After all this time of being in the coaching world either coached (since 1996) or coaching (since 2001) there seem to be three tips to making resolutions last that are the steady die-hards that work when you work them which are:

Our little brother, Hamilton, does great impressions too.  Hamilton can do the best Chewbaca cry ever which I cannot begin to compete with;  however, I do manage to crack him up with my pathetic attempts.

There is nothing quite as fun as practicing a good session of mimicry with someone.  My husband, David and I have created our own little dance with this such as talking with a Scottish brogue when we say “Scotland” or “Aye, we’re from Irrrreland” with an Irish accent.  In fact, we’ve been known to switch back and forth from Scottish to Irish accents all the way down the highway trying to get it just right. Just like the guys in “The Trip” movie.

What is it about mimicking someone or something that is so much fun and why is it when you hear someone imitate something perfectly, it can really crack you up?  Yet, we seem to know the difference between someone imitating us as a compliment or making fun of us. And there are some people that we don’t want imitating us at all?

I’ve always been fascinated by the different voice inflections that people have as well as their mannerisms.  I know when someone has caught my attention because out of the blue, I will catch myself doing some kind of mannerism that isn’t naturally my own and so I have to stop a minute to figure out “who I’m doing”.  I know I used to make one of my good friends uncomfortable because I absolutely loved the way she would say certain words with her Wisconsin/Illinois influenced accent.   At some point in our lives, many of us do mimic or imitate each other in some form or fashion.  I suppose it shows how we humans are much more like our animal brethren then some would care to guess because various species of animals in the wild will mimic each other or mimic a predator in some form or fashion for attracting a mate or for survival.  I wonder if animals ever laugh at themselves like we do?

I  suppose the closer we get to being able to mimic someone spot on, the closer we can get to really being able to see what is going on around us very clearly.  Some of my best “skits” have been the ones that combine various people, voices, situations that are going on in the world around me that show someone who is watching me that “I know” and that “we are connected”.

Have a little fun with mimicking and imitating someone or something to see where it takes you.  One of my very favorite instant imitations that my Dad did awhile ago was when he and I had been sitting on our living room futon for a stretch of time and so when we attempted to get up, the cushion had settled back into the crack of the futon very deeply impeding our being able to get up and off the futon with any flair to speak of much less in one graceful movement.  Instead, after I had gotten up and was turning off the lights to go to bed, a movement caught my attention out of the corner of my eye because my Dad was sitting there with his bohiney stuck way down in the futon flailing his legs just like a little bug while making an ever so soft grunting sound of effort.  It was pretty subtle but absolutely hilarious.  Guess I know where at least some of our humor comes from!

How about you?  What impressions or mimicking do you do just for the fun of it?

I’m going to choose to believe it’s the angels talking again.

I guess if you ask them for help enough, like I do everyday, you’ve got to expect the unexpected. But still.  I remember several years ago when David and I were living in our first home this kind of thing would happen but I didn’t tell many people because, you know, it’d be easy to assume I was a bit off.  And maybe I am, but when my friend Cynthia spent the night one weekend on our living room coach she was awakened by the sound of a teenage boy’s voice as he leaned over the sofa and said a girl’s name (can’t remember it now).  Maybe we’re both a bat short in our belfry?

I just opened our front door to listen to the quiet for awhile and sure enough, I could hear music coming from the bar two miles away.  Oh well, I like the fact that my creative mind would rather believe that it was possible to hear angel’s talking then musicians singing from a few miles away. But then again, those musicians could be divinely inspired !

Would love to hear some of your stories around things like this……leave a comment!

I have my buzzard sightings as well,  only the ones that hang out near our home are more active and happy.  This morning as the flock took off for flight, one buzzed down lower to get my dog’s attention before taking off to the great beyond.  You could almost hear his, “heh, heh, heh” as he startled the Paul-dog.  Look for the absurd in whatever situation is swimming around your ankles or whatever buzzards are breathing down your neck.  Laughter, even if it is silent from within, is a great dissipater of despair.  If nothing else, it can at least elevate  you to a fair playing field from which to base your decisions and responses to life.

The faint aroma of skunk still hangs around my dog even though when you sniff right close to him, you can’t pin point where the scent  is still coming from. He’s like Pig-Pen from the Snoopy Comics with eau de skunk following him around.  Perfect sniff and smell reminder for me not to take myself too seriously as I prepare to meet with a very prestigious person later on today.  I need to remember sitting here typing to y’all with my loving skunk-smelling dog laying under my chair.  Keeps me humble.

What absurdity can you find about your life today that will at least get you to shaking your head if not germinating a giggle?

Snoopy as the vulture

Off and on in my life, from the most extreme cases to the not-so-extreme when I sidled right up the edge of going over because I can’t handle anything more…humor just bursts out of me.  I blame both my parents for that.  We kids often begged our mother to make those funny faces that only she could make by raising one eyebrow (ambi-brows) at a time and making her lips go sideways (both sides) at a time.  Very talented but never brought her to show off at school.  My father is hilarious both with words and actions.  And both my brothers are too.  Anyway. Being an in-the-closet-comedian, whenever something drastic would happen in my life I’d always remember that even though whatever was happening at the time could really suck, it could also be really good “material” later on.

Take an awful car wreck at 21 when I passed out at the wheel and woke up just as I was going over an overpass to fly down and land just south of the railroad tracks.  Doesn’t seem like hilarity abounding right off the bat does it?  But I can’t tell you how many laughs I’ve been able to milk out of the story when I tell about the policeman who first found me. And it’s all because of a retainer that I wore at the time that had one false tooth on it.  The policeman came upon me after I had tumbled around in the car, crawled out the back window and up the 70 foot embankment on my butt.  As you can imagine, I was covered with blood, sweat and tears as well as everything in-between.  I kept passing out off and on and woke up as the policeman crab walked over to me, jumping back and forth like a sumo wrestler on steriods.  Part of what was freaking him out was that retainer which had landed on my chest.  I’m sure in his brain, he was connecting the dots of my bleeding facial orifices and that retainer…but incorrectly.   I remember trying to calm him down by saying to him, “it’s okay, I usually don’t look like this”. True story.

I bring this up, this trying not to take ourselves and this life too seriously now because I almost choked on my spit this morning waking up to NPR hearing about the economy (AGAIN) and Afghanistan (AGAIN) as well as the local weather report of 105 degrees (AGAIN) with another bright shiny day for us to enjoy.  There’s nothing to do but laugh at the insanity of it all.  Either that or dive down to the drain in my pool and stay there forever.  And I mostly like this life, so I think I’ll find a way to weather it (pun intended) as best I can.

How about you? Are you taking yourself too seriously today?

You know, when life hands you rotten potatoes, well, make what you can from them!! 

Just before the discovery of the potatoes, I had re-visited what appears to be one of my big life lessons which is that accept who I am and what I have to offer as a person and a Coach.  I’m one of these maverick kind of people who doesn’t like to be pigeon-holed in this wonderful age of branding.  My work experience includes 13 years running an IT Consulting Company as well as stints in the publishing, academia and pathology worlds. My Coaching credentialing includes both CoachU and SUN ™ Coaching schools.  I say all this because in addition to having all this great experience and schooling, and loving to work with people in various stages of career transition, I still sometimes get pigeon-holed as being a “Holistic Life Coach” (as if that is a bad thing!) and not always recognized as also being a terrific Career Coach with a wide breadth of experience and schooling to pull from.  It especially irks me when people that I thought knew who I was and what I was about, so obviously don’t.  Is this a branding issue? Perhaps. Or is this an opportunity for me to accept all of who I am and what I want at a deeper level.  In other words, perhaps I’m a “Holistic Career and Life Coach”? 

My fervent desire for people is that they figure out what to do in life that “lights them up” and then go do that thing, whatever it is. And not to let perceptions hold you back. Well, maybe this occurrence (again) today is a life “test question”. How much do I really believe what I say?    If I am willing to access my entire bag of tricks, well, who will be the people that will most benefit from them? These are the people that I need to put my attentions towards, not the ones who don’t grok me. 

What about you? What is your unique specialness? How do you perceive yourself and how do others perceive you? And who do you really-really care about understanding who you are and what you are about? 

How does this all tie in with “rotten potatoes”?  Because I was starting to grow a nice little resentment towards these people that had dared to refer to me as a “Holistic Life Coach” and I somehow believe that the Good Orderly Direction of life was giving me a hint through the use of rotten potatoes. I have much to be grateful for and many wonderful clients who find my style of Coaching very helpful for them because I can go down all kinds of roads that they may need to explore, depending on what they need. 

I’ll grab the miracles from the lessons where I can! How about you?  

This is the ultimate gift for anyone who loves to make people laugh, this kind of hearty response.

And yet, there are the times when I swear to you I must be the most serious person that ever came out of someone’s womb. When I get into these absolutely BLEAK, BLEAK places, I feel like there is not one drop of humor living inside me that I could possibly wrangle together to evoke a smile, much less a gufaw.

However, there is hope. I think I may have stumbled on to a cure for me that may be helpful for you when/if you get into these places.

If I accept the black, dank humor of my heart in these times, I can find “hit your funny bone” type connecting-humor by looking at some obvious point of life that I completely missed or a mishap or oh-so-human behavior that I’ve found myself mesmerized by

For instance. as a Coach, I have sometimes this absolutely unrealistic expectation of myself that everything has to be PERFECT. Even being imperfect has to be perfect. Anyway, the “grandfather” of Coaching, the late Thomas Leonard used to have all kinds of ideas of how your physical space should be kept and decorated where you live, work and play. For instance, there is a list of questions about the condition of your car, if it is maintained properly, washed (even the underside) etc.

Herein is where Thomas’ expectations and my reality diverge greatly. My car is well maintained, thanks in large part to my husband and it does remain fairly clean, however I have a nasty habit of chewing gum and putting the abc (already been chewed) gum into a wrapper and tossing it into the console box. Mix in a couple of those abc wrapper’s not wrapped all the way and the good ole Texas heat, and well you can imagine.

First time I realized how I was setting myself up for failure with the gum was on the way to meet an important VP of Corporate Training for a big company. Had my nice outfit on, had my clean car, had my fancy sunglasses….. When I went to retrieve my sunglasses out of the console, there was melted gum all over one of the lenses and some of the frame. I spent a good 10-15 minutes trying to figure out how to remove melted gum off of the sunglasses, with this gum continuing to melt and gooily attaching itself to all my fingers and both sides of my hands. I said a brief prayer of thanks to God that I was in my own driveway. At least there would be no witnesses.

Finally I got most of the gum off and drove to my appointment. Thank God I had the sense to take my glasses off and put them in my purse before I met with my client because a small round circle of gum was still located somewhere upon the glasses and had managed to suck every bit of hair (dog, cat, human) along with little itty bitty pieces of paper that I had in my purse, onto the gum. I had art instead of glasses at this point.

After the meeting, when I had discovered this lastest transformation of my glasses, I was in my car, parked out front of the client’s office which had large glass windows tinted on one side so you couldn’t see if anyone could see you, or were bothering to look, but you couldn’t tell for sure if they were or weren’t watching you.

Oh and my car is a convertible too, did I tell you that? So you guessed it, I got into my car and held the glasses with their appendage of gradoo below my knee under the steering wheel while I frantically scraped off the hair and paper and all manner of things attached to the gum onto my glasses WITHOUT drawing attention to myself.

At this point I figured the sane thing to do was to cop an attitude and act as if I indeed had intended to wear glasses with accutrements all along and so I flipped my pony tail over my shoulder, put the glasses on and drove away. Luckily, I’d managed to scrape enough of the junk off of my glasses that I could see out of the lense!

So, if you are ever feeling especially BLACK about the world or yourself and you want to laugh again, look to your own human-ness and help people to laugh along with you!