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...
A moment of care is a moment to share
The column "Find Your Buried Treasure" appears weekly in the Chanhassen (MN) Villager. This column was published on November 25, 2010. It started with a last-minute cancellation, and ended with another one. But what happened in between was a gift, and Thanksgiving seems like the perfect time to acknowledge it. I had two meetings scheduled half an hour apart on a recent morning. I scheduled them both for a nearby café, and brought a book with me to read during the time in between. My first client had an emergency situation come up, and called to see if we could reschedule. After I got off the phone with her, I debated going home for a while, since I now had an hour and a half, rather than half an hour, till my next meeting. I decided not to sacrifice the time it would take to drive there and back. Instead I would just enjoy the extra reading time...
Holiday dreams can brighten the season
The column "Find Your Buried Treasure" appears weekly in the Chanhassen (MN) Villager. This column was published on November 18, 2010. The snowstorm we had last weekend brought us face-to-face with winter weather. It also got me thinking about the upcoming holiday season, and the difficulties and stresses people often have during what should be a beautiful, spiritual and peaceful time of year. This holiday season I’m planning to incorporate what I’ve learned from Dream Coaching – both in being coached and in coaching others – that I know will help me to eliminate much of the seasonal stress and to enjoy the Christmas of my dreams. I’m sharing a few of the practices in case you’d like to try them as well...
A hope for healing comes from an Oprah episode
The column "Find Your Buried Treasure" appears weekly in the Chanhassen (MN) Villager. This column was published on November 11, 2010. A friend of mine was on Oprah last Friday. He wasn’t one of the people up on stage being interviewed, but he was one of two hundred men flown in to Chicago by the show’s producers to be part of the studio audience in an episode about male sexual assault. Everyone in the audience had been molested as a child, and the Oprah episode opened with a powerful image of the men holding up photos of themselves at the age when their abuse took place or began...
Multiple incentives increase success for many
The column "Find Your Buried Treasure" appears weekly in the Chanhassen (MN) Villager. This column was published on November 4, 2010. Although newspapers are often filled with bad news, I saw two items recently – totally unrelated to each other but with a few things in common – that really got me excited. They gave me hope and faith in what people can accomplish when they set their minds on positive achievements, when they’re working toward something that benefits others as well as themselves, and when they have the right motivation...
A question to ask – for then and now
The column "Find Your Buried Treasure" appears weekly in the Chanhassen (MN) Villager. This column was published on October 28, 2010. If you knew then what you know now, what would you have done differently? That’s the question that was given during the Table Topics Contest at the Toastmasters Conference I attended last weekend. In Table Topics, the contestants are brought into the room one at a time. They are asked the question, and must immediately give a one-to-two-minute answer. The judges are looking at technical elements such as speech development, language and delivery. The audience members are looking for a thoughtful, entertaining and memorable response. And some, like me, can’t help but think about how we would respond if we were up on stage answering the question...