06 Sep , 23:11 | Admin   27 May 2007   02:05:11 pm Riding the Horse Into Summer Things have been going great guns around here for several months. First there was all the organizing and painting, and then the new Relax & Revive services and the recent decision to start a foundation to coach those who contribute to their communities. I’m still excited about that, but this weekend I am really feeling the need to slow down for a while. Throughout the past months there certainly have been times where my energy flagged or I felt down or discouraged about something, but for the most part, the pace of it all just carried me forward. I’m starting to realize that I can’t keep up that pace and that I really don’t want or need to. Everything in nature has a cycle and too often I think we forget that we are a part of nature as well. For instance, I think one of the reasons that the Winter holidays are so hard on people is because Winter is the time in nature to slow down and go inside yourself. It is a time to rest up and replenish your stores for the activity and growth of Spring. But instead of laying low in winter, we race around and do more than ever, at least until the holidays are over. Now that Summer is almost upon is, I can feel that it is time to slow the pace once again. The other morning I had some some girlfriends over for coffee. They are all moms of children with special needs and we don’t get a chance to visit very often, much less as a group. We knew this would be the last time before summer to all see each other and we spent the whole morning just catching up. Normally we have to sandwich coffee in between a host of other things and it was really nice to sit and relax together this time and not to worry about hurrying on to something else. A few days before they came I wanted to mop the floors. Nothing like having people over to encourage some cleaning up to occur. I got out Scooba and set it up to run, but it wouldn’t go. I tried all the little tricks that I had learned the last time this happened, with no luck. I didn’t have any more time to fool with it that day and left it alone for a couple days. It still wouldn’t run when I tried it again and I primed it with the turkey baster and everything! I even looked at some trouble-shooting tips on line and finally realized that the battery wasn’t hooked up correctly. I took it out and placed it back in securely, but it had sat idle for long enough that it was no longer charged. After a good couple of hours in the charging cradle it was good to go and I had clean floors for my visitors. It made me think of a funny Veggie Tales episode that Harrison likes to watch. The kids think Mr. Alfred is a robot because he’s a stiff English asparagus and talks about needing to go home to re-charge his batteries. A couple of weeks ago I was a little nervous about the coming of Summer and the accompanying smaller chunks of time to do things that I need and want to do, but I’m starting to look forward to it. It will be good to slow down and spend more time together as a family. In tai chi we learn that the path to peace is to give up resisting. A tree that bends in the breeze will survive a strong wind far better than a rigid one. I recently likened myself to a tree that was freaking out in the breeze, but that’s another story. I did finally find a way to bend and stop resisting quite so much and the situation is turning out fine. Another great visual for this is the phrase, “Get on the horse in the direction that it’s going. Otherwise the ride is bumpy and you spend all your time looking at the rump!” I’m riding this horse into summer. I’ll almost certainly have to scale back my work and some other aspects of my life, but I’m choosing to see that as an opportunity. Category : Family | By : great12 | Comments [105] | Trackbacks [0] 19 May 2007   08:23:52 pm A New Endeavor This week’s post is going to be a little different. First, I would like to acknowledge all the international visitors that I’ve had on the website this week. At the beginning of the week I had a visitor from Sweden. In the six days that followed I’ve had visitors from 10 countries, including China and the Czech Republic. I don’t quite know what to make of it, but I am grateful and humbled. The second thing that I want to tell you is that I am changing the primary focus of my practice. I have decided to form a foundation to provide pro bono coaching to people who contribute to others. The purpose of the GreatDoor Foundation will be to empower clients to expand their visions and the reach of their contributions to levels that far exceed what they feel they are currently capable of. This idea is newly formed and I am still working out the details, but I am very excited about this opportunity for me to contribute to my community and to my world by helping others to think and live “big.” I just finished reading a book called “The Soul of Money,” and the inspiration for the GreatDoor Foundation comes largely from ideas presented there. It was written by Lynne Twist, a global activist who worked for many years with The Hunger Project working to eradicate hunger throughout the world. The book is a thought-provoking look at our consumer culture and how striving for more and better is an endless and ultimately unsatisfying pursuit. Even the very rich are caught up in the “hamster wheel” of acquisition. We have all bought into a scarcity mentality, believing that there is “not enough to go around.” We also believe that “more is better” and that “that’s just the way it is.” We feel we must get the most for ourselves and our loved ones because someone else’s gain is inevitably our loss and we must guard against this. The antidote for this is a knowledge of sufficiency. To quote Lynne, “By sufficiency, I don’t mean a quantity of anything. Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough and that we are enough.” Lynne tells marvelous stories, one after the other, of people who live in places where the natural resources are extremely scarce, but who’s inner resources, when cultivated, enabled them to solve their own problems. She also encourages us to use our resources; our money, time and talents, towards whatever feeds our souls and comments that money is only one type of resource and should not be given greater weight that other resources, although it often is. I could write several more pages summarizing this incredible book and the impact that it’s had on me, but I encourage you to read it for yourselves. I recommend it very highly for people of all economic backgrounds. I was also inspired by other coaches and people that I know and know of who have made it a part of their lives to empower others. My own experience with coaching has helped me uncover dreams I never even knew I had before and emboldened me to live a much bigger life than I could have previously imagined. I can think of nothing that would please and satisfy me more than to facilitate that same experience for others, regardless of their ability to pay for coaching, who will then pass on their gifts. I am looking for 3-4 clients for the GreatDoor Foundation to start with and I will select them through personal interview. This might be someone who is already involved in community work or other types of projects that touch others or it could be someone who is searching for a way to contribute and hasn’t the faintest idea of what that might look like. I would like them to commit to six months of coaching for an hour each week. This can occur in person or over the phone. I am consider charging clients $1 per week for a total of 26 weeks just because my experience has been that if there is some sort of exchange, the commitment level is higher. This, would of course, be negotiable, based on the circumstances of the client. If you can recommend anyone who would benefit from this type of professional assistance, I would appreciate you letting me know through the contact page on this website. The other thing that I need to get this foundation up and running is office space. I currently work out of an office in my home, but I anticipate the need for a more accessible place to coach from. If you know of anyone who has an extra room in their office space that they would like to donate or rent for a nominal fee, I would certainly be interested to hear of it. I really don’t know the first thing about setting up a non-profit foundation, but I am excited to learn and to embark on this new adventure. The more I think it over, the more ideas I have for people to talk with and contacts to make. My inner resources really are sufficient for this endeavor and so are yours for anything that you choose to do. Category : General | By : great12 | Comments [104] | Trackbacks [0] 12 May 2007   08:34:55 pm Confidence I’m not afraid of new technology, but neither am I particularly proficient at it. Fortunately, I am married to someone who loves all that stuff. He is affectionately know as “Mr. Gadget” and I have not-so-jokingly referred to him as my IT department on more than one occasion. He subscribed to Mac World for years and was always looking for ways to make our computers more current. I remember when we actually paid someone to drill a hole in our lovely wood floors so that we could run a phone line linking up two computers on opposite ends of the house. We didn’t actually intend for the electrician to put the hole in the floor. We assumed it would come through a phone jack and had him do that afterwards, but we still had a hole in the floor. Note to self: Be really, really clear about what you want, and when what you want involves people working in your house, be sure to closely supervise! That was a long time ago. These days our computers are wirelessly linked. Because Darryl knows so much about our computers and actually enjoys working with them, it has been easy for me to relegate any issues or questions to him. I want my computer to be like a tool; to do what I ask it to do in a straightforward and uncomplicated way. I’m not trying to do anything fancy with it and I just want to be able to write my e-mails or draft my documents without too much fuss. I actually received a MacIntosh word processing program as a gift last year. Normally, I wouldn’t consider computer software a desirable gift, but I was ecstatic! My poor husband got tired of listening to me complain about Microsoft Word, which is in my opinion, way more complicated that it needs to be. No more grumbling as the system automatically indented something for me that I didn’t want indented or changed sun to Sunday without my authorization! What ever happened to the good old days of WordPerfect?! But I’ve digressed.... When I was 21 and earning my first real paychecks, I decided to buy a stereo system. CD players were brand new then and I got the works: turntable; CD player; tape player and radio receiver accompanied by two large speakers. I was so excited to set it up and since I was still living with my parents at that point, I asked my Dad to help me wire it. He said he would, but probably couldn’t get to it until the next day. I really didn’t want to wait, so I looked at the diagram that came with the instruction manual and figured it out. If it hadn’t come with a diagram, I almost certainly would’ve waited for help. It was really a defining moment for me when I turned it on and it actually worked! Up until then I didn’t really view myself as someone who was capable of wiring together multiple stereo components, but I was highly motivated and so I did it. After that, I was always a bit more adventurous about trying things I didn’t think I could do. I learned how to hang curtain rods and put up shelving units. I finally got the knack of driving a manual transmission car. That was spurred on by the fact that someone I didn’t particularly respect was able to drive one. I figured if she could do it, so could I. But there I go, digressing again. A couple of days ago I got an invitation from an online printer that I have used in the past to try one of their products for free. For a mere $9 shipping I was able to get 100 postcards absolutely free. I don’t consider that exactly free, but it was certainly less than having them printed at full cost, so I decided to try it. It seemed the perfect vehicle for advertising my new Relax & Revive packages that are available to people who live in the Piedmont Triad area. Besides being a coach, I am also a practitioner of reiki, and several other modalities that can contribute to relieving stress and enhancing wellness. I went to the printing website and tried to upload my flyer that I had designed earlier. I use a desk-top publishing program that is also specifically for Macs and the format was not compatible with the printing website. It told me that I could put it into a JPEG, but I didn’t even begin to know how to do that. Darryl was napping on the sofa and knew it would be a while before he could help me. Still, I was highly motivated. The free postcard offer was only for a few days and I was determined to figure it out. I tried a couple things and finally found a menu that would let me export to JPEG. Great! I clicked on Export and then realized that I had no idea where the file had been exported to. I set up a folder for it and tried again. Wonderful! Everything seemed to be going smoothly. I uploaded the new JPEG file to the printing website and got a message saying that the size of my document did not match their parameters. They would be happy to resize it, but couldn’t promise what it would look like afterwards. Back to the drawing board! My desktop publishing program does have a feature for making postcards so I decided to give that a go. There is probably some way for me to translate my full page flyer into postcard size, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that and I certainly wasn’t going to read the manual, so I just recreated it as best I could, with a few modifications. The program comes with very nice templates, and because my artistic abilities are somewhat limited, I like to go with what they offer and then change them up to suit my needs. Of course, the flyer templates are not exactly the same as the postcard templates, but oh well. Another chance to learn something new. I uploaded it all successfully and paid my $9 shipping fee. In a few weeks I’ll be able to enjoy the fruits of my labor. All this while my IT department peacefully snoozed. It’s definitely one of the benefits of getting older that I have more confidence than I used to. Each new thing I try and succeed at contributes to the feeling that I can do anything that I put my mind to. In fact, I believe that confidence goes a long way towards successfully accomplishing new endeavors. One day I might even actually read the full instruction manual for something. Category : Family | By : great12 | Comments [105] | Trackbacks [0] 05 May 2007   03:24:20 pm Where Does the Money Go? I realized that the last three posting have been about cleaning. I guess I don’t get the urge to deep clean/organize very often and when I do, I try to run with it for as long as possible and hope that I can get most of the way through the house. At some point I’ll get bitten by the home improvement bug. That’s not the same as the cleaning bug and it’s usually brought on by watching too much HGTV. It generally occurs in the summer when there’s not much else on the tube and it too goes for a while and then runs it’s course. For instance, I partially painted the trim in our basement bathroom last summer and then ran out of steam. Maybe this summer I’ll actually finish it! I think that there are so many things that we’d like to give full attention to in our lives, that we just can’t do them all at once. We have to take turns and now it's money's turn! I am about 7 months into a life coach certification program. I go to Sonoma, CA four times over 18 months for workshops and the rest is reading, tele-courses and other long distance learning. In June I’ll be going out again for my second workshop, entitled Financial Independence, Stress Management and Life Coaching. The premise is that most people stress about finances and it is more than likely to come up in coaching situations. As part of our pre-workshop homework, I have to make a list of where we earned money in the past 12 months and where we spent it. (We don’t have to turn this in - it’s for our own use only) I got a little nervous when I thought about trying to reconstruct our expenditures because we tend to make a few big purchases and lots of little ones. Trying to remember them all is pretty daunting. I’ve gotten far enough to make a list of categories and with the help of old bank and credit card statements I think I can make a good approximation. I’ve also started recording what we spend each day in a little notebook to get a better idea about where our money is going now. I have to confess that I’ve wanted to get a better handle on where we spend our money for years, but have always pushed it to the back burner. I guess I had the mentality that if you suddenly decide to eat healthier than you really ought to stop eating dessert (and I love dessert!) I was worried that putting our spending under a microscope would automatically equate with deprivation, but now that I have to turn my attention to this topic as part of an assignment, I’m actually excited about it. Okay, I’m not excited exactly about poring over old bank statements, but I am excited to have the data because I know that once you know what a situation really looks like, then you have something to work with. I also know, although sometimes forget, that most things in life are not either/or choices. Eating healthier doesn’t necessarily mean no more dessert, but maybe a different kind of dessert or a smaller portion. That’s one of the things that coaching is great for - breaking out of the either/or mentality to find creative solutions. Knowing exactly how we spend our money will give us information that we can use to make better choices. It doesn’t necessarily mean being deprived. For example, years ago we decided that we like premium orange juice and even though Donald Duck brand (yes, that’s a real brand we used to buy), which comes frozen in a can, is much cheaper, we’d rather drink Tropicana. If we decide to buy store brand cereal in bulk to offset the orange juice splurge, then we don’t have to feel bad about it. I probably wouldn’t have turned my attention to the finances on my own, but since that’s where it’s turned now, I know it will be worthwhile. I also know I’ll be better off not sliding it to the back burner when my immediate interest runs it’s course, so I guess I’d better learn to use Quicken again, because I don’t want to be totaling up columns in a little notebook in my purse for the rest of my life! I’ll be sure to pass along any new or interesting tips I get on financial health in future posts. Category : General | By : great12 | Comments [112] | Trackbacks [0] 29 Apr 2007   09:38:49 am Keep On Tweakin' I definitely believe that life is a journey and not a destination. You are never going to “arrive” and if you did, I think it would be a let down. Having challenges to overcome and things to work towards keeps life interesting. I don’t want to struggle all the time, but figuring out ways to tweak things a little and make them better is very satisfying to me. Yesterday I cleaned all the dishes out of the cabinet next to the refrigerator and filled it back up with crackers, pretzels and other snacks. The plates went into the lazy susan under the counter. It looks a little odd to me to open that cabinet to get a glass and find it full of little bags with clips holding them closed, but at least I can see what we have and get to it without reaching behind a lot of other stuff. This is the 4th spot for the snacks in the almost 9 years we’ve been in this house, and the 5th attempt at a system that will allow for only one bag of pretzels or graham crackers to be open at a time. I do have a pantry, but it’s one of those fairly narrow and very deep ones that were clearly designed by someone who doesn’t really spend much time in the kitchen. I did finally install some after-market pull out shelves in the pantry, but things still get lost in the back. I pack a lunch for Harrison to take to school every day and so I really need to be able to easily access those things. The lazy susan was the second spot. I thought it was a great alternative. For a while we had a wheat moth infestation and all the snacks had to go into large plastic containers with lids that sealed tightly. They fit pretty well that way, but it was hard to remember what was in each container. Then we learned that wheat moths often come in to the house in packages of dry dog and cat food and that if you put the food in the freezer for at least 24 hours, you can mostly eliminate that problem. As soon as we figured out how to keep the moths out, we got pretty lax about packaging up all the snacks. Pretty soon the lazy susan was a jumble of half eaten cracker sleeves and chip bags. It got so bad that I started just leaving newly purchased snacks on the counter top. At least I knew what was what that way, but it was a big mess on a counter top that was already cluttered with too many things anyway. The inspiration and impetus for a new and better snack spot came when we invited some friends over for dinner. There’s nothing like having people over to force you to clean things up a bit. I thought about just stuffing everything into the lazy susan and then pulling it back out when our guests left, but it was already so overcrowded, there really wasn’t room. Sometimes circumstances force you to “think outside the box” whether you want to or not. That’s when I pulled all the plates out of the cabinet. I left the glasses, because I think it makes sense to have glasses next to the fridge, but everything else came out. Then I pulled all the stale and redundant bags and boxes out of the lazy susan and filled up a trash bag. I really feel like an adult when an activity like that makes me feel great. (I’ve been an adult for almost 25 years, but it doesn’t always register!) I recently heard a radio show where the guest was hypothesizing that the enormous walk-in pantries of newer houses was contributing to weight gain in America. His theory was that if you have shelf after shelf of pantry to fill you end up storing and eating way more processed snack foods than are necessary or healthy. I guess I’ll be losing some weight then, because I’ve only got two little shelves in one cabinet for mine. I think this spot is really going to work well. It took a lot of trial and error, but continual tweaking has led me to a solution that isn’t conventional, but one that seems to serve our needs. I feel absurdly proud of my little kitchen re-organization. Maybe now I can turn that creative problem-solving-ray on something a little weightier. Category : General | By : great12 | Comments [113] | Trackbacks [0]   Prev 1 2 3 ...9 10 11 Next