The column "Find Your Buried Treasure" appears weekly in the Chanhassen (MN) Villager. This column was published on April 14, 2011. A Dream Coaching client of mine made a great comment recently – the kind that makes me think I should be paying her for advice instead of the other way around. She said she’s started adding the practice of doing at least three things each day that she doesn’t feel like doing. That excuse, she said, tends to keep her from accomplishing tasks that she could easily finish and remove from her to-do list. It reminds me of the advice written on the cover of a journal a friend of mine has...

The column "Find Your Buried Treasure" appears weekly in the Chanhassen (MN) Villager. This column was published on October 21, 2010. Every so often I come across some deceptively-simple advice. It is condensed to just a few simple words, but could replace volumes that have been written on the subject. One example is the five-word directive to “Eat less, exercise more, repeat,” which could replace thousands of books about how to lose weight. Last week I heard another five-word piece of advice that could benefit many people, myself included. It came from a client who was working through an “assignment” I had given him that was designed to process, complete, and eliminate the type of excess baggage, clutter, and unfinished business that many of us carry around with us. It can be physical, mental, or emotional, and consists of things that haunt us or nag at us, and that take up space in our homes and our heads. And because it can weigh us down or keep us anchored to the past, it also keeps us from moving forward on our dreams and goals. At the very least, it slows us down more than we realize...