find Your Work Rhythm

How Not to Make Plans

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