We kicked off this year’s Women LEAD series with an inspiring and thought-provoking session with Rosie Molinary. In this session, we explored intentional decision-making in our professional and personal lives.
Rosie led attendees through an exercise to start out the session. She challenged us to look at the most important parts of our lives (Social, Family, Well-being, Fun/Adventure, Mission/Purpose, and Personal Growth) and rate each area from one to ten with the number that best represents our current satisfaction in that area. Rosie explained that maintaining a 10 in each area at all times is not a reasonable expectation, but we can strive for a total of 45 energy points per day with giving and taking in the various areas.
As we transitioned into the next part of the conversation, Rosie reminded us that we all have a purpose in this life, but our purpose can become diluted when we overcommit. She then laid out a framework for decision-making that allows us to be hypervigilant in protecting ourselves from burnout. Rosie calls this framework The Wholehearted Continuum. While there are some tasks in our lives that we aren’t likely to be able to do “wholeheartedly”, such as laundry or preparing meals, when there are choices in life, we can make an intentional decision about whether to participate. The rungs in the ladder of The Wholehearted Continuum are as follows:
- Thrilled to be asked
- Happy to prepare
- Eager to go
- Joyfully present
- Willing to move the trash
- Willing to savor, process, and evaluate
As we climb through each of these rungs in the ladder, Rosie reminded us that we must evaluate opportunities using the criteria above in numerical order. For instance, we can’t jump to # 3 without first evaluating our feelings around #1 and #2. While there may be times we use this framework but still find ourselves wishing we had made another choice, we can learn from these “misses” to guide future decisions.
At the end of the event, Rosie left us with this poem by Mary Oliver to reflect on.
