Marcia Francois's Blog, page 66

Pottering around the house

I’ve shared before how my ideal weekend is made up of three parts:

relaxing stuff out and about stuff productive stuff

Today is a public holiday, Worker’s Day, and it’s been absolutely lovely (already).

Last night and this morning I spend a lot of time reading – first finishing my 5th book of the month, and then continuing with the fiction I’m reading, and I’m about to play with my goals (let’s call it Goals Afternoon!).

This morning I pottered around the house, organising the kids’ bedro...

Happy 20th Anniversary to us

First, a funny story.

We were at D’s uncle’s wedding two months ago and got chatting with people at the table where we were seated.

We were all exchanging wedding stories and whether wedding dresses and weddings are overpriced or necessary. Then the other couple turned to us and said, “so how long ago was that?”

And I said, “nearly 20 years” and they were genuinely gobsmacked.

They could not believe we’ve been married so long because apparently I look like I’m 28. HA!

(the man at the wedding...

What does freedom mean to you?

Happy Freedom Day, fellow South Africans.

Freedom is one of my highest values and it is therefore very important to me that I live, expressing this value in my life.

Coaching prompts Do you know what your highest values are? Are you living them? What does time freedom mean to you? What does creative freedom mean to you? What does financial freedom mean to you?

I have a special, new e-course launching on 4 May. It’s called Discover yourself and is a super-fun and insightful course.

We’re g...

Some reading for the weekend

Happy Friday everyone.

In South Africa we get VERY excited about public holidays especially when they create long weekends. This weekend is one of those wonderful weekends because Monday is Freedom Day.

I plan to relax a lot – read, eat, take photos – and then do it all again

What are you up to this weekend? Did you listen to any of the podcasts I wrote about?

Here’s some posts I had in my Feedly to share with you. They are posts I particularly enjoyed reading because they made me think a b...

A little mind-shift that’s been a goals game-changer for me

I listened to one of Michael Hyatt’s webinars last year on goals. While presenting the content, he said something that was a bit of a game changer for me.

“You get two kinds of goals – projects and habits”

He might have actually used different words but this is how it landed in my mind.

I had a huge AHA moment.

I’m no stranger to the two types of goals… but I’d been calling them projects and recurring goals. When I made a new kind of goals sheet last year, I even put thought into which recur...

Organising your friends

I have a spreadsheet with a list of all my friends (not Facebook friends, real friends) down the first column, and then the months of the year along the top.

The purpose of this spreadsheet is not pure nerdiness, but it’s to help me keep contact with the people that matter to me in life.

My spreadsheet is set up to default to red if I haven’t yet seen a person for the year, and the minute I enter a date when we had a social, the red (conditional formatting) disappears.

I resisted doing this f...

Would you like a copy of my book?

Hi friends

I’ve had a few queries about people buying a copy of my book from me.

It’s available on the Kindle, in PDF and a physical (real) book. With the Rand even weaker than before, I do think it’s a good idea for me to order a box of books and then I can send to you via South African (tracked) mail.

If you’re local and you like a physical book to highlight and write in (I do the same to my non-fiction), let me know if you’re interested. I won’t hold you to it – I just need to get an idea...

{Weekend inspiration} Phone stacking

I’m listening to an audio book at the moment. Thrive by Ariana Huffington.

I’m still trying to figure out my groove with these audio books but while that’s happening, I keep a notebook on the seat next to me in the car and jot down a few keywords that will hopefully help me to remember what I was thinking afterwards when I try to blog about it.

I said hopefully because the other day I looked in my work notebook and I had absolutely no idea what my own notes meant

In talking about being ad...

Whom do you envy?

I know I’m on a bit of a Gretchen Rubin kick but stay with me.

Guys, her podcast is so, so good.

I listened to one this morning where they asked this question:

Whom do you envy?

They spoke about how, if you envy someone, you need to ask yourself what it is about that person that makes you envy them.

Then, flip it around and say, “how can I create this in my life?”

Isn’t that great?

I thought about how, on Instagram, we see all these beautiful images of lives well-lived, well-travelled, well-...

Gretchen Rubin’s strategy of convenience

Gretchen Rubin talks about the strategy of convenience in her new book, Better Than Before.

I bought the Audible version and will listen to it after I finish listening to my current book.

(incidentally, interesting fact – the thing I spent the most of my discretionary income on in February is…. audible.com purchases :))

But I remember reading a post on her blog and I’ve just found it for you here.

The theory is that to create a good habit, one of the strategies that will help you is if you...