Join me on a treasure hunt
The column "Find Your Buried Treasure" appears weekly in the Chanhassen (MN) Villager. This column was published on January 6, 2011. I am embarking on a year-long, worldwide hunt for buried treasure, and I’m hoping you’ll join me. You don’t have to take a leave of absence from your job or family. You won’t need a passport, visa, or malaria shot. And you don’t need to purchase a telescope, gyroscope, metal detector, or any other equipment or supplies. The kind of treasure I’m looking for is any talent, trait, gift, or skill that can be of value in some way to the person who possesses it. It is buried treasure if the person who has it doesn’t recognize it, doesn’t know or believe it has value, or doesn’t realize what it is truly worth...
New Year’s Resolutions bring new strategy for success
The column "Find Your Buried Treasure" appears weekly in the Chanhassen (MN) Villager. This column was published on December 30, 2010. “Have a great week,” I said to a friend recently. “I hope you succeed at failing.” She laughed. Of course, she knew exactly what I meant. My friend is also a Dream Coach client, and we had just finished the session about how failure can lead to success. We had talked about transforming limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs, about the lessons and insights we can gain from our mistakes and missteps, and about the ways in which the failures in our past give us valuable information and resources we can use to help us succeed now in anything we set out to do...
Christmas bells bring music, memories, and peace
The column "Find Your Buried Treasure" appears weekly in the Chanhassen (MN) Villager. This column was published on December 23, 2010. “Christmas bells, those Christmas bells, ringing through the land, bringing peace to all the world. And good will to man.” You may recognize those words as the chorus from “Snoopy’s Christmas,” a song about Charlie Brown’s pet beagle and his Christmas Eve battle against the Bloody Red Baron of Germany. The Red Baron was a World War 1 ace fighter pilot in real life, and also – occasionally – in the “Peanuts” comic strip. In the song, the Red Baron forces Snoopy’s plane down behind enemy lines. But then – inspired perhaps by the sound of Christmas bells from a nearby village – instead of shooting Snoopy, the Red Baron offers him a holiday toast and wishes him a Merry Christmas...
A quiet request brings a joyful response
The column "Find Your Buried Treasure" appears weekly in the Chanhassen (MN) Villager. This column was published on December 16, 2010. A friend and I went to a nearby restaurant last week for a breakfast meeting to discuss some plans and projects we want to get started on. She and I have very similar values and beliefs, but very different skills and talents. We complement each other well, and have already worked on several projects together. We had a lot to talk about and a lot of catching up to do, in both our personal and our professional lives. It was one of those conversations in which we had to keep making notes about other things that came up, so we could keep track of things we wanted or needed to talk about later...
A nighttime dream looks bright by light of day
The column "Find Your Buried Treasure" appears weekly in the Chanhassen (MN) Villager. This column was published on December 9, 2010. I had a weird dream the other night. I was talking with someone who looked like an NFL linebacker, but he was actually a basketball player. He said, “Tell your daughter that she’ll be alone a lot when she’s on the road. Make sure she’s prepared for that.” I told him it wouldn’t be a problem, because my daughter does a lot of work by computer and is used to being alone when she works. On the road, she’d have her laptop with her and that would keep her from getting lonely...
Symphony of the season gives us rich, beautiful music
The column "Find Your Buried Treasure" appears weekly in the Chanhassen (MN) Villager. This column was published on December 2, 2010. The alarm on my clock-radio went off the other morning just as the news was getting over and Christmas music was starting up again. The first song was “The Little Drummer Boy,” which has always been one of my favorite Christmas carols. Since I didn’t have any meetings or appointments for which I needed to hop up and race off to start the day, I stayed in bed long enough to enjoy the song. And because I had no other distractions, I noticed things I never really paid attention to before...