When I first got into coaching in 2001, administering, defining and refining various assessments was the THING to do.  Being as how I seem to have popped out of my mother’s womb with the need to question authority at almost every turn, I was skeptical about most of them. You see, being an intuitive person I usually seemed to have a very good idea of who someone was, where they were coming from and what they were looking for in their lives so why give an assessment to tell me what I already knew? Well, one of my Coaches convinced me that assessments were for the client so they would know (or have their hunches confirmed) which made sense to me at the time.  Of course this meant that I had to take the assessment for myself so that I would understand how it works and see to its accuracy for myself.  One of the categories on the test was for trust, which gauged how trustworthy you are and/or how much you trust other people, situations, etc.  The range was from the low of 0 up to the high of 10. I scored a “2″.

I knew I had an issue with trust but now there it was in black and white (and now my Coach knew for sure too!!).

Fast forward seven years and I have long since put assessments to rest when working with clients (although I may tell them about one or two that I had worked with in the past if asked) and word out on the street is that more and more people are forgoing the assessment route. I hope it is because people are finding better ways to listen and to trust their guts (and hearts) without having to have some kind of ritualized form to confirm what they already know within themselves.

We often hear how hindsight is 20/20 so I’m sure you can understand how now when I look back on the years when I could have been focusing and building on my intuition and teaching others how to trust their own intuition, I can see where I hid behind the assessments because I didn’t trust myself, my abilities nor what other people were capable of as well.  Besides, the way I taught myself how to understand how the assessment worked when explaining it to a client was to think of the assessment as a kind of Tarot deck except with words and graphs instead of symbols. I was still doing what I knew how to do but I was doing it in a way that I thought was acceptable to the professional world.

Today, I am happy to say that I have learned to trust who I am and my intuition much better and I let people know about it rather than to catch them off guard by somehow “knowing” something about them and telling them about it unexpectedly.  There are some really fabulous coaches out there who use intuitive in their title and stand behind it (and themselves)—Sue Frederick being one (http://www.careerintuitive.org/).  Growing up in a flock of geese when you’re a roadrunner is never easy but learning to trust yourself and your ability to navigate towards other like-minded birds is so worth your efforts.

I will probably spend the remaining days that I am on this planet of ours learning better each day how to be aware and use all the gifts that the Divine has given to me.  Trusting myself is just the tip of the iceberg.

Who can you really trust if you don’t learn to trust yourself first?

Today I had a conversation with a very good friend, who I’ve known for twenty years. She said she was having a sort of identity crisis that got kicked off when meeting some new people in a high-powered public setting and they asked what she did and since she was project less at the moment, she became tongue-tied and they moved on politely to the next person. Now, I am sure that this particular friend is just super sensitive to what all is going on with the planets right now (don’t ask me, look up my friend the astrologer Laura Waldman for insight at www.laurawaldmanastrology.com).

But I noticed that when my friend described a couple of reactions that she has had from some high-powered women, I felt really sad. I felt sad that those women did not have the awareness to realize what an incredibly special woman was standing before them. I felt sad that even in the year 2010, we humans still seem to be so focused on WHAT WE DO and not on WHO WE ARE.

This friend of mine has been such an important spiritual teacher to me through all kinds of thick and thin that I’ve been through over the last twenty years (and that’s in more ways than one!), she has a deep knowledge about life, about God, about animals and plants and if all that isn’t enough there have been delicious moments in our friendship when she makes me feel like I am about 8 years old—especially when we giggle so much I fear that I will pee in my pants! I am so grateful that I have the capacity to be aware of so many special people who are in my life today. Sometimes I feel like I must be in the center of an overflowing waterfall of lovely people. Real people. People who would be there for me (and have been there for me) when the rubber hits the road and the mud is flying all over the place.

These kind of people all around there for you too. It’s all about how deeply you’re willing to pay attention. How many more stories, fables or morals will we have to hear before we get it that WHAT WE DO is NOT WHO WE ARE? Sure, it’s great if you can run a multi-million dollar company, but I think it’s more important when you can enjoy the people you meet along the way because of whom they are and who you are, not because of what they can do for you.

I was thinking today of a friend that I’d become connected to on Facebook who is a fellow Coach and has gone through the same Coach Retreat training as I have. As I was thinking of this person and some other friends that I’ve gotten to know on FB, I had a warm glow in my heart for them because of how loving and sweet and caring they’ve been to me with absolutely no hope of gain from me other than my friendship. What is more important than that?

Believe me, if someone like me who can be one of the most skeptical people on this planet when it comes to other people can recognize the beauty within so many people and feel a genuine love for them I just know that you can as well. Do I really get angry at human actions and thoughts sometime? Oh, you know I do. Do I feel disappointed in human beings sometimes, of course I do. But if you think about it, statistically, out of billions and billions of people on this planet the odds are that there must be quite a large number of pretty amazing people out there for us to notice and enjoy. At least, that’s where I prefer to put my attention.

Who are you really? Follow your heart, it will always tell you the truth.

Love you!

I was telling a good friend today about my “Making Spaces” class which is offers an intensive exploration of the character of spaces we inhabit with a significant component of in-class discussion and analysis of images of works of preeminent architects/designers. When I shared with her that one of the reasons I like this class so much is because of the teacher who is from West Africa. As I described his slight compact body that he moves with ease and grace around the classroom and that he always seems to have a smile on his lips, a laugh at the ready and a sparkle in his eyes, my friend replied, “He’s like a shrimpppppp”. At first I was a little appalled that my friend would make such a disparaging remark about my professor, but as her thoughts unfolded I realized she was referring to my very special Cairn Terrier that I had for over 14 years whose formal name was “Breakfast” but whose nickname was “Shrimp”. And as with most of the nicknames that we assign our pets, “shrimp” got stretched out to “shreeeeeeemp” because when we said it that way it would always make Breakfast curl her head under and wag her tail at you in a flirting manner.

Actually, we should all be so lucky as to be compared to the Shreeeeeeeemp dog. She was an amazing little feisty 13-pound burst of energy all head together with blonde and brown wirehairs. I’m pretty sure that when she was born she just burst out of her mother’s womb and began charging around the room laughing at the top of her lungs. She came to live with me when she was just a pup on her way from Mexico to Atlanta. I insisted that her human mom leave her with me instead of taking her on to Atlanta with her. I’m so glad she did. At that time, my Golden Retriever who was a mega dog and my very best friend was dying from cancer. Colby began grooming Breakfast with the responsibility of taking care of me (I’m just sure of it). Sometimes, especially after a particular rigorous therapy session, Colby would return home exhausted and lay on the cool floor to take a nap. Inevitably, Breakfast would dart out of somewhere and begin chewing at Colby’s paws, ears and nose. All of this would usually end up in a big cuddling match with Colby wrestling Breakfast down under one arm and soothing her with his big licks.

As Breakfast got older her energy never seemed to cease. Even at ten years old when we would drive out to Fredericksburg to hike up Enchanted Rock, if we picked her up to carry her to the top she would squirm out of our arms and insist on barreling up to the top on her own. Now, yes, when we finally got home did we have to massage her poor sore joints so she could sleep? You bet but then nobody would witness this but us so she was safe to relax!

I’m so glad that my friend reminded me of the Shreeeeeemp dog today because my heart was immediately filled with giggles. May we all learn to have a Shreeeeeeemp attitude about life!

From Thomas Leonard’s (http://www.thomasleonard.com/) 28 Attraction Principles: Principle #17 “Endorse Your Worst Weakness: When you can accept and honor the worst parts of yourself, you are more accepting of others”.  That’s a mighty big sentence to swallow but if we take it in small bite size pieces, I think we can get it down okay.

First piece:  Endorse Your Worst Weakness.

So what does that mean anyway? Was Thomas saying for us to stand on our rooftops and shout for joy for all to hear that, for instance in my case, one of my worst weaknesses is that I am sensitive to the point that I will sometimes go out of my way to make sure someone else isn’t inconvenienced while completely inconviencing myself in the process just so that I can make someone happy or at least not make them sad, mad or disappointed?  Well knowing Thomas, he was probably coming from his 12 step knowledge around acceptance being the answer to all our problems.  Endorsement in this case means to accept fully who we are in all our glory bells and burrs and to be willing to open up our hands and admit our weakness and have the willingness to do learn what that weakness is about and make amends where appropriate.

Second piece:  When you can accept and honor the worst parts of yourself.

Sheesh.  Accept and honor the worst parts of myself? Oh geeze.  First I have to be willing to even SEE the worst parts of myself and then to accept them doesn’t mean I have to agree with them or even like them but only that I accept what they are as the reality as I understand it today.  Honor, for me, means to respect my foibles as a human being and probably even deeper than that it means to love, love, love myself in spite of myself.  For instance, I was really getting down on myself this week because I’d over booked and over committed to do so many things that my options were to either throw up my hands and give up, scream like a wild ninny or possibly disappoint someone (and myself) because I would have to un book and un commit from at least one or two things for sanity.  Honor in this instance is shimming really close to being a form of love.

Third piece:  you are more accepting of others.

Well isn’t that so? I mean haven’t you found that when you realize you are judging the hell out of someone else that when you look a bit closer that who you are really judging is yourself?  There’s a saying around the halls of recovery that says, “if you spot it, you got it”. So wouldn’t the converse be true? When we learn to accept and honor our worst weaknesses, then maybe, just maybe we will be more tolerant of others.

Endorse doesn’t mean to engrave it in stone.  Endorsing your worst weakness means to get behind yourself and trust the process of becoming a real person: mind, body and soul.

Love yourself, love yourself, love yourself, put the oxygen mask on first and then you can really be there to give the love you have to give to someone else.

The two classes I’m taking this semester at TSU (Go Bobcats!) are both Honors classes. One of them is Elementary Number Theory (I suspect my professor friend Walter Stroup would know my professor and program….) and Making Spaces (looking at basic theorems of architecture) and I’m already behind in both!! I missed the first class last week because we were out of town and then behaved like a typical young college student without any capacity for planning ahead and allowed myself just enough time today to get to the campus parking lot before class only to discover that it was completely full and there were already about four other cars in the cue ahead of me waiting to find a free space. As a result, I was 20 minutes late to my second day of class in math. In spite of myself, I did actually learn more about the division algorithm that I don’t remember learning before which is how to divide a number using various bases (5, 7) rather than in base ten as we usually do. That was fun. Not exactly sure how to apply it to the real world, but it’s fun to make all the numbers come out.

I’m trying not to panic now that I’m realizing that I’m already behind before I’ve even gotten started. I have one student friend who regularly takes 17 hours and who I believe is a straight A student with a job (she’s a non-traditional student but still younger than me by at least 15 years!). I’m pretty sure she plans ahead for her classes and structures her days accordingly.

So how do we keep from continue to stumble when the race has already begun and we find ourselves way behind the pack? Like any good training program that teaches us how to plan what you want to do and do what you plan, school is no different. Almost the minute I got into class, I began meeting other students to gather email addresses, during the break I asked the instructor for homework assignments and during the break between classes I downloaded the syllabus from the site he sent me to since he doesn’t used the usual school based system (yes, I had emailed him previously to let him know that I was missing the first class).

For the homework assignment that is due on Wednesday, I have begun what I can during this break between classes and will complete the assignment tomorrow during my day at home. On Wednesday, I plan to make both my lunch and dinner (I’m in a special food program with a required food plan) and leave for school early so that I can meet with my math professor well before class starts (and find a good parking space!). I also plan to talk with my friend Julie (hi Julie!) about looking over my math homework to see if I’m on the right track as well as to meet with the professors TA.

I don’t know why after all these many years I still sometimes don’t see the freight train headed for me until I’m on the track, but now that I can see the chunk of time that it will take to get a good grade in these two classes, I’m going to resign from two of my volunteer committees that I’ve been on for awhile now and let someone else step up to the plate. I want to have time to do well in school, do a good job with my work, continue my commitment to people and programs that I’m in and have time to enjoy my husband and friends. Sometimes it is hard for me to remember all the things that I have been doing that take up my time until a good expanse of time is swallowed up and then I can really feel the edges of the balloon seams!

It’s right at this place that I am now that in my past, if I had even gotten here, I would have either run screaming into the night and totally dropped the ball on many people, places and things or I would have been overcome with anxiety and not had a clue how to move through the mire of my own making. What I’m grateful for is the capability of being able to stop and breathe and assess what is going down so that I can then plan my course of action.

I’m sure for some people, this may seem really simple. God bless you!! For me, I’m still a work in progress so I want to share this in progress work with you in case it may help a few of you out there who can recognize yourself in here somewhere. Plus, just having to admit this to y’all is a great way for me to stay accountable!

Thanks for being out there. Share any experience, strength and hope you may have!

One of the promises in the 9th step of Alcoholic Anonymous is that “we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it”. Psychologically speaking, you can see the wisdom that enables this promise to offer someone hope who may have been reeking havoc in the world as a result of their drinking. Many people who just don’t know much about what it takes to stop drinking don’t often consider that stopping drinking is just the beginning of the process of learning how to live. When you get far enough down the road of sobriety that you can start adding up hours into days and days into weeks, then many of us have looked up, scratched our heads and asked, “what the hell is this all about, this thing called life?” And when you get sober enough to look at where you are and where you’ve come from the road can look pretty dismal because you don’t have your sobriety lenses on yet.

I’ve got a very colorful past in my drinking career that I can dust off and shake out to share some experience, strength and hope of my journey so that others can see what may be possible for them. If I was full of fear or regret of my past and wished I could shut the door on it then I really couldn’t be of much service to others who may be coming up the road behind or beside me. This promise has let me know that if I do the work required to clean up my side of the street and focus on how I do my best in living then I will learn how to accept my past and use it as a tool to be of service to others.

Don’t get me wrong, there are still times that I look at all the years I wasted when I was totally drinking and smoking and not paying attention to anything but what was the next thing that I could do, get, say or be that would help me feel better. It’s that illusive thing again that always crops its head up in my life that says, “right over here…just right over here…is much better than where you are now….”

Over the years I’ve been blessed to experience the connectedness and love that comes from being honest about who I am now and who I’ve been in my past. Turns out, there’s a whole lot of people out there who can relate to my history if not by the specifics, then with how I have felt. One of the sayings that you’ll hear a lot in recovery rooms is “we’re only as sick as our secrets.”

If you are new to sobriety or even right on the precipice of deciding that drinking has hurt you more than helped you, then what I would want you to take from this blog tonight is that you are not alone. There are so many people that have been on this path before you and are on it right now who are there for you. In fact, giving someone who is sober the opportunity to share their history with you actually helps to keep that person sober believe it or not. Ask as many questions as you want, listen to as many stories as you can, read all the literature you can get your hands on and know that you are embarking on a very special journey that you will never regret.

We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it because when you can look at your life through the eyes of something or someone bigger than yourself (I call this my Higher Power) then you will know that every blade of your life, every breath you have taken has a purpose and meaning. You really are an extraordinary and beautiful gift from the divine.

This weekend my mother-in-law and I went shopping. She’s of a similar shopping persuasion as me in that we both hate to shop. I’m my father’s daughter: I like to know what I need to purchase, visualize which store will best have what I need, enter and do a quick reconnaissance, spot, pick-up the merchandise and head-out for fresh air as soon as possible. As a shopping team, my MIL and I are great. She was able to find and purchase five shirts that she wanted for her sister and herself within half an hour of our tour and even remembered that I had talked about wanting a new purse.

We stumbled upon the section of the store that had purses and looked at a few varieties but my MIL saw the “one” that she knew I would like, which I surely did, and insisted on buying it for me. Almost as soon as I got the purse home I realized that it was almost exactly what I had been wanting in the way of a purse for a long time. Now, this may not seem like a huge deal to you but when something that I’ve been wanting (and pretty much not voicing) falls into my lap as effortlessly as this one did, I realize that I really don’t have a clue how this manifesting business works.

In my head, manifesting takes great energy, effort and focus. You’re supposed to write what you want to manifest down in a specific way. You’re supposed to say out loud what you want. You’re supposed to feel the feelings of having what you want in your life…right? But, for this purse and me I pretty much did none of that. I did, however, really, really want it. I also really want a Mazda RX8!! I’m thinking if I can manifest the purse of my dreams, then maybe I can manifest the car of my dreams as well…right? Only trouble is when I visualize the Mazda RX8 it shows up in Eggplant purple and I’m unable to visualize it in the color I want (blue)!

So what is this manifesting thing all about? And if we really can manifest things into our lives that we want, where does prayer enter into the equation? Can we manifest things for other people through prayer or is manifesting only for one’s self and prayer only for others and never the two shall meet? These are the things that keep me awake at night or at least keep me from putting too much effort into either. Prayer and manifesting are good things for one to contemplate.

Now I’m going to go snuggle up with my honey (who is a manifestation from my prayers) and watch some funny shows he downloaded on his IPAD (which he manifested from work through his hard efforts) along with our two dogs (who someone else manifested but then took to the pound so that then we would find them as an answer to our prayers).

Tonight I’m scooting in here just under the deadline to make it a daily blog! Had a great day today with my mother-in-law, brother-in-law, nieces, husband, brother, sister-in-law and best friends. I’ve been with some family member since Friday at 10:30 a.m. and I’m pretty much just feeling grateful. Yes, I did have a couple of mini-meltdowns, at my husband’s expense, but nothing like I used to have in the past.

I don’t know about you but when it comes to being around family, especially family that I’m not around very often, I can get a bit tense about things and my need to do everything perfectly can raise her ugly head. Most of the time; however, I can take a quick inventory of what is going on with me and what I need to figure out what I need to do to stop myself before I go over the edge.

Tonight I’m thinking that feeling grateful feels like love. I think that gratitude and love are interchangeable. When I’m feeling grateful my heart expands just a bit to accept love that I may have otherwise overlooked and when I’m feeling loved or loving, I am grateful that I am able to feel it. I’ve often wondered if anyone else–especially people that I respect–have ever had the experience of going from 0 to 60 in 2 seconds flat with a vicious inner dialogue about someone that you love but for whatever reason are completely miffed about at the moment. It’s such a gross feeling when I feel that way, like I’m sliming all over the inside of myself. And when I get down to it, I’ve got to say that the over-arching feeling at that time is the feeling of being constricted by fear. It’s a tight feeling that squeezes even tighter with each negative thought or scenario so that I can really get worked up into a really good frenzy about the person, bless their heart.

The moral of the story? I like the way I feel when I’m grateful because my heart feels expansive and I’m able to let more love in and give more love out. What’s not to love about that?!

Feel grateful, it’ll do your heart good

Sometimes I wonder how I ended up being the age that I am and not a mother (at least not a mother of the two-legged kind (we do have 2 dogs and 3 cats). Luckily, I do have three nieces (16, 13, 11) and a nephew (14) and they are all great kids. Still though, sometimes I feel like I’m caught between being too old to understand kids and too young (thinking at least) not to understand them.

Right now two of my nieces are creating Avatars for their SIMS games. They’ve spent about an hour and a half doing everything from creating their faces (heard a lot of comments about how nice Daniela’s “mom’s nose looked) and now they’re figuring out where their families will live. Every once in a while I hear some Japanese words spoken by the characters when they meet up and I can understand maybe one in twenty words (aso deska). I have no idea how the games are played but they do sound like fun from what my nieces have tried to tell me about them.

My little brother and sis-in-law came by to meet the girls tonight upon our return back from the beach and I was immediately aware of how my (considerably younger than me) SIL is so good at interacting with kids. She’s fun!! And has great energy to boot. I never stop to think about not having kids around all the time until the girls come to visit and then I realize what we don’t have. It’s nice to have them hanging around (except for when they’re fighting, then not so much). It’s also interesting to observe my brother’s kids’ behavior and my brother-in-law’s kids’ behavior…very different yet the same in many instances. One set have always had a mom and dad who love and respect each other and the other set have two homes with parents who love them very much but not each other. My hat is off to my brother-in-law who has made it a point to be very active in his girls’ lives and just bought a new home about five minutes away from them.

When I was little, I was infatuated with the idea of having six children, like my friend Jeanette from sixth grade who came from a large Catholic family. Then I grew up and didn’t get married until later in life which may be one of the reasons that the window for creating offspring shut fairly quickly (that and all the repercussions from my rather rambunctious youth!). I’m not sure what kind of a mom I would have made to humans (I seem to do quite well with the four-legged variety) but I’m starting to see that being a mother would be another awareness and acceptance of who I am. Sometimes I’m crazy fun and can stay in the ocean for literally hours and hours boogie boarding and other times I can sit quietly reading and just hanging.

What I know for sure (thanks O) is that I do not want to grow old and stiff in my ways and thinking. I hope that I can always be a fun aunt and also an aunt that my nieces and nephew know they can come to with various questions which I will definitely listen to intently while helping them to sort things out.

As Joni Mitchell sings, “we’re all just aging children”.

This past July I celebrated 20 years of continuous sobriety. I came through the back doors of a program that is designed for friends and family members who have a problem with somebody else’s drinking and then about two or three years into it realized that I was one too. My denial was really, really high for a number of reasons. First of all, I was what you might call a high-bottom drunk. That meant that I could get pretty tipsy on not very much liquor, beer or wine and usually, I’d drink past my capacity trying to keep up with my drinking friends and end up making donations to the porcelain god throughout the night, always waking up with a horrendous hangover in the morning.

It is so nice to be at the beach and to be sober if for no other reason than to not feel sick. But the allure of alcohol is everywhere seducing us from billboards to outdoor cafes to radio ads with the come hither viewpoint of a cold one that will hit our spot just right. I gotta confess that even after these many years of so many miracles and gifts in my life from not drinking, every once in a while I can find that addict part of my brain pining for what never was. Like tonight in a little Italian restaurant we went to off of a side street in the older section of Galveston, the glasses of red wine were calling me name and then the bread drizzled with butter and garlic added in its melody and there was a veritable symphony happening right in my own head. And then spirit decided to send one of those red wine drinkers to the bathroom just as I was finishing up washing my hands and I got to hear her talking a little bit too loudly as she jostled the door handle a couple of times. On my way out, she acknowledges me with that false intimacy that sometimes comes along (at least it always did with me) after two or more glasses of vino. No thank you.

And not that there is anything the matter with drinking for those people who can drink and be normal like I have never been able to do. In fact some of my best friends are scuba diving party people in the most fun way and I’m right along with them getting silly on my sparkling water. I just recognize myself in those people like the woman outside the Ladies Room tonight and it makes me glad that I don’t have to live like that anymore.

So, yeah, it is possible to actually enjoy the beach without a beer or margarita to help smooth out the time. I’m not even doing caffeine right now so there is pretty much nothing between my experiences and me. I have noticed that by gum those negative ions pouring off of the waves from the ocean have mellowed me out considerably and the chatter in my brain has smoothed out to the sound of the surf flowing in and out. Maybe some of the time I’m not the party animal that I was in the past but I was able to stay out in the ocean for a heck of a long time with my niece as we patiently tried to catch a wave on our boogie boards.

For those of you who do drink, enjoy a cold one for me and for those of you who don’t, yes, it is very possible to have a really enjoyable time at the beach and be as sober as the day you were born.