How to Live More Intentionally – Insights from Elisabeth Sharp McKetta

Have you ever wanted or needed to change your life and wondered how to do it? Well, this interview may be for you. 

On this episode, I'm excited to share my conversation with Elisabeth Sharp McKetta. Author of 13 books, Liz teaches writing for Harvard and Oxford and is the founder of the Book Year Writer's Circle.

McKetta's latest book is entitled Edit your Life: A Handbook for Living with Intention in a Messy World.   Elisabeth knows about what she writes. During our interview, she shares the story of her own major life edit.

You can find out more information about Liz, on her website.  

Key Takeaways:

1. Intentional Living: Elisabeth emphasizes the importance of living with intentionality. Much like editing in writing clarifies and refines, intentional living helps us clarify our priorities and align our actions accordingly.
2. The Power of Editing: Drawing from her background as a writer and teacher, Elisabeth discusses how editing principles can be applied to life. 
3. Elisabeth's Journey: Elisabeth shares her personal journey of undergoing a significant life edit. This experience forms the core of her insights into navigating change and making intentional choices.
4. Her book, Edit Your Life: A Handbook for Living with Intention in a Messy World.  The framework is examine, edit and enjoy.  

Please follow along for real stories, take away a little wisdom and maybe find something that helps you figure out what's next.  

Transcript

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Elisabeth's journey as a writer

Judy Oskam 0:02

Have you ever wanted or needed to change your life and wondered how to do it ? Well , this interview may be for you . Welcome to Stories of Change and Creativity . I'm Judy Oskam . On this episode , I'm excited to share my conversation with Elisabeth Sharp McKetta . She is the author of 13 books . She teaches writing for Harvard and Oxford and is the founder of the Book Year Writer's Circle . She wrote the book Edit your Life: A Handbook for Living with Intention in a Messy World . and as a former journalist turned university professor , I know about editing . When I worked as a reporter in television news , I edited copy and video . As a teacher , now I help students edit their work . The process of editing makes everything clear and understandable , and editing can also apply to life . Elizabeth knows about what she writes . During our interview , she shares the story of her own major life edit . I think you'll find it interesting . I hope you enjoy our conversation .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 1:13

I got into writing as a kid . Both of my parents were , and are , big readers . Also , there are a lot of educators in my family , so I think the idea of having lots of interesting books around that led to interesting discussions was just part of the sort of the culture that I grew up in , which was really lovely kids in the way that all kids do creative things . I've got two children now who spend weekends making cardboard apartments for their stuffed animals and writing poems and stuff like that Very creative kids .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 1:52

And then as I grew up , I just didn't grow out of writing and I think part of it was that it was a place to process the very matter of this podcast . Place to process the very matter of this podcast , the my wishes for my life , the changes that I was feeling in myself as a young person . So writing was just a safe place to kind of rest on the page and put all that stuff out there . So I was a big journal keeper and then when I went to college I had this incredible I'm going to call it an initiation . I was an undergrad at Harvard and applied as a sophomore to every single creative writing class that they offered which was eight at the time and got rejected from every single creative writing class that they offered Every single one and each one .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 2:40

This was the days when they all had specific essays that you had to write for each one . So one of them I wrote . I remember having to write a short story about a train . I mean , I worked so hard to get into these classes , didn't get into any of them and was wondering how I will ever improve my writing without a teacher . When my wonderful college roommate , who's a neurologist and still one of my best friends , was at the time , um , working in as a receptionist in um for what used to be Radcliffe College , now is Radcliffe Institute of Study , and she brought back an ad for a community education writing class on right on on journal , on keeping a journal colon weaving your autobiography . And she brought it back and said Liz , you might apply for this .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 3:27

They might take you . And so I put together my application and sent it in and got accepted and walked to my first day of class at age 19 and went into the you know the bowels of this long building , with you know , room after room , door after door , one of those academic buildings that you're very familiar with and I walked to the you know the room number and walked in and there were about 20 very old women sitting around the table and I looked at all of them and they looked at me and I gave an apologetic wave and thought clearly I'm in the wrong room . And then I checked the number again and this was my class .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 4:07

And they were so surprised to see me because I was 19 . And I was welcomed in and wrote with this group of women for the next four years until our instructor died at age 101 .

Judy Oskam 4:21

Wow .

The importance of mentors

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 4:22

I know , About a week before Bush's second election , which she would have thought was very something was very good timing . She was very political , was a communist , had four husbands that she outlived really interesting teacher , and most of the writers were in their 70s , 80s and 90s and they just took me in and were so generous in trusting me with their stories .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 4:43

So that was the place where I went from being a private writer , journal keeper , scribbler of poems in tea shops , to someone who every Tuesday had an essay due to a very rigorous reader who corrected you know , who would not let us use passive verbs , and he was trained in New York or New York Times style editing and was just very fierce about the kind of writer she wanted her students to be . So it was incredible discipline of four years of these Tuesday assignments and during that time I wrote , I finished two memoirs , which was kind of amazing considering all the things that I was so young but it just wasn't really .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 5:19

I found my pack and they became my girlfriends and now , by this point , I've outlived all of them , which is so strange , but they were my elders and I realized more and more how much of a gift they gave me by taking me and taking me seriously and helping me , really showing me something that I again . The layers of the meaning of this come , you know , have come later , but we were , even though the specifics of our lives were so different . I was writing about my college boyfriend and about , you know , sort of rowdy college weekends and they were writing about making normal aid and you know difficult conversations with their children and . But at the end of the day there were these , what I now think of as the birth , love and death cycle .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 6:01

You know we were all writing about , you know , beginnings and excitement and connection and the complications that come with it , and endings and the grief and these birth , love , death cycles that I now think of as the only , really the only three stories were reflected in all of our story . We're all writing , you know the big things of life , even with individual details . So I think that was one of the . So that was , I think , one of the . That was what made me a memoirist , for sure .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 6:29

And on the side and I didn't realize how these would intersect I had an incredible teacher it always comes back to the teachers who was a fair is alive , still is a dear friend , still is a fairy tale scholar , who was Maria Tatar , and so I was taking classes . I did get accepted into her class , so I studied fairy tales with her at Harvard and then studied memoir with Hope Hale Davis , the memoir teacher , and so these two sort of seeds of storytelling intersected and have continued to . Just , I don't know this beanstalk of these genres have been a part of my writing ever since .

Judy Oskam 7:00

So I think fairy tale . Oh , that's wild . And now don't you teach a class in ? In memoir writing .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 7:06

I feel like I was born to teach this class . I teach a class called mythic memoir that I designed for Harvard a few years ago , and the stuff that comes out of it is incredible .

Judy Oskam 7:14

So you actually combine both of those areas oh , I love that .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 7:19

It's so much fun and I feel that's . That's one of the books in my files , one for one day , and there are too many of those books , but one on mythic memoir just a little sort of tiny , little slender textbook on this , because it's such a wonderful way to think about these epic stories that all of our lives are and these highly specific details that are as unique as our fingerprints , and what happens when we find them . It's so cool .

Judy Oskam 7:43

Well , and and you've , you've kind of gone through your own path and your own journey in how you came to a new place , and that's where the book edit your life comes in . So talk about what you decided to do as a family , and that's pretty , pretty bold and pretty courageous , I think .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 8:04

It was a wonderful um . It was , it was bold , it was courageous and it was it was funny to think about it that we moved from for for listeners , um , the . The book that we're referring to is called edit your life , and it's um stemmed from a Ted talk I did , which was based on an experience my family and I had in 2017 , moving from a big American house to a 275 square foot , though we made it a little bigger , we added on a tiny kids room , tiny backyard guest house so that we could just have a simpler life , distilled to the things that we really enjoyed , which were hanging out with our kids , doing hikes , reading , you know , working , going on adventures you know the stuff that wasn't .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 8:53

You know , taking on weird side hustle jobs to pay for expensive repairs . You know cleaning you know all the things that sort of come with being the staff of the big house . So it was a decision that was completely practical in terms of just time and money , which , you know , new parents know , there's never enough of no , no , never , ever , ever .

Judy Oskam 9:12

Older parents know that too Exactly .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 9:14

Never enough , never enough . So it felt like this wonderful decision that we went from . You know , we had a three-year-old and a six-year-old and um , two parents who worked at home very completely so that we could spend time as equal parents with our kids . You know , we didn't want to sort of feel that only one of us was a capable parent or that one of us sort of got to know them as babies . We really wanted to do it together and we and we have um , and so we yes , we went from scarcity mode , which I now see was really heavy and chaotic and stressful and hard on my relationship with myself , hard on my ability to write , hard on my marriage , hard on my ability to be a present parent .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 10:03

It was hard on everything just because we were sort of running , you know , we didn't have enough time and money . It's always stressful to overnight abundance mode and I know it sounds ridiculous and simplistic , but just the single choice of having no living expenses , essentially , you know , no housing expenses .

Judy Oskam 10:19

After working so hard to earn them .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 10:22

Exactly , it freed us up immensely . It was just , it was an incredible overnight change to just looking around . I remember the spaciousness of the first day when we took the kids to school and sort of looked around and made avocado toast and we're sort of waiting for the sort of crazy frenzy of like we need to do all these things Instead . We just kind of we didn't , you know , I think we went for a walk and we took the dog . We just kind of we didn't , you know , I think we went for a walk and we took the dog . I mean , it was just this , you know that feeling of spaciousness when you come into a new room or to a new city and you just feel like you can exhale . It was like that and it was just you found your life again .

Intentional Living in a Messy World

Judy Oskam 10:54

Then really you actually found the name of your book . The entire name of your book is edit your life a handbook for living with intention and a messy world , a Handbook for Living with Intention in a Messy World . I love that title because the older I get , the messier I think the world is , isn't ? That true it's just messy and I love the focus on intention .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 11:16

Yes , thank you .

Judy Oskam 11:18

Thank you so much .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 11:19

It's important , and I think it's , and I think about that and this is a bit of a sidetrack , but I turned 45 next week . Know , the first half of my adult life I was spent gathering , you know , gathering practical things like a decent blender . But also , you know , the thing that was most important to me was wisdom . Just trying to figure out , like , what do I need to know in terms of , um , both , you know how to , how to work , how to write , but also things like how to how to eat , how to exercise .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 11:58

You know a lot of your tiny habits , just sort of figuring out those and then doing them long enough to accept them , not fight them . It just feels like so much of the last 20 years has just been building , building wisdom , building relationship with self , and now I feel that , um , I feel heavy with it and on one hand , I feel like I have , you know , wonderful habits and I can trust myself to ride and I can trust myself to be a good friend and all of these things . And I'm now looking at the next you know , 20 years and thinking I think there's a lovely , a further shedding , not of physical things . I feel that was part of what the last 20 years have been realizing that I don't need that many .

Judy Oskam 12:33

I don't need a big house , I only need one water bottle .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 12:36

But I think that there's going to be some further simplifying in terms of just sort of what I need emotionally and in terms of wisdom to carry me through .

Judy Oskam 12:45

I don't know , yeah Well and I'm 20 years older than you , so I can tell you that it does change and you do . It's like the first time you have a child . I think your perspective is just totally different , totally different , and my husband and I adopted our kids and it's the same to me , is the same , but your perspective of the world changes and so your role in it also changes as well . So I think that's part of it is that when you're looking at and I love the way in the book you you looked at the you know sort of I don't know if you'd call it a process , a three-step process , where you do like examine , edit and enjoy . Can you talk about that for people listening who say what does she mean by edit my life , edit your life ?

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 13:37

With life editing and with edit your life . It's um , I , I lead readers through the steps of first examining our life and asking what is this ? You know what ? What ? What makes up an ordinary day ? Um , what are its joys , what are its annoyances , what are its longings ? Can we distill what it seems to you know be trying to be ? Does it want to have more time in the garden ? Does it want to have more time as an active parent ? Does it want to have more time in the garden ? Does it want to have more time as an active parent ? Does it want to go back to grad school ? You know what does it want and how .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 14:06

What is the bridge ? You know what are the bridges . And then we go from you know the souvenirs of that examination to making some edits . And then the last step , which I think , certainly for me is the hardest , because I like to do things and change things and edit things and improve things we go from examine to edit to just to enjoy . The third E is to enjoy and to just live in it and to , you know , continue to , you know , move forward , but without feeling that everything needs to be changed radically every day .

Judy Oskam 14:40

Sure , sure , well , and what do you feel like people have the most trouble with when they're really looking at their own life and they're trying to edit their life ? And again , intention with intention .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 14:54

Yes , I think that the hardest . I think most people know exactly what they want and need once they've done a little bit of you know , honest thinking about it , you know most people can sort of get there pretty quickly and most people can pretty quickly identify the annoyances and the things that aren't working , although I think that's a little harder because some of them I think it's easy to be in denial about because they're embarrassing and they make us feel small . But I think most people can get there pretty soon about because they're embarrassing and they make us feel small . But I think most people can get there pretty soon . But I think where people struggle the most and where certainly you know before we moved to the shed , I struggled the most is just with the enormity of how many changes need to be made .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 15:30

So it feels like a drop in the bucket to just say like well , I'm going to try to feed my children more healthfully when you know we can barely afford the house or whatever the thing is . So I think just the sort of sheer overwhelm is probably the first one , which again goes back to you know , the sort of smallness of a change leads to another smallness of a change , another small change , but but it really is . I think about not being rigidly afraid to make , to make one and to see what happens when that one makes you feel better .

Judy Oskam 16:00

What did you notice when you guys first , I guess , went to a simpler life ? Or how do you describe it when you , when someone , says , well , tell me your story about how you went from a I guess , society's view of a middle class family or , and then you went to what ?

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 16:23

We went to what we just call it a single word . We just say we shed we just shed .

Judy Oskam 16:28

I know shed S-H-E-D . Yeah , tell me what that means .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 16:35

I think of it as sort of getting rid of the old skin and I think of it as , um , you know , taking off the winter coat and just being a little bit , um , sort of more simply , simply facing the life that is to face . Um , but I , the way we spoke about it to the children in , because of course they were the ones who were living in the weird houses with the weird parents was that , um , it was a choice for all the reasons that we had been discussing , you know , with them and in front of them for a while

Minimalism

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 17:04

.

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 17:04

But that , outside of the sort of narrow you know , the narrow , our , you know our tiny world in you know in boise and idaho and in america and in countries like america , people have lived in spaces like this throughout the world , throughout time , forever , that this is nothing different from , and James and I both got into the kids' schools and tried to get them to imagine what could fit into a house this size , and they're always amazed at the thought that the one that they always say but where's the TV , where's the washer dryer ? But it's such a I mean , and then I think so on one end , people throughout time and all over the world , throughout time , have lived in , you know , caves , welsh roundhouses , you know , pick your small dwelling .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 17:46

And I also liken it to the fact that in the beginning of life we live in , you know , a room in our parents' house . We live in a dorm room . You know we live in a first studio apartment in an expensive city . We live in a first studio apartment in an expensive city , and then I've seen many of us live similarly small but we have this sort of imperative to make the middle really kind of swollen , which again didn't work for us but works for many .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 18:10

But , it just felt like kind of a cleaner journey from , you know again , beginning middle scarcity to abundance , abundance , um , and with and without so much um . You know there's . There's a beautiful book that I love by the writer , craig Lambert , called mind over water . It's about um rowing and he has the line on it about how , how a course that minimizes he says it more eloquently but that minimizes sharp turns is a smoother course , which of course it is .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 18:42

And I think about how part of the you know , the wisdom of learning to write with those , you know , the elders in Cambridge , was that I could see the long shot of it will be writing and there will be all sorts of turns to get there , but it won't suddenly like , I won't be blindsided by the fact that it's writing and I think , in a way , by living in a house that isn't so distractingly , overwhelmingly stressful , you know all the things that , yeah , that it feels just like here is the thing that matters and we can check in with that . Is this still the thing ? How do we need to adapt ? Okay , the kids are older now . How do we adapt again ? James's job has changed . How do we adapt again ?

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 19:14

So it feels like a course that's smooth and that I , you know I'm too wise to know . You know to think it will always be easy , but at least we are paying attention .

Judy Oskam 19:27

And you know the word intention . Does that also tie in with control , a level of you feel a little more in control of your own destiny ?

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 19:36

Very much so . I think it has to do with intention , attention and a sense that the and again , you speak to this so well in many of your conversations that we can , um , I , I , we can kind of it's protective Um and it's sort of a way of of what's the word I'm thinking of , like cultivating the self . You know , it's a way of sort of cultivating the self .

Judy Oskam 20:14

Of becoming who you really are .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 20:16

maybe yes , exactly Like any kind of distillation way of like . This is the essential , elizabeth . This is the essential , judy . This is not all the people I might have been or would like to pretend I am , but here you go , right here and and that's sort of safe and sane and uncomplicated but can ultimately be open to the world and I think a pretty big way because it doesn't have a lot to defend and carry .

Judy Oskam 20:43

Do you ? Do you and your husband call yourself minimalist at all ? Is this part of the minimalist movement or not ?

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 20:50

We're not really we've never been kind of we don't really use what's the word I'm trying to say you know , we don't really use what's the word I'm trying to say you know , we don't really use the term minimalist , although we definitely are um . We're sort of not bandwagoning I feel like we're .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 21:03

You know , they're always different and we just kind of were like , well , we've all , you know , I remember in college I had a great pair of checkered pants and all my friends were like those are terribly unfashionable . And I was like , well , comfortable . And then , like five years later , the checkered pants became very fashionable and then they went fashion again . I think that it feels like all of us should probably consider how many things we have , because , you know , so it feels less of a trend and more sort of a responsible thing . But yeah , but I would say that , you know , I would say that we are minimalists and I would say that our children recognize that , because when they're having sort of rebellious adolescent moments , they say , well , you are minimalist , we are going to grow up and be maximalists , oh yeah but the term shed I like .

How to edit your life

Judy Oskam 21:44

I like the dual meaning there of the physical space , but also the shedding of materialism . Is it materialism ?

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 21:54

yeah , I think so . I think just anything that isn't um , that just isn't really that important , um , and nothing against . You know the , the delights of , you know thinking of . I'm holding up right now a beautiful water bottle that I use every day , great touch let's hear it for like you know , materials that we enjoy very much , but sort of as a as a trophy . That just seems like such a waste of time you know all of it .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 22:17

And I think that most people by the end of life feel like all right , you know it's here , here goes , but you know we don't need all that , so yeah , so I think it's a way of to us I think it just felt kind of like a waste of time , and money and not the important thing as much .

Judy Oskam 22:34

Let's go back briefly to that group of older women when you were 19 . And you probably had a really good view of what might be coming back then , even from learning about from their wisdom . What did you take back from that ? I mean , what do you think about now when you think about those women , that 101 or 104-year-old woman ?

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 22:58

Oh , I loved learning from them and I do think that they gave me , yeah , just a sort of glimpse into what it will be like in that third of life . And it's funny because now my husband and I have been married for now 16 years . Often I will turn to him and say things like , james , when you're in your nineties , do you think you're going to ? And he'll look around and say I don't know what I'm going to be doing next week . I feel like I have a very active to give my older self the best chance she can have to , you know , have good relationships and still be healthy and still create and still you know all of those things .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 23:44

So I think that they really opened up that you know that relationship by doing that . But it is funny , though , that I think it never occurred to me and this is something sort of new and strange and funny that this is ridiculous .

Judy Oskam 23:57

It's ridiculous sort of what we focus on which I guess expands and what we don't .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 24:07

It never occurred . I feel like I came to a lot of the I don't know if that's entirely true . Maybe that's the wrong thought , but I was astonished this year when I realized that I'm middle-aged , because I think I was like this baby person , because I'm like a teacher like most of my friends are retiring , but I'm like I'm just starting out , you know , but I'm like , oh , there's something between young and like oh , that's the middle , that is the middle .

Judy Oskam 24:27

Yes , yeah , I still walk by a mirror and think who is that gray haired lady ? Oh , it's me . Oh , but I think it's kind of . This is why I really like the focus of this book , because it does give you , give readers , a framework for looking at their life , but it also gives them tools , because I hate some of those self help books that just point out all the negative . I always want tools and strategies . Okay , what do I do about it now ? How do I take it and go ? So , when someone's reading your book , and if my students are reading it and they're going to be seniors in college , I mean they can do some life editing too , right .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 25:12

Absolutely , Absolutely . I think that I ask my children to do a lot of these things . I think that it's really helpful to feel that we have , um , some you know , responsibilities to be , to have creative control over our lives , especially in light of all the unknowns . To to think about what , um , you know what , what ? One of the tools in the book that I think about daily is what I call the daily minimum , which is probably could also be called the morning routine or any number of things , but just the idea of it's not linked to time as much as just what are the things in the realm of , you know , work , love , play , health . That just should happen most days , and that's something that I think any 10 year old could .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 25:54

Then , you know , especially a college kid who's going into their , their twenties , um , often without an organizing principle , you know , I think , as , as educators and as a writer , for me I felt like that was the organizing principle of my twenties and I knew that whatever choices I made would have to support writing . I'd have to have a spouse who's you know , who was emotionally supportive of that , and I'd have to have , you know , jobs that were flexible enough . You know , that gave me time for it . But I think that if we you know , I was lucky to have these elders who sort of helped me understand that , but I think that for someone in college to read that book and ask themselves those questions and sort of have a mind , view of you know sort of an edited perspective of here are the things that matter to me , here are the things that don't so much .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 26:34

What a gift to their coming 30 year old self .

Judy Oskam 26:38

Yeah , yeah . And then when they're actually putting things into action and they're enjoying or I would add the word execute as well they're actually executing it . So then they're about to launch their career and knowing they have agency to do that and the power to do that . I think that's where I have a real issue , and I always tell my faculty that students go k through 12 and they're in a box . They come to us and we say , okay , get out of the box . And no wonder they ask us how many pages do you want ? What size font do you want ? They want to know because they've been in the box for 12 years .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 27:17

What a good point .

Judy Oskam 27:18

And so I think we and now you add COVID in the middle of that we have other issues as educators that we're actually trying to open them back up and help them kind of get a little further . But I love the focus on intention and I love the focus on the fact that empowering students to really take charge of their own future .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 27:41

Yes , it's so . That's one thing that I think the younger students can really you know , can really learn from the students who have taken a gap year or a gap decade .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 27:52

That I think that the older students you know that I used to teach at Austin Community College when I was 24 . And it was amazing that they , you know , in college I was in a box . I would just come in and say you know what's the font , but they would come in and know exactly why they were there and what they needed to learn from me . It was really cool to rise to that as their teacher and realize how much they were paying for this education and they needed . They needed this now in this form it was . It really raised the bar for me and it was so exciting yeah , yeah , that's great .

Judy Oskam 28:23

well , and again , if you're giving us tools like and I'm , you know , looking at my notes here examine , edit and enjoy , and then in the book you're going to explain some of that , obviously you give us some tools . Look ahead five years . What are you going ? Largely like today , but with some ?

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 28:43

of the seeds being planted growing in more surprising ways . I feel like I'm happy with the what's the word ?

Judy Oskam 29:08

The path or the trajectory .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 29:11

My sister always uses the word latitude With the latitude of my teaching and writing careers , I'm happy with the number of projects I have on my desk . I'm happy with the classes I'm teaching . I feel like these two stay stable , obviously with different students , different books . That will be really satisfying and will continue to be interesting . And I think the main variable is who my children will be when they're 18 and 15 , and how that will change my relationships with them , my relationships outside of them , my who knows my time , my travel , all the things .

Judy Oskam 29:49

I love it . I love it Well , and I always like to ask my guests about their strengths . And what are your ? What do you see as your strengths ? You don't have to have had the Gallup , strengths Finder or anything , but you know what you're , what you're best at , what are your natural talents besides writing ?

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 30:07

Oh , judy , I love the strength question and I do have my Gallup Strength because that was the book . This was in 2011 . This was the book that all of my young professional friends were dropping off on each other's doorsteps . So I did take it when I was a new mother and I'd be curious does it change when people take it over the course of five or six years ?

Judy Oskam 30:25

Well , not necessarily . Sometimes they move around in their top 10 . Sometimes I've had people do that or if there have been major life changes . Sometimes people want to retake the assessment and see , but it all depends on what you think and how you're using them . So so give me a couple of your top strengths then . So my .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 30:45

So my top five , um in order oh well , positivity is first . First Maximizer , Ooh okay . Second Activator is third .

Judy Oskam 30:56

Okay .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 30:57

And then my next two are Ideation , and I think they call it Intellection . So the two sort of creative , intellectual ones which are what I do all day were actually not the top three , but the top three I realized as soon as I got these results I use every single day with writers , right and personal lives , like what , like what you know . Yes , there's hope for this book , here's what it can be , here's some stuff so we can get it there and with your kids too .

Judy Oskam 31:22

I'm sure you use it with your kids too . Well , that's a great group of strengths , I mean , and just just because you know , ideation , and that's my number one , by the way and and and and intellection .

Judy Oskam 31:35

Just because they're in your , you know , if they're in your top 10 , you can dial those up and dial them down pretty easily . So if you think of them , you know , like that , I think that's really helpful . Positivity I'll tell you my mom she's going to be 93 tomorrow and Positivity is her number one and I told her I had her do this Gallup thing about four years ago and so anytime she's down I'll say , okay , mom , dial up your positivity because they can really see it . So again , that's such a good one .

Judy Oskam 32:09

And Maximizer , that means you're going to take advantage of every opportunity and make it work for you . So that's a great group of talents . All of that's fantastic . And I think , knowing that and again , giving yourself permission and with the intention to really focus on those strengths that you need , you know , and pull those in when you when you need , then you know , tamp them down when you don't , you know , I think that's really important . So that's great , that's great . Well , and as a teacher , I really think positivity is really good for teaching and for parenting too , right , I mean , it's so important .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 32:50

It's so important .

Judy Oskam 32:51

Oh , that's , very cool .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 32:53

Oh , that's a happy birthday to your mom . Yes , yes , yes , I've got to go get a cake for her in a little bit .

Judy Oskam 32:58

We're having a little get together , so it's going to be fun . But yeah , I just think I just I'm so glad that we were able to connect and you could share some of your positivity about ways we could edit our lives . Any closing comments you want to give for the listeners . It's been wonderful to ideate with you and to talk about all these things .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 33:20

It's been inspiring and fun . Thank you so much for this conversation .

Judy Oskam 33:26

Great , it's been fun , and can I call you Liz then , is it Liz ?

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 33:30

You can call me Liz . You can call me Liz , great , great .

Judy Oskam 33:33

Liz , thank you for joining us and again , I will put the information in the show notes and I will ask my students to listen so they can learn about how they can edit their lives . And the full title of the book is Edit your Life a handbook for living with intention in a messy world . And it is a messy world , but we're glad you're in it , thanks , oh , we're glad you're in it .

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta 33:55

Thank you so much , Judy . This has been so much fun . Talk to you later .

Judy Oskam 34:00

Thanks for joining me on Stories of Change and Creativity , and remember if you've got a story to share or know someone who does reach out to me at judyoskam . com . Thanks for listening .