Hello {!firstname}:

Ever have one of those weeks where you just feel “off”? Well that was the kind of week I was having recently. While I ended up spending a wonderful evening presenting my Positive Aging: It’s an Inside Job to 12 terrific women at Body & Soul Day Spa in Great Barrington, MA, I got off to a VERY rocky start. I had screwed up BIG TIME!

I arrived in plenty of time to set up and relax before the group started to arrive. As I pulled out the pens, handouts, and worksheets for the evening I realized with great dread that I drove right past the printer and never gave a thought to stopping and picking up the worksheets. YIKES! Resourceful, positive, and always looking for the opportunity in every situation, I immediately began to imagine Plan B. But all I could conjure up was using plain sheets of paper and that would have worked about as well as not showing up at all.

So at 5:10, I flew out to the car, grabbed my Blackberry, called the printer (who closes at 5:00), and she agreed to wait 5 minutes for Richard (my dear, sweet, wonderful husband!) to come pick up the worksheets. Called Richard and said: “I screwed up. I screwed up bad!!!” When I told him what I’d done, and emphasized that he did NOT have to save my-you-know-what, but if he did I would be forever grateful, he flew to the rescue. We live 40 minutes from Body & Soul, so I joined the group for refreshments and confessed the error of my ways. They loved it, because who can’t identify at our age with “forgetting” something important?

The best part, is Doone Marshall, the brilliant, beautiful owner of Body & Soul was thrilled to find out that I am, indeed, human, because for some reason she always thought of me as being totally organized and together. And, then she confessed that she had spent 30 minutes looking for the box of crackers she had purchased for the evening and couldn’t find anywhere.

We started a bit later than planned, and just as we were getting to the first written exercise, my knight in shining armor arrived. He took a bow, got an ovation, and I’m now the lucky gal with the solid gold husband! :-)

To your endless possibilities (and to being human)!

Lin Schreiber, Retirement Revolutionary

WOW Good Vibes Coaching Group

Do you always think of September as a fresh start in the new “school” year?

I do, so I’m especially excited about the third WOW Good Vibes Coaching Group of the year kicking off on Thursday, September 17th. The April group is going gangbusters in manifesting what they want in their lives, the July group is starting to take off, and I can hardly wait to see what the 12 Wise Outrageous Women in this September group create by the end of the year.

It’s affordable, powerful, and FUN!! Call me at (413) 499-9761 to reserve your spot. . . I’m confident they’ll go fast!

What Do You Really Want?

by Lin Schreiber, Retirement Coach

I strongly believe it’s important to go on an internal journey to discover what you really want to be doing in your encore career. This is especially important if in previous transitions you made decisions based on what seemed like the next logical step or what was expected of you, but didn’t end up with a great fit, doing work you love, with people you enjoyed working with.

There are some pretty cool steps you can take that will help you determine what’s in your heart, what would keep you engaged, passionate and purposeful, or as I like to say, what would pull you out of bed each day excited about what the day will bring.

So, where do you start? By determining what it is you really want.

What if like 95% of all of my clients over the years, you’re starting out not having a clue what you want? No problem, because I’ll bet, again like my clients, you can be pretty articulate about what you don’t want. So that’s where we’re going to start.

The first step in determining what you want is a simple -- yet powerful -- exercise that goes like this:

1. Sit down in a quiet place with a pen and notepad, and draw a vertical line down the center of each page you use.

2. In the left-hand column, start by writing down everything about your current (or previous) career that you don’t like (i.e. “being chained to my desk”, “the wicked commute”, “my boss’s nasty personality”, “too many rules and regulations”).

3. Next, write down everything that makes you anxious, concerned, worried, or fearful about what might be next (i.e. “not having enough money”, “being bored”, “starting over again”, “being consumed by the work”, “having to go back to school”.)

4. Finally, write down everything about your current life that you don’t like, or that worries you, makes you anxious, etc. (i.e. “living where the winters are cold”, “not being close enough to a town/city center to walk everywhere”, “being 30 pounds overweight”.)

Got a good long list? Great, now comes the fun part.

5. In the right hand column, one-by-one, reframe what you wrote down into a positive sentence, in the present tense.

Here are some examples of reframing those things that you don’t want:

6. Now you try it. One by one, reframe what you don’t want until it puts a smile on your face. If you’re smiling, or tingling inside, or just plain feeling good, you’ll know you’re on the right track. If you’re having trouble with one, skip over it, and come back to it later.

7. Take a break for awhile, before reading through your reframed sentences.

When you read the right-hand column, you should see an excellent list beginning to reveal itself of what you want your encore career (and life) to look like. It’s not a complete picture yet, but it’s a terrific start.

In the next issue of LWTBO, I’ll let you in on another powerful tool for honing in on what you really want. Meanwhile, keep adding to your “Don’t Wants” list and reframing them into your “Wants”.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you keep it intact and include this blurb with it:  Certified Retirement Coach Lin Schreiber, author of The ABC's of Revolutionizing Retirement, helps self-reliant women reinvent themselves in the next stage of life, formerly known as "retirement. To claim your free Revolutionize Retirement Starter Kit, visit her site at http://www.RevolutionizeRetirement.com.

My friend Sharon sent this to me this week, and it put such a great big smile on my face, I just had to share it with you. Remember Do-Re-Mi from The Sound of Music? Great, then sing along! Lin is featured on the PBS series Boomers™: Redefining Life After

Check out my latest “Embarking on Your Encore Career” blog on RealforMe.com

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Lin Schreiber is a Retirement Revolutionary who loves helping self-reliant women reinvent themselves in the next stage of life, formerly known as "retirement." Like Lin, her clients have a positive vision for the future, and the idea of riding off into the sunset for the next 30-40 years isn't in the picture.

She is a sought after speaker, Professional Certified Coach and Certified Retirement Coach. Through her business, Revolutionize Retirement™, she delivers her comprehensive coaching programs to individuals over the phone, and to groups at her Boot Camp live events. Combining her contagious enthusiasm, non-stop energy, and passion for her subject, Lin creates a fun, dynamic learning environment that energizes and inspires her audiences.

Lin is featured on the PBS series Boomers™: Redefining Life After Fifty, and is the author of The ABC's of Revolutionizing Retirement.

Contact her at www.RevolutionizeRetirement.com.

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