The Reluctant Cheerleader

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, I was sitting on a bench in a playground watching my two pre-school sons navigate the jungle gym with a raw, adventurous curiosity that only children who have not yet been formally educated can have.   

But since I'd had almost two decades of formal education by that point in my life most of my curious wonderings were tucked firmly away in deep, dusty pockets of parental responsibility, exhaustion and occasional bouts of generalized cynicism.     

Feeling protective of my pseudo-solitude moment on the bench when my boys weren't needing me to wipe something, tie something or solve some emotional crisis between them, I'm sure I let out an audible sigh when a father and his young daughter wandered into the playground. 

With no energy to make small talk, I kept my gaze in the direction of my playing boys taking full advantage of that spacey, far-off look I get when tiredness gets in the driver's seat of  my attention. A stolen sideways glance at the father revealed the slump-shouldered look of a man who likely had even less energy than I did.  For that, I was grateful.

He mumbled some sort of greeting as he sat down on the bench next to me and for a few sacred moments there was an easy silence that was broken only by our infrequent interaction with our children.  But then I heard his audible sigh revealing that he was not as much at ease as I had assumed and apparently felt a obligation to begin a conversation.

“Do you live around here?”   

We rode the merry-go-round of pleasantries for a few minutes and then he asked what my then-husband did for a living.  I caught myself hesitating to respond.  Turning to do a visual check of my boys' whereabouts, I did my best to put on an air of casualness. 

“He's a...ummm...he's a motivational speaker”.   

He grunted.  “A motivational speaker?  Humph....what does he go on about?”   

I stifled my own laughter as I tried to feebly defend my husband's choice of life's work to this stranger who clearly thought the whole thing was a load of bunk.   But, in fact, I had struggled to “get“ the idea of my ex's line of work from the moment I met him.   

Work to me meant hard labour whether that be mental, physical, emotional or spiritual.  It meant getting tired. Exhausted.  To the point of getting sick.  It meant not taking vacations.  It meant people commenting on the unbelievable schedule I was keeping and how dedicated I must be to keep up the grueling pace.  

Fast-forward a couple of decades.  Boys are now out in the world, on their own.  Ex-husband successfully motivating others in another country.   I'm choosing to reduce the grueling work pace as Guidance Counsellor, Teacher and Yoga Instructor and to find a better life/work balance.   

And after two more decades of informal education, life experience and a new-found curiosity, I'm being drawn inexplicably towards an evolving life's work of encouraging others to dig deep to discover the best version of themselves.  To give them a framework for setting out intentions and goals.  To help them rewire the neural connections, the habits and ingrained patterns that are no longer useful and are keeping them stuck.   To help them explore methods of daily groundedness and ease in the face of free-floating anxiety and numbing fear.  To challenge them to draw on their skills, their experiences and their unique personality to create a life of abundance, passion and significance.

So how's that for getting run right over by the karma bus?   Snickering cynic turned cheerleader.  Sarcastic skeptic turned self-help guru.  Life-long workaholic turned life coach.  

After I stop rolling my eyes at myself, I realize this work is what I've been doing for most of my life.  It's a natural progression of my teaching, my guiding of angst-filled adolescent learners, and my experience with yoga and meditation. The evolution of a life work that works with more balance and is deeply aligned with my core values.   

Okay, okay, okay....I guess I'll become a freakin' life coach.  But I won't cheer.  And I may occasionally suggest that a client just go ahead and “bite me”.   What can I say?   I'm a work in progress.   Clearly, I'll need to seriously re-think my marketing strategy!

PS.  On my road to becoming a lifestyle/ wellness coach, I'm intending to be mentored by Tim Brownson who blogs at http://www.adaringadventure.com .  He seems as twisted as I am so this should be some kinda fun!

Gotta Love a Monday

On Monday, I begin teaching a class of 15 year old students about the long and winding road towards finding their life's work.  From now until June, I will have a total of about 45 students in this ministry mandated course (not a huge selling point for the students...or me for that matter) about the study of Careers.


This is my ninth consecutive year teaching this course and not once has it been the same, by design.  Its evolution has mirrored my own and each year I get so pumped at the thought of seeing a tiny light of self-recognition go on for even just one student.


I'm not deluded enough to think that all of my lesson plans will be riveting for these born-wired adolescents but I'm pretty certain that the classes will be a tad different than the suits at head office had considered.  Less content dump, more learning how to learn.


We will work together at developing a deeper level of self-awareness through continual reminders to “notice”, practiced minutes of silent attending to the moment, journalling and self-assessment tests.   With the support of a guest teacher, we'll be working through some mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques especially for teens.   Where was this class when I was their age?


I've also developed a brand new unit on self-regulation, a concept quite foreign to many young people, especially the young men who's frontal lobes are still a tad doughy and need more time to finish baking!  They still struggle significantly with the idea of that their actions have consequences so goal-setting holds little meaning for them.  Impulse control and emotional self-awareness issues arise regularly in a class full of these still mushy-brained boy-types.  It only presents as behavioural in a overly structured environment like school when really much of the issue is neurological.  


As well as environmental.   Not many parents model attending to the moment nor do they create opportunities for their children to practise it.  Expecting a class full of teens to arrive already knowing how to pay attention is unreasonable and fuel for frustration.


Together with my students, we'll each set intentions and goals, plan actions to move us each forward, journal our observations, learn more about ourselves, learn how to learn, see what learning and work options exist beyond the school walls, and spend time in corporate, silent noticing.  I'm pretty sure by June, I'll know what I want to be when I grow up!


I doubt any of my students are having the same thought as me right now but I can't wait for school on Monday morning!

Bored or Boring?

I don't fully understand the concept of boredom.

It's not that each moment of my life is riveting or that every interaction is life-changing or even intensely meaningful. Far from it. In fact, from the vantage point of an innocent bystander, my life is quite middle-of-the-road and ordinary. Full of daily, repetitive movements necessitated by a life in motion. Average. As common as a kitchen sink.

But this thing we call ordinary life is frequently so awe-inspiring to me that even common days are not boring to me.

This week alone found me being awed by an enormous, burning orange sun during a morning commute, the successful resolution of two intense, work-related crisis management situations, briefly losing my cool with a colleague, choosing a nap over a weekend household chore, collecting data towards an exciting new business venture, making a choice in one single moment to not over-think my life and balancing my tendency to over-achieve with the acceptance that this is the way things are.

Nothing earth shattering. Just the stuff of a life lived out loud and in the moment. Epiphanies of the everyday. Bored? Boring? Not possible.  Thankfully!

The Second Act

I am of two minds about resolutions.  You'd think that with two minds, I should be able to process information, make decisions and think in double time but, alas, no such luck! Does sharing resolutions take the steam out of your plans because you feel as if you've already done something or does it act as an accountability guide?  Not sure.


But I've been making resolutions for as long as I can remember and not just at the dawn of a new year.  As a student then teacher, the end of August is always prime intentioning time.  Then, I'd do it all again in December,  and, for good measure over a green beer on my birthday and then one more time at the beginning of summer break.   This has always included tweaking a goal when, on the path, it has become clear that an unhealthy pattern played too much a role in the original planning stages.


To see the incredible power of intentions, put them down on paper and then tuck them away somewhere out of sight.  I've recently found lists of resolutions from 5 years ago and am amazed at how almost every single one has come to life, even the ones I'd not worked on strategically.   Not that I'd recommend not breaking down a vision into manageable, short-term to long-term goals but it's amazing how setting your frequency for where you want to go has a power all its own. 


I once heard of a man who cut a picture out of a house that he wanted to own one day and adhered it to his vision board.  Years later, after many visioning sessions, many jobs and moves later, he found his vision board packed in some boxes and was flabbergasted to realize that he was now living in the very same house he had cut out of a magazine!  


So this year is already the best one of my life so far.  What incredible abundance I have in my life.   And I've been able to say that every year since I've been more specific and strategically writing out resolutions.   Although I feel far too young and on the verge of a personal revolution to consider this my second act of life, the plans I'm envisioning do involve a change in career (again) which always seem like real page turners in the chapters of my life.   These next chapters will need to have more breath given to love and less to fear.




2012 will see the seeds of the following planted, watered or begin the glorious germination process:


1.   Create a viable small business that falls under category of Wellness Guide, Coach, Teacher, Mentor, Transition Counsellor for teens, Meditation/ Yoga Instructor.   NOT Life Coach...that term barely scratches the surface of what I'm thinking and seems too much like professional cheerleader.  I'm much too cynical and sarcastic to pull off cheerleader.  Plus the costumes are just ridiculous!


2.   Generate a vibrant, evolving client base for above business  by staying on guest teacher list at two local yoga studios, initiating contact with others doing this work to see what it takes, offering workshops & experimenting with current students who are in transition.


3.   Build a solid business plan and save enough in advance to leave my current job and still suffer the slings and arrows of a small business in its first few years of operation.  


4.   Create a unique selling proposition that clearly sets my services apart from others.


5.   Create an online presence to help promote the business and to eventually sell all the books I have inside of me waiting to be written.


6.   Explore the available funding (gov't community housing grants, green initiatives, angel investors) for building a community-based apartment complex in my backyard.  This is a longer term goal that could be a base of operations for the above business.  

7.   Run a 5K race in June in under 30 minutes. 


8.   Risk being in relationships.  Open my heart enough to risk having it be broken, to love deeply without attachment.  Risk not being in an intimate relationship.   Risk being alone.  Risk asking for help!


9.   Confront trepidation about all the above with self-care, nourishing myself with whole foods, a consistent spiritual practice, gratitude for what I already have and by realizing that I am surrounded by spirited, open-minded, generous, supportive and competent friends and family.  I couldn't be alone in this, even if I tried!




Deep breath!   Here we go.  We're all in this together. 

Epiphanies in the Dark?

I used to love the idea of the tortured artist.  The writer with the dark temperament and the drinking problem. It seemed that great works and inspired wordsmithing came from the depths of sadness, betrayal and chronic melancholia.  But so far this year (all four days of it!), I've discovered that  I can actually be surprised by joy and be inspired by serenity.  In a place of peace and celebration of loving without expectation, I am finding a level of creativity that is surprising even me.


With this daylight epiphany, came the memory of this song.  Here's Van the Man singing "Days Like This" in his regular large and in-charge fashion. 


Lyrics:



When it's not always raining there'll be days like this
When there's no one complaining there'll be days like this
When everything falls into place like the flick of a switch
Well my mama told me there'll be days like this


When you don't need to worry there'll be days like this
When no one's in a hurry there'll be days like this
When you don't get betrayed by that old Judas kiss
Oh my mama told me there'll be days like this


When you don't need an answer there'll be days like this
When you don't meet a chancer there'll be days like this
When all the parts of the puzzle start to look like they fit
Then I must remember there'll be days like this


When everyone is up front and they're not playing tricks
When you don't have no freeloaders out to get their kicks
When it's nobody's business the way that you wanna live
I just have to remember there'll be days like this


When no one steps on my dreams there'll be days like this
When people understand what I mean there'll be days like this
When you ring out the changes of how everything is
Well my mama told me there'll be days like this


Oh my mama told me
There'll be days like this

This Run's For You

Yesterday, I was channeling both Martha Stewart and Guy Kawasaki at the same time. How cool is that?  I was the design maven known for creating something fabulous and useful out of nothing as well as the innovative entrepreneurial visionary and author of “Art of the Start” rolled into one for an invigorating session of dreaming, intentioning and goal setting.


But since my budget is a tad smaller than even the post-incarcerated Martha, I was more like the Giant Tiger version of her.  I took a roll of birthday wrapping paper, turned it around so the blank side was facing out towards me and taped the design side across 6 feet of my living room wall.  Then, with a coffee mug full of colourful markers, I brainstormed what 2012 could look like under the headings of “Life's Work”, “Heart” and “Body & Spirit”.  


There is still much work to be done in reducing the longer term goals into smaller, more manageable 'to do' lists but that will come.  


In the area of Body & Spirit, one goal was to train for a 5K race in May.  This run, known affectionately by my family as Race Weekend, has been an annual event that my original family and an assortment of friends, children, lovers and distant relatives have participated in for 8 years.  It started May 2003, the year that my father died and we have run every May since to raise money to support the hospital that treated him during his illness. 


The first year I took training very seriously.   It was my way of proactively grieving for an inevitable and painful ending that I saw coming.  Morbid?  Maybe.  Perhaps it was the fifth reading through the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying that convinced me to sit with the impending darkness and not look for a way past it.  


By January of 2003, I had signed up for a 5K race near my hometown, downloaded a beginner's 5K training schedule and stuck to it religiously using every commitment device I could find.  My intentions were mostly visual.  I was running towards something, not away from it.


My father was still living during my training and was determined that he was going to be there to watch me finish the race.   Imagining that scenario gave me the energy to run even after a long day at work.  In the bitter cold.  In the dark of evening or morning.  Or through the mind-lies that lashed out at at me to keep me from going on.  "You don't have the body of a runner."  "You're too old."  "This won't make a difference to anyone."


At this point in his illness, the cancer had entered his bones and there was significant deterioration and pain in his one hip.  He eventually admitted that he might have to be at the finish line in a wheelchair.   Even near the end, in his morphine-induced haze, he kept asking if we won the race.  Eventually I told him 'yes'.  We won.


My father died May 3.  Three weeks before the race.  Through the tears, the funeral preparations and the mind-numbing exhaustion of round-the-clock vigil at my father's bed for two weeks, the rest of my siblings, their children, friends and extended family all signed up to run the race with me.  Our first Race Weekend was born.


This memory flooded me, as I went out for a run this morning.  My first run since last May and part of my goal setting practice.  Training is less vigorous as the years pass and I realize now much more there is to Race Weekend than just running.  It's a legacy of facing obstacles with courage of a hero and the frailty of a human being.  Of flawed and fiercely real people putting one foot in front of the other and breathing through the “I can't go on” moments. 


My father was running beside me this morning.  Occasionally flicking at my hands to see if I was clenching them into fists.  Telling me to lower my shoulders.   Reminding me to relax.  To breathe.  He was telling me not to give up, even when I wanted to.  Then, when we realized we were closing in on the 4K point, we both smiled, lowered our arms for increased pumping action and really gave 'er to sprint the last block home.


My father seriously would've needed a few days to get used to the large piece of paper of my living room wall.  He was old-school that way.  But since our family owned a flower shop and a catering business for 20-some years (after his long career as a banker), he would've been totally okay with the Martha and Guy bit.  Then, after a week or two, I would hear him telling someone else why they should be visioning with wrapping paper on their living room wall it as if it was his idea.   


Hey, how can I miss you if you never go away? .... I knew that would make you smile.

Have Yourself a Matrix Little Christmas

I'm not sure when it started.  Or why.   


But, at some point along my Personal Beliefs Timeline, some very serious rants against the practice of mindlessly following long-held traditions began popping up like waving flags at a K'naan concert.  And these weren't just rants going off in the fogginess of my own mind.  Literal proclamations of judgment spewed forth from me, freely and unsolicited, in the presence of others with the precision of a courtroom gavel.


Despite my Degree in Biblical Studies and once being married to a minister (or perhaps because of those things), many of my rants were aimed at questionable religious traditions.  Funeral services that included a message of hell-fire and brimstone for the vulnerable, captive audience of mourners warranted an equally fiery rant for the whole car ride home...no matter how far that car trip home happened to be.


I rationalized that following a tradition without question, was due to an overactive need for consolation.  An adult version of a self-soothing pacifier.  I thought that, as truly high-functioning adults, we should be able to look into the eyes of darkness, feel the discomfort of it and not have to anesthetize ourselves to it with a soother of ritual habit.


Post religious degree and ex-partner, I have now created a very fulfilling life that is a far cry from my oft-evangelical, fundamentalist, tradition-filled roots and education.  I do yoga (gasp!), meditate, question most things, spell truth with a small 't' and believe that god is spelled k-i-n-d-n-e-s-s.  But being a little off-centre is never more evident than in this season that is filled with and built on tradition.  


Last night, I spent a wonderful evening with my sons and we laughed at how 'non-traditional' our family is.   Since the boys were to be on an airplane to visit their father early Christmas morning, we created a new (possibly for this year only) tradition and have our family time on Christmas Eve.   


Some things we did were similar to regular families, I guess, as we opened our gifts to each other, ate  delicious treats and caught up on each others lives.  But we veered significantly off-course when one son put a picture of his friend wearing her hijab on our our pile of gifts and claimed that we had a Muslim Christmas Tree.  Then we watched the Christmas episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (as opposed to The Grinch or Die Hard) and engaged in a role-playing, drinking card game and this certainly must have put us in some sort of category of white-trash crazy.  


But, as I sat watching my boys playing the role-playing game, I smiled deeply from the inside out.  One was wearing a bow-tie and the other a camouflage Elmer Fudd hat.  They couldn't be more different if I had submitted a genetic wish list.  But there we were.  Three joyous oddnicks enjoying an even odder evening of celebration.  We laughed.  Till our faces and bellies hurt.  We kept putting off bedtime even though we were all aware of the early flight.


The next morning, as the boys packed, primped (well, the one in the bow-tie was the only one primping) and yawned themselves awake, ate warm cinnamon buns out of the oven, they talked about the trip before them.  I listened with interest as they confirmed with each other that one of them had the movie, The Matrix, downloaded on one of their laptops.  I asked why.  They said, “it's our tradition”.  


Apparently, the first post-divorce, Christmas airplane ride 6 years ago involved watching the movie together, side by side in their plane seats, so, out of a need for continuity, sameness, or just making sense out of a new way of life, my boys created a tradition for themselves.   For comfort.  For consolation.  For the time when they needed that.  


Could it be that all traditions aren't evil incarnations of thoughtless people who are stuck in their adolescent phase of belief?  Or can we create flexible traditions that console and nourish at the same time?  


Who knows?  All I know is that my life, my loves, my boys, my viewpoint are all basically non-traditional but also magnanimous enough to include the occasional tradition.   


“Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony”.  Matrix makes Christmas merrier.  Who knew?