Lisa Gates

Lisa Gates is a life balance coach and writer at Craving Balance. Committed to helping smart working women achieve the everyday extraordinary and the extraordinary every day, Craving Balance offers goal setting from the inside out teleclasses and workshops for individuals and businesses, as well as fabulously sensible and affordable private coaching. Find her at Craving Balance.

Posts by Lisa Gates

Are You Ditching Work-Life Balance Because You’re Afraid of Losing Your Job?

Some people think that life balance is a thing of luxury, something you pursue when times are good…that we should work like dogs  to remain indispensable in this unpredictable economy. But wait a sec. Weren’t we were already working like dogs, before we added in the fear of losing our jobs? Here’s what got me…

Goal Setting from the Inside Out

It’s so curious how we spend the last weeks of the year in a sugar-plum-induced family frenzy of parties and holiday sweaters, and expect to walk into our lives on January 1 ready to drill down and get things done. To get our minds focused back on what the year holds in store for us we…

How to Launch a Revolution in Your Evolution

You know those half truths and white lies we’re all so accustomed to telling? The ones we all think save our butts, but leave us a little flat, a little grey around the edges? Ever wonder what it would be like to slip into Jim Carrey’s character in Liar Liar, and be forced to tell…

29 Worn Out Perspectives in Need of the “Oh Really?” Factor

We all have places in our lives where we get stuck, augured in by a particular belief like, “work is hard,” or “children are too expensive,” or “politicians are evil.” To make matters worse, we often can’t distinguish between the truth and a disempowering belief because we attach little refrains like, “that’s just the way…

The Real Trouble with Productivity

I have a confession: I cringe at the word productivity. Getting things done. Saying that feels like being against democracy or love or Buddha or something, but I feel that much of what passes for productivity is simply ubercybersonic doingness dressed up in happy faces. Organization, accomplishment, measuring effectiveness–all those tools and systems are cool…

How to Start a Writing Critique Group

Did you say you were going to start writing that book this year? If you’re looking for a way to honor your word(s) and put your writing life in action, starting a writing critique group will catapult your accountability and get you in community with your peers. It will also sit you next to writers…

Job Satisfaction: Can You Love the One You’re With Before You Move On?

Have you ever noticed how jobs are like love affairs? You hit a bump in the road, even a patch of bumps, and there you are, climbing in bed with the statistics and making the livelihood you love all wrong. One day you wake up and say something like, “This job is just not giving…

How to Use Time to Make 2008 the Best Year Ever

Of all the things people cite as the reason they don’t start or finish something—write that book, lose the weight, build the business, or invent the widget—time lands squarely at the top of the list every time. What clients say time and again (sorry) is that becoming conscious about how they use every hour actually…

10 Questions to Ask Yourself to Regain Your Work-Life Balance

Last night my 11-year-old came into my office (9 p.m. to be exact, foreshadow, foreshadow), and said, “Mom, can you please get off the computer and be with me?” I should know better, right? After all, achieving work-life balance is one of the staples of the coaching diet. I turned off the computer and we…