Karen Smyth - Writer, Speaker, Coach

Unlock your potential and embark on a journey to create your unique success story. Together, we will explore the strategies that lead to personal and professional growth, empowering you to achieve your dreams.

A four-pack on love:

In what ways is it easy for you to show love?
In what ways is it hard for you to show love?
In what ways is it easy for you to receive love?
In what ways is it hard for you to receive love?

James Clear

"You can't change your past, but you can re-frame it.

Find the lesson in it. Find the opportunity in it. Pull the teachable moment out of it and share with others.

You can't choose your history, but you can choose the story you tell about it."

James Clear

"Communication is about what is received, not what is intended. If there is a gap between what you are saying and what they are hearing, you have to find a new way to say it." - James Clear

You know when you mess up. And you know you did - you know in the moment that you behaved badly, you lost your temper, you said the wrong thing, lots of wrong things. You can't deny, you don't want to deny it. You want to take it back but you can't.

Days pass and it comes back to you. Someone heard you say the wrong things - maybe it was a swear word, maybe it was losing your voice you were screaming so badly. It's that moment, you take a deep breath, you swallow. The fierce conversation is about to happen.

My policy is to face it, own it. Apologize. Lean in. "It wasn't my best day. Not my best behavior. I intend to be better." It's embarrassing, humbling.

There were no cameras but I know what I said, how I said it, how it landed. I'm grateful to be caught in it because it shows me how I can do better. It allows me to go back to my intentions, my deepest soul and decide how I want to live my life and model for my children.

I'm also grateful I'm not a celebrity, a politician, or anyone in the public eye. Anything someone does and says CAN BE taken the wrong way. It can even be wrong when it comes out but it can be a mistake. It's so important to give people grace, seek to understand, come from curiosity and forgive.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all the things I said or didn't say that didn't leave a good taste in someone's mouth. I'm grateful to those who spoke up and told me how to do better. I'm sad some people may have pulled away from me and I never knew. Guess they weren't my people.

I'm probably going to mess up again. So, I'll apologize again in advance. I'm not perfect, I'm a work in progress. And I'll own it -

Poet and novelist Sylvia Plath reminds us that choosing a path means ignoring the rest, but not choosing means squandering them all:

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with q***r names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

Source: The Bell Jar

Thank you for the reminder James Clear

We are Entrepreneurs. A special breed...

We are Entrepreneurs We are a special breed of people. We are creating something from nothing.  We are now the CEO and the Janitor. Whatever role it takes to succeed. We are the owners of our companies. Most of the time, they aren't even com...

⅓ of the people will love you no matter what you do

⅓ of the people won’t love you no matter what you do

⅓ of the people, it really doesn’t matter

The best type of people are those who say:
"Text me when you get home safe"

Someone just engaged me to spend a hour with their Graduating Senior and off them Life Coaching - to speak with them BEFORE they leave for college - to talk about their goals, definitions of success, ambitious and concerns.

To establish a framework for achieving their potential, to create a road map, to hold them accountable, check on them throughout the summer and the coming school year.

What an honor to be asked! I'm looking forward to serving and supporting!

We could probably support our teenagers more, as they are in our households, as they work towards setting up strong habits based on values and commitments. It's our job as a community to support them, to offer a safe space and help them establish the standards and discipline NOW that will create amazing results.

If you'd like to discuss what this looks like for your Senior or to gift the coaching session to someone - it turned into a great graduation gift. I'm ready to pour into these young people to set them up on a course of clarity and success.

Poet and writer Joseph Brodsky on how to deal with the critics, detractors, and negative influences in your life:

"Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those — in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed. Suffer them if you can't escape them, but once you have steered clear of them, give them the shortest shrift possible. Above all, try to avoid telling stories about the unjust treatment you received at their hands; avoid it no matter how receptive your audience may be. Tales of this sort extend the existence of your antagonists; most likely they are counting on your being talkative and relating your experience to others.

By himself, no individual is worth an exercise in injustice (or for that matter, in justice). The ratio of one-to-one doesn't justify the effort: it's the echo that counts. That's the main principle of any oppressor, whether state-sponsored or autodidact. Therefore, steal, or still, the echo, so that you don't allow an event, however unpleasant or momentous, to claim any more time than it took for it to occur.
​
What your foes do derives its significance or consequence from the way you react. Therefore, rush through or past them as though they were yellow and not red lights. Don't linger on them mentally or verbally; don't pride yourself on forgiving or forgetting them — worse come to worse, do the forgetting first. This way you'll spare your brain cells a lot of useless agitation; this way, perhaps, you may even save those pigheads from themselves, since the prospect of being forgotten is shorter than that of being forgiven. So flip the channel: you can't put this network out of circulation, but at least you can reduce its ratings."

Source: On Grief and Reason