Lean into your #nextNow

E25: Celebrating my first anniversary as an author

I pushed “publish” on my book “Contours of Courageous Parenting - Tilting Towards Better Decisions” one year ago. And today I get to do a happy dance 💃🏼💃🏼💃🏼 in celebration.

The journey from concept to writing to publishing has been as interesting as the travel stories from our Round-the-World trip I used to showcase the various factors involved in decision-making.

It’s an amazing ride!

What a whirlwind. And it continues to gain momentum.

• I used the power of community and accountability to gradually find the writing rhythm that had previously eluded me. That rhythm allowed me to accumulate a body of words, sentences and memories from which I created a book.

• I am meeting wonderful people as I make guest appearances on their podcasts, and accept speaking invitations. This conversation on having renewable career Lego blocks with Tilter Hoda Kilani in her Career Chat is the most recent of those.

• My joy is when my children are proud to share this book with their friends (the real test for any parent)

Taking that first step

But there was a moment — back there at the beginning of 2021 — when I questioned the reality of publishing. Imposter syndrome reared its familiar head. Procrastination and perfectionism invited themselves along for the ride.

This was the point of no return. Once I hit enter and a book entered the outer world, the line between my personal and public worlds would blur.

I was at risk of doing exactly what I talked about in one of the chapters of a decision fundamentals book that was almost ready to publish:

Sometimes we get stuck in an analysis paralysis loop and we over-prepare. We may even go so far as to make a decision, but never actually act on it. 

That is a waste of a lot of the emotional energy we poured into the previous steps to help us arrive at that “decision”.

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“You should include excerpts from the book in your newsletter,” Tilter Vicky Zhao suggested as we chatted recently. She’s right. Both talk about the skill sets and mental models we need to develop for the Future of Work. So today - in celebration - I am taking her advice. (Thanks, Vicky, for inspiring this edition!)

I selected an excerpt from the chapter Your #NextNow. It is about that pivotal moment of commitment, taking that leap of faith. When we take that vital first step our body leans into the direction of our project and we are placed in motion. And you know what they say about Newton’s First Law of Motion!

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Kehen Temple, Bali 2005 © Karena de Souza

Your #nextNow

Taking that first step

It was September 2004.

We had delayed enough. The sale of our home, though not finalized, was now in progress. It was the major reason our leaving date had moved from our planned departure in August. We could play on the side of certainty and wait till that cheque cleared before making any more commitments to the trip.

But this was decision time.

If we were to honour our choice to spend Christmas in Goa (the thought that had launched this worldwide travel project) then we would have to get the ball rolling. While staying open-minded, we needed to stop scope creep (for those who know that phrase)! We had some hard choices to make.

We could either accelerate our visits to the countries scheduled before Goa, move them to the end or drop them from the itinerary. Or all of the above. Our first two stops – extensive tours of Japan and China – were the ones that we dropped. (They remain on our bucket list.) Our travel agent moved our visit to New Zealand and Australia after our stay in India, which we shortened by a month. It meant that we zigzagged the world, instead of the original West to East circumnavigation we had planned.

But what was our #nextNOW? What was the smallest possible step that we could take to commit to our plans? We sat at our kitchen table, credit card in hand, picked up the phone and dialled our travel agent to put a deposit down on our flights. We would now depart in early November.

GO time. From this point on, we would embrace the challenges that would inevitably appear. But we would do so wearing our new persona of ‘world traveller’.

#nextNOW

You need to have just enough of the way forward planned for you to move into action. #nextNow is more powerful than #NewNormal, as it is the small subset of tasks that are within our capabilities and power, on our way to creating greater change.

#nextNOW – As a driver, this is the moment you put your hand on the gear shaft, ready to move out of park and into gear.

This is the nudge behaviour you need to jump!  To go out there and take that leap. You can try out a number of strategies here to propel yourself into ACTION:

• Positive talk. Maybe a mantra. Our mantra was ‘Life is the adventure, travel it well’. 

• Reminding yourself of all that your wins and what you have overcome in the past to get you to this point

• Preparing an Option B: Making sure you have a safety net

• Picking the smallest step in the direction of the action you want to take

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“Wait. That was decision-making advice for all ages,” you are probably saying if you are one of the newer members in our Tilt community (Welcome!) And you are right.

The book is for all of us who make daily decisions and choices at any age. That was feedback in the many reviews. (I’ll share some in future newsletters.) But the twist I added was encouragement and tips that we parents can use to empower our children to gradually grow into making confident choices often. That is a 21st century lifeskill they will need in a world filled with uncertainty.

Here is a photo of my mother reading my book - a proud moment for both of us.

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Dear Tilter
Edition 25 of the Tilt the Future newsletter is a double celebration - the one-year anniversary of the book and the start of a new cohort of Write of Passage (the course that launched this newsletter)! It is intended as a weekly dose of hope in your inbox. I love the conversations that it generates, and the community we are creating. Share it forward, if that is your thing. And I’ll see you again next week!

Karena

P.S. “The more we know”. Knowledge shared helps various communities. Please contact me if you see an opportunity for me to share my messages around the Future of Work with a wider audience.

My book “Contours of Courageous Parenting – Tilting Towards Better Decisions” is available on your local Amazon site

Photo, audio & video credits: © Karena de Souza