Setting Intentions

Setting intentions is a fascinating endeavour. I have read many books on sales, motivation, self help, and my all time favourites, apologetics. Reading these books is the equivalent of a thousand peoples observations, succinctly placed in one easy to read volume(s).  I have read that brilliance is observation of patterns, noted and recorded, written and or verbalized. When I read and say yes, ah ha, that's right, that's it, it is me admiring what someone else has had the insight to see and name and then seemingly claim as their own, in writing.  That's the end result, the written word, the start of something beautiful and edifying is the intention, the seed of genius awaiting its time to burst forth with leaves and branches in glorious living colour, giving full expression to not just an idea, but to a vision.  In coaching, the coach is a dog with a bone, at least I am, about the client knowing what it is they want, to be intentional about it, and in time, "it" IS...the client sometimes smoothly transitions from here to over there where their intentions live and that's when the coach gets to say "SEEEEEE, LOOOK, YOU DID "IT"!!!"  Ha, yes, this is gratifying to write as I happily recall many an instance when it has been my pleasure to be able to celebrate intentions that made it into animated life with a client, especially when what they were afraid of, no longer exists!  My intentions?  To have a pure heart...it might take some time and I WILL, get there.

Emotions and Entitlement

These are the messages I have received recently "I get to feel this way", David Lund. "Don't beat yourself up for having feelings", Alex Den Broeder.  "Your entitled to feel that way", Elvira Meluci (that's my wise mum!).  I have been taking care of my body with excellent food and 6 days a week of strenuous exercise. I am being purposeful about this, making my wellness a priority. As I decended the stairs today, my quadricep muscles were screaming loudly at me and I was answering them with some moaning and groaning. My mom, who lives with me and my boys, asked with concern "what's wrong, are you ok?".  When I told her the reason for the complaining, she stated "your entitled to feel that way". Click!  The body aches and it is perfectly ok to acknowledge this, to logically equate it with a cause.  What about when the soul aches, cries out for justice, longs for acknowledgement of its suffering?  Do emotions and their expression really have to be stuffed down, ignored, placated?  How is happy and upbeat allowed but dark nights of the soul forbidden from view?  The full range of human emotion, the bleeding the laughing the crying, they all come to me, spend time with me, and I am starting to appreciate the freedom of expression that is mine to claim. Today, on a really cool piece of cardio equipment, I did a simulated boxing ring fight...at one point, the screen told me "you are bleeding". Yes, I am bleeding, and then I get all stitched up, the scars are a badge of honour and I am forged in the fire, the fight.  Stronger and more resilient because emotions won't kill me but ignoring  them just might. 

Amazing Grace

3 funerals, one pending, yeah, life doesn't suck, death does. While I am all doom and gloom, I have to get this out. If illness, suffering and dying are all around us and it ISNT happening currently in our own lives or our immediate family members lives, than how can we in good conscious not treasure, enjoy, love each day that we wake up to?  Restless is a disease of the fortunate, thinking not enough or they have more than I do or when I get there is for the healthy of body, the ones who look out into the future with longing because they have the luxury of doing so.  What about wishing for one more day because this one might be the last?  Greedy self, occupied with more, how dare you steal from now and borrow from a future that might not exist?  I have is more honest, kinder, softer, than I want.  It is with gratitude that I thank God, for but for His amazing grace go I.

Heaven Wins Again

FAITH...forsaking all I trust Him.  2014 is only 52 days old and I have attended 3 funerals already. Today's was especially hard, because someone I love deeply is gone from this earth, God took back one of the really good ones.  When I think of him, I think of Gods love radiating from his face, his words a gentle balm of peace and trust in God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.  I knew the end was coming for my friend, it makes me grimace, seeing spirit moving in a body, them breathing life into their lungs and knowing at the same time that the death march has begun, and that it would eventually, soon even, be claiming another saint.  Death is a cruel thief, stealing away loved ones before I, before we, are done loving them.  Sickness is crueler yet, and so it is a welcome platitude to hear and say "he/she is in a better place". This does nothing for me, as my heart aches and yearns for one more hug, one more faith filled story, one more shared moment of soul brushing.  I will miss you Doug Dakin, I'm grateful and blessed for having known such a great man of God.  Heaven wins again. 

Dreaming

The lyrics to a Passenger song  called Things That Stop Your Dreaming grabbed me as they rang truth.  They go like this "if you can't get what you love, you learn to love the things you've got, if you can't be what you want, you learn to be the things you're not, if you can't get what you need, you learn to need the things that stop your dreamin, all the things that stop your dreamin".  This last line nearly broke my heart in the lonesomeness of the message, need whatever it is that will stop your dreaming...it's like clinging to a tooth pick to save you while you bob up and down in the middle of the ocean, trusting that somehow the tooth pick is enough, loving it and hoping it will save you. Coaching, lovely rich coaching asks what are your dreams?  Who are you?  Who do you want to be in relationship?  What are you here for, what is your life purpose?  Coaches know clients have dreams that have gone to sleep, desires they are afraid to speak for fear of them never coming true, hopes that have been dashed in the past, holding them pinned to helplessness.  The coach believes in the client. We are not dream weavers, coaches are the gentle wake up call from slumber to come alive to love, life, reaching for the big stuff of which dreams are made.  Do you see what I see...isn't it the truth that we can't see our own brilliance until we see it reflected in the eyes of an admirer?  Seeing less stops our dreaming.

Welcome to Communicable Diseases

Welcome to communicable diseases, spoken in deep, rich, vibrant DJ tones. 

This is the recorded greeting for the immunization health unit. This message cracked me up and I giggled and or full on laughed at the thought of it and my repeating it to others, throughout the day.  A communicable disease is clearly something to be avoided, being welcome to it was plain old ridiculously hilarious! 

When choosing who to speak to, a recorded request is made of the listener that goes something like this, If you have a fever or flu like symptoms, do not come to the clinic; this message delighted me as much as the first one! 

I am inclined to spin this into a super cool metaphor, I invite you to come with me. 

What if the communicable disease is dis, ease, agitation, anger, dis satisfaction, selfishness, bitterness, self pity, entitlement, envy, self indulgence, me first?  These are real health threats, corrosive and sometimes, contagious otherwise referred to as emotional contagions. 

• Why would you or I want to be exposed to these toxins?  
• What is the impact when we are?  

I for one feel sick after exposure, and like any illness, the symptoms take a while to dispel, lingering far longer than the actual exposure experience took in the first place.  

Doctors and nurses are called to aid the ill; they have healing hearts and hands, and they expose themselves to real and deadly disease for the sake of others. Those that request their help for healing are given the gift of health aid~this said, they have a call to duty, to protect the general public from "communicating" illness, by refraining from exposing others when they are already very sick. 

Coaching is like this, the client can bring all their dis ease to the coaching relationship because they want to get better, move away from what makes them emotionally sad and sick, and toward what makes them healthy, whole, and feels like heart singing resonance. Clients learn to move away from emotional contagion and toward health filled loving relationship first with themselves, and then with others. 

I want to catch happiness, I want to infect others with joy, I want to be so contagious that everyone is bitten by the love bug!  Perhaps you have been bitten today, in a great and wonderful way? 

I sure hope so.

Love is a feeling AND an ability

I heard a great line in a movie "love is not a feeling, it is an ability". I mentioned this to my son and he said "love is a feeling AND an ability", clearly love can be and is both. There is a lot of self love I have been reading about~this shows up in social media, where people take brave steps in confidence and tell the world, and the world (or the persons social circle) responds with good for you and I knew you had it in you and you inspire me comments. I am inclined to get irritated with these public displays of proudness, they seem adolescent and needy to me, as though the grown man or woman did not receive praise in their formative years and now they can catch up, share and care and fawn over themselves and others.  I'm tracking right now in my memory to see if I am a suspect, if I am amongst the needy?  Guilty as charged, for who among us is not in need of love?  Which brings me to my point:  there is a time in each life where the feeling of love must be incoming, an outside in, a receiving in order to comprehend, to absorb, to feel and know that you and me, we are precious. Than, as I see it, know it, have experienced it, love becomes an ability, it moves away from my need to receive and toward the giving, the sending, the offering to another.  My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of The Lord...my Teacher loved me first so that I might love as He does.  If this is all I learn from this life, to love like Jesus, it will be gloriously good enough.