The beginning ~

My husband and I recreated our front yard recently.  It wasn’t by choice, really.  We had a root diving under our garage and lifting the concrete pad.  The transformation was great, both visually and personally.  So what did I learn in the process?

• Change is hard and exhilarating at the same time.
• Change isn’t always by choice.  It’s sometimes imposed upon me
• I say that I am open to change but have come to realize that I do cherish history, whether it’s my story or a continuation of another story.
• What appears to be good on the outside (the tree’s shade and beauty) may have something not so good lurking underneath (the offending root that was lifting my garage floor).
• Destroying a perfectly beautiful tree that had the misfortune to be planted in the wrong place meant ending its life prematurely.  I had to give myself the space to mourn, even be angry.
• Hanging on to something that needed to change is not productive nor healthy ~ in this case for the yard and my garage floor.
• Change is an opportunity to learn something new, try something new, create something new.
• Change takes work.
• Change can be fun.
• I can love the new as much as I loved the old.  They are just different.
• Change is not permanent, change begets change.
• If I’m not changing I’m either a zombie or dead.

the end

or is it???????

I was coaching a client today who is in the process of re-inventing herself during an already difficult life transition.   I could say that the emotions of that transition were clouding her self-awareness, but that would only be partially true.   This particular client just has a hard time holding  a mirror to herself and identifying her value and abilities.  Sometimes we  need someone else to hold that mirror for us as we seek clarity and create a vision for the future.

“She did what she could” ~ five little words that can change your life.  Join me at the Design 4 Living Women’s Conference on May 21 and 22, 2010 at Cornerstone Fellowship in Livermore, California.  For more info or to register on-line go to www.cornerstoneweb.org

The conference is designed to give women tools to live life  NOW right in the middle of whatever circumstances they are in.   It’s easy to think that we have to do everything but what if God is asking us just to do our part?

Breakout sessions include:

• Learning how to take care of yourself emotionally, physically and spiritually while actively engaged in raising children.
• Getting off the food merry-go-round and breaking free of food disorders.
• Getting over the feeling you are on the outside looking in, that you don’t “fit in.”
• Creating practical steps to make it through life’s inevitable storms.
• Breaking free from your sexual past to move freely into your future.
• Mothering from grace not guilt as a single mom.

I will be presenting the single mom session and if you are a member of this club, I invite you to thrive not merely survive right where you are planted, doing what you can do,  in this season of your life.

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

How many times has someone come up with an idea or even a name for something and I’ve said to myself ~ “wish I had thought of that,  it seems so obvious or right.”  The thing is, it wasn’t obvious or right to me before that moment because I was thinking within my own spectrum of possibilities.  Rather than allowing my mind to explore, I was ready to jump to conclusions that worked before or weren’t that far out of my habitual thinking.

As an artist, I am forever challenged by creating new images using the same medium.  It’s amazing to me how many permutations I can come up with in size, shape, color and form when I have kept my mind open to fresh ideas.  These ideas might not even have anything to do with the project at hand but they have been percolating and turning around in my mind ~ a photograph, a quote, a song, a page from a magazine.  The source isn’t important.  What’s important is my being open to the free flow of possibilities.

This is true in everything we do.  Thinking outside our proverbial little boxes opens us up to new ways of seeing and new ways of creating.  It expands our world, and in turn, expands our relationships, our work, our zest for life.

Our character says a lot about us.  What we believe in.  Expectations of our behavior.  How we will act and react.  Indeed, our character is very often a predictor of the consequential outcomes, both good and bad, from our interchange with the world.

We are what we believe.  We act in alliance with that belief system.  We all believe in something.  So the questions that beg to be answered are:  What do I base my belief system on?  Is it based on truth that does not sway with cultural preferences or political pressure?  Does it uplift not denigrate both myself and others?  Does it shy away from the hard stuff or courageously face it head on?  Is it self-indulgent or “other” purposed?  What is the way of life that I have chosen to embrace, why and do I strive to consistently honor that choice?

Bottom line ~ What is my footprint on the world?

I haven’t posted since January 2009.  Do these phrases sound familiar to you?  Time is so slippery and elusive.  Where does the time go?  How did it get to be (you fill in the blank) already?  How long has it been since (again, your fill in the blank)? I would like to leave you with one more thought about time.

The clock isn’t counting faceless time; it’s counting the minutes of your life.

What words do you use to define yourself? Have you ever given it much thought? Do you unthinkingly accept and buy into the assessments and expectation other people have pinned on you? What we believe about ourselves affects our actions and our actions impact the direction and quality of our lives. Let me give you an example.

As a country, we are knee deep in a recession. The government’s solution is to get us to open up our pocket books and spend more money. So they are proposing to give us money to spend it on services and things, but primarily on things. They reason that we are a nation of consumers for and about consuming, and that ramping up our spending will solve our economic woes.

I’m not an economist and this blog post is not about solving the nation’s financial crisis. I am, however, asking you so stick with me on this analogy as we look more closely at how accepting generalizations about ourselves can be a waste of our potential and even harmful.

“We Americans are so used to being referred to as ‘consumers’ that we comfortably fall into that role and do so conspicuously,” wrote reader Tom Krohn in his recent email to columnist Michelle Singletary of The Fresno Bee. His point was that it’s not just our spending habits that need to change but how we define ourselves as a nation that needs adjusting. We have gotten so used to thinking of ourselves as consumers, that we nod in mass agreement when the government says what we need to solve this economic crisis is more consuming.

As Singletary points out in her newspaper column, “According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, consume means to do away with completely; destroy; to spend wastefully; squander.” Oops! What Krohn is saying is that maybe we need to think outside the box about our values and our focus in order to open up greater possibilities to re-energizing and re-developing our economy.

And that is my point to you. The definition of who you are will overtly and even covertly direct your behavior. So do you live by who you truly are, or are you held captive by someone else’s definition of you? Are you boxed in or do you have room to grow and flourish? Have you ever even given it much thought? Introspection and self-awareness are good things, and there is no better time than the freshness of the new year to turn the looking glass on yourself.

So take a moment to write down a minimum of ten words that you would use to describe who you are. Re-read and assess how truthful you were about yourself. Do you like what you read? Does anything need to be enhanced, changed or just completely deleted? If you are perfectly satisfied, then I ask you to be deeply honest with yourself. Humans are like sharks, if we don’t keep moving and growing, we die. I am not suggesting that you be highly critical and smash your self-esteem. I am just asking you to remain open and aware to what new personal growth and opportunities may lie ahead

My February newsletter will complete this topic (for now) on rethinking, renewing and refreshing.  Please take a moment to sign up for my newsletter if you haven’t already done so.  Happy New Year!

(Note: Michelle Singletary’s column, We’re Defined by the Way We Shop, appeared in the January 4, 2009 issue of The Fresno Bee newspaper.)

New Year’s Resolutions. Here we are a couple of weeks away from New Year’s Day and already many of us have broken, or at least compromised our resolutions for doing things differently. While we may be sincere at the time we crafted them, we often sabotage the process and therefore our success by setting unrealistic goals to be achieved through ineffective methods in an unattainable time frame. I’m not trying to discourage you from desiring and working towards change; I’m trying to inject a bit of a reality check into the process.

Any kind of successful resolution has to align with your value system. If you don’t completely buy into the resolutions you have set for yourself, then you are inviting failure into the process.

Any kind of successful resolution has to be broken down and achieved in manageable increments. Sure, there are some of you who can bluster your way through, and some resolutions (like quitting cigarettes) may require an all or nothing approach. But for the most part, you are inviting discouragement into the process if you try to bite off more than you can chew all at once.

Any kind of successful resolution has to be pegged to attainability. It’s great to dream big but in doing so don’t undermine your success by setting a goal that just isn’t feasible. You don’t necessarily have to throw the baby out with the bath water ~ perhaps you need to modify or rethink the original resolution.

Any kind of successful resolution has to be made public. Yes, you need accountability for your actions so in those moments of weakness, you have a partner to help you over the humps.

So go ahead and make those resolutions. That’s the beautiful optimistic nature of new beginnings in a new year. But do it in a way that you won’t look back in a few days, weeks, months and ask yourself, “What was I thinking?” or “I’m such a loser.”

I love a fresh snowfall. It covers a multitude of ugliness and bareness in a beautiful mantel of fresh white. Even the process of snow falling is beautiful and serene as the white flakes blank out the sky and drift silently down from heaven. It becomes all about the snow, and once this exquisite gift has been delivered, the clouds recede to reveal a blazing sun shining in a brilliant blue sky while the land rests in protected peace. Have you ever noticed how quickly the birds come out after a snowstorm and sing their delighted songs exclaiming the beauty of the day, the provisions from the sky and the promise of life renewed?

It is fitting that the new year comes in winter, a time when we think of life as dead or dormant. (I realized that some of you may be living in climates where snow is nonexistent at this time of year or ever, but that doesn’t prevent the analogy from applying to you, too.) for some plants, winter is too hard and they die. But if you know anything about plants that thrive in cold climates, they need the dormant time of winter to rest and recharge for the burst of activity in the coming spring. It takes a lot of energy to produce leaves and flowers, and renew the cycle of life.

We, too, need a time of dormancy ~ not complacency nor denial nor regression but a time of reflection, planning and renewal. A time for a physical, spiritual, mental and emotional check-up, tune-up and balancing out.

So while you contemplate what the new year may bring, visualize the covering of snow over your past year. Think about what lies underneath. The failures, disappointments and pain remain, that cannot be changed, but what also lies below the surface of the fresh snow is the beauty, potential, joy and hope of all that is you and your days ahead. You can wallow, wither and die in the history of your past, or you can be dormant for this season as you prepare for the annual renewal of your life.