Knowing What to Do and Doing It Are Two Different Skills

I preach keeping ourselves at the top of the priority list. And guess what I did? Bingo. Lost track of myself entirely. 

Getting Honest with Myself

Last spring I built the most beautiful plan you have ever seen. Color-coded. Two weeks of going back and forth with AI, and I ended up with a document that looked like it belonged in a binder with my name embossed on the front. Martha would be proud. It was a good thing.

Trouble is, I did almost none of it. And that wasn't an isolated incident.

Not gonna lie, I got outright fed up with my own "stuff." I'd gotten in the bad habit of breaking my promises to myself, something I rail against and found myself succumbing to anyway.

So I recalled a time when I was in the flow. I had invested in a mastermind, the kind you think about for a while before you say yes, and it was the best year I've had in business and in my own life. No magic sauce, nothing like that. It was the structure and the accountability. My promises were to myself, and being witnessed in the struggle as well as the success gave me a confidence I hadn't fully honored until it was missing.

I'm bringing that back, and I wanted to rally some other women dealing with their own "stuff" to come along. It's the structure that worked for me, built for women who shouldn't have to spend what I spent to get it.

Among Women is a bit of analog in a world that keeps going the other direction. Women who know what you said you'd do and will ask you how it went. I'm in it too, so you'll hear about my weeks, the ones that went to plan and the ones where the color-coded plan went back in the drawer.

Life Did What Life Does

There's always something that needs your attention. Work, family, the committee that penciled your name in before you ever said yes. You're capable and independent, so people lean on you accordingly. Most of what lands on you can be handed off or rescheduled. Some of it can't. Nobody can get to bed at a decent hour on your behalf, or take the walk for you, or manage the condition you've been managing for years now.

You've had stretches where you had it handled and you could feel the difference. Then a deadline lands, or somebody needs you, or life does what life does. Sometimes you hold the line straight through. Sometimes one small thing slips, then another, and one morning you look up and realize you've wandered a little farther from yourself than you intended.

What's been missing is a place to put yourself back on your own list, alongside women who know what it's like to be the one everybody counts on.

Three Honest Sentences

Among Women is where you say out loud what matters most to you, and then keep your word to yourself about it. You choose what you're ready to work on, whether that's getting your strength back, finishing the degree, or finally figuring out why 3 p.m. flattens you most days. You make the commitment. Then you pay attention to what actually happens.

Years of clinical work taught me something I still catch in my own life. Nothing runs on its own track. What you eat shows up in how you sleep, money worry finds its way into your patience with people you love, and a good walk can loosen up all three. So we look at the whole picture, every part of your life. Each season you pick a few areas to work on.

Some weeks you'll follow through. Some weeks you won't, and that's where it gets interesting. You get curious about what got in the way, and you decide what comes next.

As I see it, the three most honest sentences a woman can say are these.

This is what I said I wanted.
This is what I did.
And, Here's what I'm going to do now.

A woman who says them out loud is learning to trust herself, one honest sentence at a time.

Here's How It Works

People hear accountability and picture a performance review. Somebody checking your numbers, or a coach you report to, and the consequence waiting if they miss the mark. That's not it. We're all about self-accountability here.

Three rhythms, and they stack.

Once a quarter we gather online and work. You take an honest reconciliation of your life — finances, health, mental wellbeing, spirituality, purpose, creativity and play, personal growth, connection — then decide what the next three months are for. Doing that in community is the difference between planning your quarter and meaning to.

Once a month we get on Zoom. We break into discussion circles so you can say where you've had success and where you're stuck. If you ask for feedback, the women in your circle will give it. If you just want to get something out there, they'll honor that too. And you'll do the same for them.

Every week you write down how it's going. Nobody's checking up on you and nobody's turning in a grade. Self-accountability means you answer to yourself, which is the easiest arrangement in the world to walk away from. The weekly note is how you don't, and there's research behind that one.

Somebody Did the Math

A psychology professor at Dominican University of California wanted to know if the way you handle a goal changes whether you'll reach it. She took 267 people and split them into groups, each doing a little more than the last.

People who only thought about their goals landed at 43%. Add writing it down, committing to specific actions, and telling someone else, and it goes to 62%. Add a weekly progress report to the mix, and it goes to 76%.

That last rung is a person writing it out and hitting send once a week. She’s making note of how it really went. Which is the whole thing we do here.

Whatever You're Carrying

What you bring is yours to name. 

You might be building a business and finding that everything personal gets crowded out by what the business demands. You might be leading an organization, used to holding a vision for everybody else, and ready to turn some of that attention toward your own. 

Maybe you’re writing a book, finishing a degree, starting a nonprofit, training for something, cleaning out the shed that's been waiting on you for three years. You might be deciding what you want this chapter to hold and finding that the deciding keeps getting postponed.

The common thread isn't the goal. It's that you have something you want kept in view while the rest of life keeps moving.

You don't need somebody hovering over you, and you won't get that here. You may have already done the coaching, and if you have, you probably know what I know: the accountability was the part that made it all work. You can have that part without investing in the rest of it.

You're Not Starting From Zero

You've done this before and done it well. The year something actually stuck, the stretch where you felt like yourself again. Your discipline held up fine. What disappeared was the structure, and it went before the habit had anywhere to live.

You're honest with yourself, which is rarer than it sounds. You're not shrinking from what's true in your life. You know you're both the problem and the solution (we all are), and you'd rather work with that than around it.

And you're curious, which matters more to the woman sitting next to you than it does to you. When she says she's been stuck on the same thing for months now, you're the one who's already tried something, or read something, or lived through it. You'll say so when she asks.

That's the trade. You get a room that tells you the truth, and you're one of the reasons it does.

When Independence Goes Quiet

I've noticed something about women who hold everything together. Independence is a fine quality right up until it quietly turns into isolation, and most of us don't catch the moment it happens. You can be surrounded by people all day and still go a long stretch without anyone asking how you're really doing and then sticking around to hear the answer.

Most of what passes for connection now is people trading highlight reels. The promotion, the finish line, the photo from the good day. You'd like to know people past all that, and you'd like someone to know you too.

So your circle here is small on purpose. Small enough that your absence gets noticed and somebody asks after you. You tell the truth about how things are really going without putting a shine on it. We witness, we celebrate, we encourage. Advice waits until somebody asks for it, and comparison stays at the door.

Give it a few months. Somewhere in all those honest check-ins, women who started out as near strangers become the first people you want to tell, whether the news lands on the good side of life's ledger or the hard one.

It All Starts With the Woman in the Mirror

Every time we break a promise to ourselves, it comes at a cost. Ask yourself whether you'd trust a person who kept her word to you the way you keep it to yourself. Most of us wince at that. It runs the other direction too, though, and a woman who says what she'll do and then does it ends up trusting herself in a way that shows up everywhere else in her life.

I'm more convinced than I've ever been that women need to be in the rooms where things get decided. The organizations, the boards, the movements, the family table. Every one of those starts in the same place, with a woman who can lead herself.

That's the part nobody hands you. You build it by saying what matters, doing something about it, taking an honest look at how it went, and going again. Nobody I know has kept that up alone for long. Not me, anyway.

Founding Membership 

Founding members pay $282 for the year. That stays your rate for as long as you choose to stay. There are a limited number at this rate. After that, Among Women opens at $47 a month or $470 a year, and those rates climb as the community grows.

There's a bonus in it for founding members: a printed planner for the first quarter. This is where the work starts, on paper. You'll work out your plan for the season, your monthly look back, and your weekly progress there. I'm printing the first run here at my house so I can pivot and adapt as we bring this to life.

We start with the first Gathering on Saturday, October 10th. I'll poll the group on timing once there's a good number of us. I'm aiming for the afternoon, but morning will work just as well. It'll be recorded if you can't make it, though live is where the good stuff happens.

You've spent a lot of your life being someone other people can count on. This is where that turns inward.

If you're ready, click the button below. If you'd rather talk it through first, text me (850-736-4442) and we'll grab a cuppa over Zoom.