Yoo hoo…Wake up! It’s already January 22, 2012.  The first month of the new year has almost flown away, soon to become either a shadowy memory, hopefully pleasant, or a possible cause for your heaping on a big serving of self-recrimination..

How many of you are starting to feel like the air has leaked out of your balloon and that the  high ideals and goals that had you so pumped up on Dec 31 or Jan 1  have already fizzled?  How many of you are disappointed, or even worse, are beating yourselves up because you believe you have failed again.

You are not alone at all. We often get so carried away setting our lofty goals that we forget to spend time thinking about how to create a workable plan that is easy to stick with, and is one that includes rewards for even small achievements and gains. We spend a lot of time watching other people and perceiving that they are better, more efficient, more dedicated and more successful than we are. We focus on what we see as their results and wins, but we forgot to identify with them as human beings, as vulnerable and imperfect as ourselves. We don’t pay attention to the stumbles, setbacks and even the absolute disasters they experience before they get up and gingerly take a few more small steps and try anew. Instead, when we fall on our faces, we  feel sorry for ourselves, get frightened and discouraged, blame ourselves more than anyone else could ever do, and decide that our goals were unattainable and unrealistic and we should just give up. I am, not saying every one of us behaves this way, but a good percentage of people do.

I am writing this because I haven’t done so fabulously either with some of the  goals I set around the start of this month. Life, work, illness, the problems of family members, the crises of friends, needs of clients, have all piled up to form a mountain on which I have at times found it hard to get a foothold, let alone to climb to the top and plant a flag.   As we know, the shoemaker’s children go barefoot and the coach must be reminded to “coach thyself!”.  One of my New Year goals was to increase the frequency of my blog posts, but the days have been filled with other tasks and I haven’t done this yet.  As you well know, the longer that we procrastinate and do nothing, the more formidable the unclimbed mountain becomes.

. I have, admittedly, gotten a little stuck with the blog posts. I am not talking about writer’s block.  I constantly have new ideas that I write down and plop into  my idea catcher box, but I haven’t done much with them lately.  I have excused it by reminding myself how busy I am and how many other things I have to do.  Still, I  have spent time reading other blogs of those I admire, learn from and enjoy and inadvertently scolded myself for not getting back on the horse and knocking off more posts and articles.   That’s what I am doing today.   I am, back on the horse. I wrote a paragraph earlier, came back to the computer, wrote another, and here I am. I told myself that even if I only got to do a paragraph today, it would be ok.

What are some of your goals and can you find a way to break them into smaller, more doable tasks?  It’s crucial to stop comparing ourselves to others. It only makes our mountains harder to climb and makes us feel bad about ourselves and accomplish less.

Can’t get to those 10,000 steps a day?  What can you do at first, that is more realistic for you?  How about making an extra trip up and down the steps when you carry something to your bedroom? Leave your package in the bedroom as you intended, go downstairs, walk up and down one extra time,  It will only take a minute or two more, but it will start you in the right direction and get you working on your goal. You will begin to build your endurance and start to feel less breathless, less stiff. Once you are up and moving, it is somehow easier to keep on doing it.

One thing that seems to be common among people who run small businesses, is a difficulty in narrowing down our strongest skills and expertise, or the ways in which our businesses give people what they want or need. Without a clear picture of this, it is almost impossible to  get out there and market well..  So many of us, including me, just keep putting off the task of zeroing in on this important awareness and information. It seems like a big job and we have no idea where to start looking or how to begin.  We  do the same familiar, but not terribly effective things, over and over.  I can think of five colleagues who have listed this as a project to take on starting Jan 1st, but who haven’t gotten anywhere with it.  Now is a great time to take the first  steps in figuring out how to change these patterns, but when we think about it, we break out in a cold sweat and it seems overwhelming. One thing I have begun to do and that you might want to think about,  is to spend 10 minutes a day for the next week (surely you can find 10 quiet minutes to dedicate to this!) asking yourself questions about what makes you really stand out and what you do differently than others in your line of work. Think about what your clients, customers and supporters would respond if asked about you. (Better yet, ask them!) Jot down what comes to mind.  Enjoy a nice cup of tea while you’re doing this, if you are so inclined.  Don’t skip a day and keep on writing, using a stream of consciousness technique. By the end of the week you should have quite a bit of information and insight to start working with.  Then it’s time for a glass of wine, in my opinion!  My tea kettle is already on the stove and my apple-caramel latte tea is in the steeping ball, waiting for me to begin!  How about you?

Do you remember the first time you ever put on roller skates or ice skates and how gingerly you began moving? You were fearful, insecure, and as you watched the other, more proficient skaters, you decided you would never be able to match their amazing skill. You held on to the railing, or to your companions, but eventually, you took an awkward step, maybe you fell, took another step and kept on going.  After a while you actually began having fun.

Any task is doable and manageable,  if you do it incrementally, but you must get started.

I would be thrilled if you would consider sharing with me,. with us, the goals you have set, but now feel discouraged with.  We can try to come up with some ways to get back in action.  Let’s do it together! Let’s design the steps you can begin to take. Even a few tentative steps will get you moving.

I did it! There’s my blog post and I have a bunch more to begin working on–one sentence at time if need be, till they take shape.

Happy January 22nd!

As everyone else seems to be doing at this opportunity for a fresh start in a new year, I am thinking about what will be different in 2012 and what I would like to change about myself.   I am still nursing a miserable cold and today was a day of lounging and lollygagging. (That’s a word we don’t see much nowadays!)

I enjoyed a little bit of “hair of the dog” this morning, as I sat down with a cup of tea,  to contemplate my life.  No, there wasn’t any alcohol in my tea.  It was just a nice cup of Earl Grey and the hair of the dog was not necessitated by a night of heavy drinking on New Year’s Eve, but by my little kooky Scottie dog snuggling up to me on the couch and asking for non-stop stroking to her wiry coat.

Forgetting it was Sunday and that the Sunday paper awaited me in the newspaper box on my front lawn, I absent-mindedly turned the pages of a newspaper from a few days back. I was distracted, with my mind wandering in several directions and then happened to notice my horoscope of the other day.  I don’t place a lot of stock in general horoscopes from the newspaper.  I happen to know a few people who are accomplished astrologers, both  of Western and Vedic, or Indian Astrology. The charts they do and the readings they provide are far more detailed and specific to me.  Still, the words I read stood out and seemed to call to me.

“Friends rely on our discretion and good judgment and subsequently you are the one they come to for answers”.

Mulling that over for a bit, I acknowledged that it applies to me. Friends do seem to rely on my discretion and good judgment and sometimes they do come to me for answers, as do some family members.  We all like to indulge in a bit of ego massage, so it usually feels good to us when people do this.  It makes us feel needed and important. Still, how many times has our advice-giving backfired? For the most part, people who think they want advice generally only want a chance to vent and/or complain.  Sometimes they do want advice and suggestions but they usually have a pretty good idea of what they plan to do, or not do before they even approach you, or anyone else. They just may not realize it.  If they don’t like the advice you offer, they may get upset, angry or resentful and as they are pretty unlikely to act on your advice, you may grow angry or resentful.

As a professional coach, I know well that the kernels of solutions are within each of us.  Coaches may sometimes also act as consultants who are paid for their advice in their areas of expertise, but generally, coaching involves guiding our clients to insights about themselves and their circumstances, and encouraging them to help them “discover” what   is there,  but has eluded them. We help them to create new goals and plans based on their desires, needs, beliefs and aptitudes. We don’t tell them what to do. We don’t lead them down paths simply because we may feel these are appropriate for them.  We don’t judge them.  With close friends and family members it is often far more difficult not to be overly directive and not to insert our own agenda and values.

Even when our counsel and specific input is sought by family members and friends, I have little doubt that it would be more effective and much more in the interests of maintaining positive relationships to avoid offering advice and quick fixes.  It is not our job to solve the problems of the world, or of our loved ones.

I don’t want to put this in the form of a New Year’s resolution for myself because I want to take this seriously, and quickly drafted resolutions made in the heat of the moment are rarely lasting.  I do resolve, though, to practice and practice and practice some more, on giving non-advice in 2012.  I don’t want to say “no advice” because to me, that implies a lack of interest and engagement (maybe I am getting stuck in semantics).  I prefer think of what I will make every effort to provide as “non-advice”.  I want it to take the form of loving, honest feedback, positive reinforcement, enthusiasm, acknowledgment, and all of those good things we do for our coaching clients. We do more than that, but our close friends and family members are not our clients and while we may use some coaching techniques in our interactions, I don’t think we should be coaching them. What do you think?

I hope you will visit my business Facebook Page soon at http://facebook.com/visionpoweredcoaching.  I am looking forward to your visits and comments there. Let’s get to know each other!

Good luck symbols 

It’s time to “fess up”. I will if you will!  Do you frequently tell yourself you have lousy luck and that nothing goes your way?  Do you think it is really bad luck that plagues you, or is it at least partly your own attitude?

Maybe it’s time to take a long, honest look at yourself in the mirror,  to examine what you see and what the dynamics are in your life.  Is it possible you have been carrying around with you the idea that you have a lot of bad luck and it has colored how you perceive the world?  Do you preserve some of those old family recipes that really need to be discarded?  You may delight in making your grandmother’s delicious snickerdoodles when the holiday season rolls around, but nobody needs a recipe full of ingredients that disagree with us, or cause us to be less healthy or happy.  I know my grandparents used to enjoy a variety of peasant food that turn my stomach thinking about them.  They loved hard rolls smeared with rendered chicken fat, with fried chicken skins (gribenes). This is the Jewish equivalent of fried pork rinds and you couldn’t pay me enough money to eat that kind of stuff. That’s one piece of my family and cultural heritage that I am happy to be rid of.

When I think of the family I was born into, I can think of many fine attitudes, qualities and gifts that were passed on to me.  I always had an abundance of love, even if I sometimes felt a bit smothered. Learning for the sake of enjoyment and personal enrichment was encouraged. Writers and good literature were greatly valued.   I learned that people, as well as causes to which you were committed, were more important than money and material things.  This belief has prevailed throughout my life and has been both a positive and negative force, but perhaps that’s the subject of another blog post.

I learned that family is ultra-important, as well as loyalty to good friends. From my parents’ marriage and obvious love for each other, I was taught that nurturing the marriage or primary relationship is crucial.   I learned from my mother how to be frugal when needed, and  how to plan and budget.  From my father, I learned how to be generous.  I learned how to be welcoming and hospitable to those who visited our home, whether the insurance agent, the plumber, the Egg Man who sold farm fresh eggs to the neighbors, or the doctor (who made house calls).  I was taught to buy only what I can afford, and that it is a virtue to be as debt-free as possible, but when money is tight at times, it is important to feed your family well before taking care of some other things. Having enough food, even in lean times, was key to my parents’ ability to feel secure. Naturally this stemmed from their childhoods and I am sure had some negative carry-over, but it was mostly a good thing.  If family or close friends were short of cash, you tightened your already tight belt just a tad, and helped them out of a jam.

Unfortunately, along with these mostly good notions and values, I got a pretty strong lesson in L.D.S. principles.  That may sound odd to you, since we were Jewish, so I need to explain. My family did not convert to the Mormon faith (though I have always liked their concept of the Family Home Evening).  L.D.S. in my lingo, stands for Lousy Destructive Shit (pardon me, if you prefer to just substitute the word ‘stuff’).

Now it’s time for my confession.  I grew up in a home where blame was put on bad luck more than I care to remember, and after a while, I began to internalize my parents’ mindset. They sincerely believed that they did not have good luck in life, in general.  They felt that trouble had some sort of radar with which to locate them. That is not to say they weren’t thankful for what they had, but they just expected things to go wrong. When they purchased appliances, cars or furniture, they assumed it would not go smoothly and they went on the defensive from the start of most transactions.  They perceived of it as protective or smart consumerism.  It never occurred to them to think that one might catch more flies with honey than with suspicion. Therefore, I also grew up thinking that bad luck was my fate in life and that sales people, contractors, craftsmen, etc. were out to either cheat me, to bestow inferior goods, or to provide me with less than adequate service. I  considered it my mission (not always totally consciously)  to research to the point of ridiculousness and to be in the highest DefCon Alert mode.  When people took ill, my parents hoped for the best, but usually assumed the worst would happen.  While I still have some residual effects from this, hopefully ameliorated by education, time, therapy at different life phases, and my life coach training, I have done my best to be aware when I slip back into that mode and to work on ways to talk myself out of it.

I certainly don’t believe that people bring misfortune on themselves when they are stricken with illness, as I have written in other blog posts.   I don’t like blaming those who are victims of  terrible occurrences.  I do believe, though, that when you go through life with distrust and expecting the worst, you project that out into the world and you get a lot of it back.  You don’t directly cause the ball bearings in your brand new fancy clothes dryer to break off after a few months, (Increasingly shoddy workmanship in manufacturing takes care of that) but I think  you do have some influence on the frequency and way in which things occur. I think we have all read about and seen for ourselves the effects of embracing negativity as a way of life.

Will Edwards, in his blog, “Inspiration-Personal Views by Will Edwards”,  says,  “There really is no such thing as “luck” and that is because life is what you make it, and by maintaining a positive mental attitude, you attract positive events into your life. This is no accident.”

I don’t  believe that bad luck is totally non-existent, but I do feel we can attract some of it to ourselves.  Will. Edwards says something else  that really strikes me.

“Having a positive mental attitude is also about having faith in your ability to succeed in any area of your life and doing whatever it takes to get there.”

After years of working to get out of expecting things to go badly for me in life, I realized that somewhere within themselves, my parents felt that they didn’t deserve to have good luck or success. They needed to believe that bad luck clung to them like dirt to the Charles M. Shultz character, Pig-pen.  For whatever reasons, they did not have the faith or confidence in their own ability to succeed at whatever they set their minds to.  They believed that life was a series of obstacles put in their way to make their days more difficult and less pleasant.

Therefore, this was my legacy for a long while. Instead of seeing obstacles as unpleasant, but surmountable with persistence, strength, faith, support and creativity, I saw life as one big “downer” and sometimes felt it was futile to try to try to accomplish my own goals. I had not yet trained myself to view obstacles, even serious and painful ones like losing loved ones, as lessons from which I could learn to be a happier, better and more compassionate person. I had not conditioned myself to search for what might be just be small specks of positive value within a dark and difficult experience. Slowly I l worked on changing the way in which I viewed such experiences, which helped me through them and permitted me to try to salvage or construct something good from them.

Think about the messages you received when you were a child and if they are still busy influencing how you behave and how you perceive the world.  What do you tell yourself about the existence of luck, whether good or bad luck?

Have you ever been to an old-fashioned taffy pull?  Probably not, since people don’t do that much nowadays but my family was once invited to one years ago.  It was a lot of fun, but lately when I think about taffy being pulled every which way, I think about parenting my adult kids.

As you wrap up this first day of the work week, I hope you are reviewing your past weekend and that you have some nice memories of good times and/or  pure relaxation.  I hope you are saying to yourself,  ”What an amazing weekend I had!”    Mine  didn’t quite  turn out as I had hoped and planned.  It seems that life usually has its own ideas and we must roll with the punches.

I had expected to catch up on writing , reading, grocery shopping and a few phone calls.  My husband, a cardiology R.N., had to work all weekend, so it felt like a great time to play catch-up on things that have eluded me, including some craved-for quiet time for myself.

A man named Orlando Aloysius Battista, once said, “The best inheritance a parent can give his children is a few minutes of his time each day.”  I always thought so when my kids were growing up.  There were certainly days when I would have preferred to immerse myself in projects and creative pursuits that were beckoning to me. but I truly believed at that stage of my life, that my kids’ needs came first.  I felt that the time I spent with my children was an investment in their futures and that we were making memories for that future.    I still enjoy seeing my kids, but my perspective is different now.  I consider my personal time to be precious and spending it on myself feels like an investment in me. . I have already invested heavily in my four kids and even though I love them , I believe it is high time that I “diversify”

Inevitably though, when I look forward to a stretch of time to luxuriate in quiet and bask in the joy of choosing to do whatever I wish, one of my kids ends up needing something.  It’s not as though I jump at every whimper, but it does feel like crises have a way of occurring in bunches and as my mother once told me, “You never stop being a mother”, so it is difficult to ignore a cry for help when it feels sincere.  We do raise our kids with the hope that they will become self-sufficient adults and some of mine are, or some of mine are some of the time anyway.

As long as everything is going smoothly, or they perceive that it is, they seem to manage.  Mom is then an invisible commodity to them. The story changes when something explodes (figuratively) at the job, when unexpected bills come pouring in, or when a little one is ill and there is no babysitter.  My adult kids are pretty spread out in age.  They are all very different and their needs, lifestyles and priorities are pretty disparate.  When things are going smoothly, they don’t seem to need my support. That is understandable.  In fact, they usually don’t want my opinion or involvement at all.  Most of the time that doesn’t phase me as I am a  busy person and I prefer not to offer advice that I am pretty certain is going to be ignored anyway.  That is not to say I don’t often have some strong opinions, but they do tend to act as though I am a relic from the Ice Age.   I normally  try to keep my opinions to myself, though this does take self-control and I am not always successful in doing so.

The weekend is over now and the crises have passed, for the moment.  I never did catch up on the tasks I wanted to. I never got to take that long soak in the bathtub with a glass of wine nearby and a book that has been beckoning to me from the shelf in the living room. I didn’t really get more than a few minutes to myself, to be honest.  I am making plans for the next stretch of time that will be available for me to indulge in some solitude and self-focus, because I know how important it is and that I must never give up on this.

I remember that taffy pull so many years ago.  I can still hear the  giggles of the children and our warnings not to touch everything with their sticky hands.  There were six or seven kids there and at first they were pretty wild and loud.  We parents thought that perhaps the activity in which we were engaged was a mistake and that the children were too young.  I remember how the taffy was a big messy blob  when we began to work on it and how it gradually took shape . Finally we all settled down happily to cocoa, cookies and our finished product–the taffy, which was enjoyed by all.

I do have times when I feel that I am being tugged and pulled every which way and that my life resembles more of a sticky, crazy mess than I had anticipated it would at this stage of the game.  I am working on it though.and several times a week, I ask myself, “How would you like your life to look and to feel? What steps, Iris, are you taking, to bring your vision into greater alignment with your reality, without sacrificing your deeply held values of being there for those who are important to you?” (Yes, I talk to myself sometimes!)

It’s all about balance and self-care. These have become buzz words but there is a reason and we need to pay attention to them. I hope you will make it a point to think about that when you feel yourself being pulled in too many directions.

Meanwhile, this is a poem I have been working on for a while. I recorded it on Sound Cloud and shared it on Facebook but here it is in print. I would appreciate your sending it on to others who might enjoy it.

If you haven’t heard it through the post on Facebook, here is the Sound Cloud link:

http://soundcloud.com/irisarenson-fuller/audio-recording-on-tuesday

Remembering Thumbs and Other Parts

                                             Iris Arenson-Fuller-Nov 2011

We danced in the kitchen
on the linoleum you could eat from
if all the dishes were dirty
(though we knew that would never happen
in my  mother’s house).

My father let me stand on his shoes,
held my hands tightly till I felt the blood
squeezing up through my arms, past the neck,
oozing out my elf ears like Crest toothpaste
forced from the tube.

We waltzed and laughed,
his extra thumb an anchor as I gripped it,
thinking all dads had one,
steadying myself from waves
of dizziness, seasick from twirling,
after big bowls of  spumoni from Sal’s store
on the corner..

While we waltzed, we listened to
the mixmaster churning, finally freed
of the plastic cover she dressed it in.
the oven slowly worked its way up
to meet requirements, ready to greet
trays of perfect white circles,
rolled into balls, flattened, kissed
with jelly thumbprints by my mother’s
two loving hands, diamond rings off,
sitting on the speckled counter.

I got a gift around that time,
a book about K’tonton, Jewish Tom Thumb,
mischief-maker extraordinaire, like me.
I climbed in and out of his pages,
hung upside down by my own thumbs
from the rim of a wooden  mixing bowl,.
never once scolded for the flour I scattered
to the winds when I happily swam in the batter.

It took me years to look up and notice
the things that others saw.
my fat little thumbprints were
dancing on the kitchen window
smudging my visual highway
to the life stationed outside awaiting me,
a windy, cold world I never ran through
without furry white coat, matching
hat, gloves and fancy purse bought with
my big sister’s first paychecks..

Sometimes my father’s extra thumb
tapped tensely on the formica kitchen table,
he frowned into the black phone balanced on his shoulder
while my brother shouted at him across town
where he lived with his wife and kids.

I covered my ears, till the voices softened,
fought off the twitches I hated,
yet that  kept me snug and safe,
took me far away from scary songs
of self-blame nobody else ever heard,
went back to my books and waltzing.

Years later, they put my brother’s leg on display,
a hospital peep show through a small window
in the hyperbaric chamber.
they all cringed  but  I looked in.
when they severed the leg, tossed it on a pile
in leg limbo, my brother took his first wooden steps,
eyes frozen on my father’s face, no more shouting,
but no more waltzing for either one.

My brother’s eyes were tired the last night I saw him.
standing together, we caught a quiet moment,
cradling it,  a firefly captured in the dark.
he was the sick one, he told me–that was that,.
no discussion, so my kidney stayed safely tucked inside,
as his body parts continued failing and falling,
collapsing organ dominoes.

I was grown then, my two eldest with sweet fat cheeks,
the blonde one and his suck-a-thumb sister,
her neat cornrows perpetually housing sand
from pre-school playtime,
they stayed up past bedtime, thumbing through Oz books,
thumbing their small noses at grown up rules,
they thumb-wrestled with their strong father in the days
before MS claimed  his body parts as ransom.

I begged the wind to blow our inside-out umbrella-world
back in place, to send bad luck swirling over trees
to raise leafless branches high, twig-thumbs up
in praise of whatever gods  could wrap the pieces
of our shattered lives in cotton wool, carry them home
in the sweet silence of dawn, glue them together, make them work,
the cut up parts and limbs, real and artificial,
the crutches, borrowed kidney, defective hearts
that seemed to stop time for us.

.My begging though, was like watching a hitchhiker
thumbing a ride on a dark country road
where few cars passed and those that did
spat rejection as they kicked up stones and dust.
I can also see the girl, braids flying and the woman,
with the heart that goes wild with no warning,
yet finds its own mini- rhythm and beats on,
a ruddy structure with invisible holes,
a tiny instrument in a symphony on auto-play,
making music even when she believes
there is only death.

.

     Yesterday my husband planted some pink and white hydrangeas and also some Boomerang  lilacs (they come back a second time in a season) from White Flower Farm, in Litchfield, CT(www.whiteflowerfarm.com/)   

     For a long time we have needed some new plants and a lot of general landscaping in our yard, but life keeps happening and we haven’t gotten around to doing much about the situation for quite a few years.  Parts of the yard looks lovely, but there are many bare, colorless spots too.  I must admit that when it comes to certain things, I am not  a big planner or thinker. I usually go mostly by intuition and instinct and just do it, if the thing I want to do is not a huge undertaking or major life change. If it is an expensive or significant undertaking, then I do plan my course or courses of action, but in the end, my intuition usually wins out anyway. I have learned when and how to trust my instincts.   I find that I have multiple projects looming and multiple needs presenting themselves simultaneously, as often happens in life, and particularly when you own a home.  If I try to over-think and over-plan a multitude of things at once, I get bogged down and paralyze my ability to make decisions.  I must tackle them one at a time, and sometimes I just need to take action, however small an action.  For me, that might involve just choosing a plant I like,  sticking it in the ground, hoping for the best and letting myself be surprised by the outcome, good or bad. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t.

     My husband, on the other hand,  normally prefers to research and to plot things out on paper, taking into consideration various factors, like soil conditions and sun and shade needs. Uncharacteristically he hadn’t created his ultimate landscaping plan, but just decided he liked the plants and would try them and go from there. He, too, can get bogged down by too much planning and then things have a way of not getting done. That’s why people need to deviate from “perfect” plans once in a while.  Making something happen can give us a jolt of energy and can even spur us on to new productivity.

Photo by my cousin, Gene Arenson

Photo by Gene Arenson

     Recently  I was watching the P.Allen Smith gardening show. They had a segment on the Denver Botanical Gardens, which, by the way, looks like a great place to visit.  It is one of the top-rated botanical gardens in the U.S (www.botanicgardens.org/ ).  On the show, the spokesperson for the Botanical Gardens was talking about their core values.  I got to thinking about what he said. I realized that the values he mentioned are worth considering for our home’s landscaping plan, but are actually very good points to reflect on when people want to make positive changes in their lives. When I mulled it all over, I found they are things I work to incorporate into any coaching action plans I help my clients come up with.

     Here are the core values cited on the public television program I was watching. Think about them!

   Sustainability–Wikipedia defines sustainability in humans as “the potential for long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions.” How does this apply to our personal lives?

      It’s easy for people to  decide on and implement changes in behavior and lifestyle that provide instant gratification and ego boosting. Will such changes last though, and really make a real impact on one’s life? Changes that are going to be  more than ephemeral must be well-thought out. They must take into account the ways in which an individual has been successful or unsuccessful in previous life endeavors. What worked is more important than what didn’t work. We still need an awareness of what didn’t work, so we can alert ourselves to signs that we are repeating unuseful patterns and can nip them in the bud. If we are going to make changes that last, they must be ones which are aligned with our most important and deeply held values, at least in my opinion. We can’t just randomly decide on having things happen (like impulsive New Year’s resolutions) by quickly choosing one thing from column A and one from column B.  Since we are all part of various systems, any changes will have an effect on others within those systems, such as family, work, etc.(Though I like to be surprised by the results of my randomly sticking a plant in the ground without preparation, I don’t think that’s such a great technique when trying to make life changes that will be lasting and successful!)

Relevance –Have you ever awakened in the middle of the night and had an idea that seemed no less than goundbreaking and amazing?  Sometimes when I get these “night visitors”, I am so excited that I can’t sleep and have to get out of bed to write down at least a few words or sentences. Then, if I am lucky, I drift off to sleep thinking I have found something that may change  my life and/or somebody else’s, or at least that, with a bit of work, will turn into a beautiful piece of writing. When I get up in the morning and attempt to sort through my late-night creative wisdom, it may not make much senWhat felt like a brilliant idea or plan in the wee hours, may have  little or no relevance to anything I am working on, or living through now. There is most likely a reason my brain has decided to pick up on it, but I probably need to tuck it away for future use.  It may simply not be an idea that makes sense for me to tackle in the present moment, due to the other things that have to be priorities for me.  This goes for ideas that other people come up with for you, that sound reasonable and perhaps even fantastic, but that somehow leave you less than thrilled and motivated.  It’s usually due to their not being especially relevant to you, your needs and beliefs, and to what is going on in your life. Only you can decide what is truly relevant for you,  for where you are presently, and for where you hope to go in the future.

      Just as plants that thrive in tropical climates look beautiful in a catalogue, you know they won’t thrive in your New England yard so you may enjoy looking at the pictures, but that’s as far as you get with them, unless you decide to move to a different climate.

Transformation –So you are envisioning eliminating or adding things to your life, in order to bring about some change.  If that is the case, you probably don’t want to expend a large amount of energy, or a great deal of money making a change so slight that it won’t make a lot of difference.. (Maybe you do, and that’s your choice, but experience tells me most people don’t.) For example, you are contemplating returning to school to prepare for a career shift. You might have some apprehension or uncertaintly, but decide to go for it. In that case, I don’t imagine you would want to take courses in subjects you have already studied and mastered, but would want to choose something that is going to be new and/or useful in some way and that helps you get closer to your goal.   A new area of interest and study might really help you clarify your dreams and  might infuse you with excitement. You are not going to deliberately choose something that will keep you, your knowledge and situation in exactly the same place you have been.

    If your garden has always had the same old perennials that all of your neighbors have in their gardens and you are looking for something fresh, I imagine you would choose something that strikes your fancy, but that would add splash, color and texture to change the appearance and feel of the area. The same things goes when you want a makeover of your wardrobe. If you have always worn dark, conservative clothes, but have recently lost weight and gotten into shape, this might lead you to choose brightly colored, maybe even sexy outfits to help you transform the way you feel and look when you go out into the world.

     What about your life’s landscape needs to feel and look different for you? Are you thinking about something you can do to make a shift that gets you thinking and acting outside of the box in which you have lived for a long while? Do you want to change only the bow on top of the box, or do you want to try out a whole new box? Figure out what works for you.

Diversity –I don’t know if you like diversity in your world. I do. I don’t think I could live happily and comfortably without it. Most people don’t want  ivy covering every part of their property. I love lillies, but I wouldn’t  enjoy a yard with only one kind of flower or plant. So is your life too predictable, too homogenous and boringly undiverse?  Diversity means respecting, embracing, celebrating and appreciating others for what is special and unique about them. Imagine the richness of, and how interesting your life might be, if you didn’t restrict your encounters and friendships to people who are very much like yourself.  Imagine  a personal world reflective of the larger one. If your life is small and circumscribed by norms handed down to you, or that you established years ago, can you re-think how you want your lfe to be?  What if you avoided labels or stereotyping? What if you decided to ignore what’s written on the seed packets you picked up at your garden shop and you sprinkled the seeds throughout your yard, waiting for surprises to spring forth? What if you focused on valuing and appreciating every person you encountered for his or her own uniqueness? Think about how freeing it would feel to see people as human, rather than seeing their race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, socio-economic status, physical or mental abilities, etc.?

     Now that  the autumn seasonl is here in my part of the U.S. there’s lots of work to be done in the yard. Leaves need raking.  Certain plants need pruning in order for them to blossom well when the warm weather returns. Bulbs need to be planted before winter. There are bushes and trees that do well when planted in this season too. It’s a good time to do a little planning and to visualize how you want your garden or gardens to look in the springtime.  The air is turning crisp, the sun is setting earlier, but it still lingers on our faces and backs and warms us before the cold, gloomy days arrive.  It feels like a really good time (to me) to think about some changes you would like to make in your life. What do you think? Are you ready?

      I wish there were an app to simplify and make less painful, the cleaning out of all the clutter (and crap) that accumulates in our homes over the years. Some of the clutter has real meaning for us, which  makes it a formidable task to take care of, but I wonder more and more these days about the benefits of having so much “stuff”.

      I wish there were a way to just hit delete and to have some cyber-genie make the decisions and do all the work, sifting and sorting through the possessions that are beginning to bog me down, that call forth memories of wonderful and terrible times. It would be terrific to simply move my delete finger  without brain involvement and not have to make tough decisions that may not be immediately necessary, but that will be one day, if history repeats itself as it tends to do.

     I helped my mother “downsize” four times. She and my father moved from the house where I (mostly) grew up in Brooklyn, NY, to an apartment in Sheepshead Bay, and then after my father’s death, to senior housing in the CT town where I live.  It didn’t seem possible to compress her life and history any more than had already been done by the great figurative trash compacter of aging, but when she  moved into a nursing home for the final nine months of her life, I agonized over the allocation of what was left.  

     I certainly am not saying that my mother’s life amounted to a trash heap of junk. Each and every piece of furniture, doily, dish towel, figurine, dog-eared photo, ugly lampshade, card, letter, book, and dish was a treasure to her. Each represented a life in which I truly had a bit part, a walk-on, really, in comparision to the years lived before I blinked into the sunlight one day at Brooklyn Doctor’s Hospital.  I am not saying that I was not important in her life. Naturally I was, but so many others were too. She had a life of thirty-five years before I made it into the world.  I did not live inside of her head either.  I could not possibly have understood her unique memories and the attachments she had to her own things. Even when we share certain memories with another person, the ways in which those memories become recorded in our brains and etched on our hearts have to do with how we personally perceive life.  

     The items that triggered some type of memory for me and had meaning in my own version of our family experience, I held onto. Some things I foisted off on anyone in the family who had even the slightest interest, and they also chose what was useful to them.  The rest I gave away or even discarded, with no small measure of sadness.

     Years later (yesterday was the eleventh anniversary of my mother’s death) my husband and I went through a similar experience with my mother-in-law. We conducted what almost amounted to an archeological dig though her house in Pennsylvania. She was definitely a horder, so there was a lot to go through.  In her attic, we even found pay stubs from her very first job.  We unearthed an abundance of school papers and drawings done by her two adult sons.  There were personal items that should have been discarded forty years earlier (believe me, you don’t want details). We found toys, old religious artifacts belonging to her parents, more photos of few people we recognized, and furniture that was her mother’s, but was too beat up to have much monetary value.  We discovered bags and boxes of clothing that had traveled the roads of weight gain, weight loss and renewed weight gain. There were unopened cartons of things ordered from catalogues, tucked away and never used, as her life became more and more isolated.

     We helped Bernice move to an apartment in a senior complex. She lived there for about four years and when she became less and less able to function on her own, we moved her two floors down to an  assisted living unit in the same complex in Chester, PA.   After a little more than a year there, her health and mental status further declined, so we once again downsized.  We circulated her worldy goods among those who wanted them, sold some and moved a few meaningful items into her small, cozy room at an assisted living facility  for those with dementia, near our home in CT.  My husband claimed the objects that meant something to him. We also ended up with a few pieces of furniture that were too new to discard and that nobody else had room for.

     Some pieces of crystal joined the collection from my mother,  from my late sister, my grandmother and my sister’s mother-in-law. They sit, mostly gathering dust, on my dining room mantel.  A couple of times a year I  tend to them, washing them in dish liquid and trying to remember which piece belonged to whom.  The bud vases my mother collected on their travels to Europe after my father retired, are in her curio cabinet in my upstairs family room. My aunt, the baby in their family of origin, was to have been the recipient of the vases, having greatly admired them, though they aren’t worth much. She died about nine months before my mother did.  I have earrings that were my aunt’s, along with various pieces, mainly costume jewelry, that belonged to my mother and my sister. Again, little of it is worth money, but I am now the repository of all of the collective memories connected to these things.

     I have several bookcases filled with books that were primarily my  father’s  He treasured them. I have books of my mother’s too and of one uncle. There are only a couple of rooms in our house that don’t have bookshelves and all of them are full.  I have my late brother’s photo album from his days at Parris Island when he was in Boot Camp in the Marines. I have pictures he painted before he gave up his art and music and became a family man who thought (sadly) that he needed to put his talents and passions away for eternity. On our walls are awards my sister won at her job and in her volunteer work with the Jewish War Veterans. I have (tucked on a shelf in a plastic bag somewhere) a cap, one of many exactly the same, worn by my father at work, from the time he was sixteen to the time he retired.  Boxes and boxes of photos of people in old-fashioned garb are stashed in various closets.  The photos are full of faces nobody remaining in our family recognizes.  A large plastic container of vinyl records sits in a spare bedroom. They are of opera, jazz, pop, folk music and are not in good enough condition to sell,  but  I keep hanging on to them, till the day I have the heart to discard them.  I also have part of a downstairs closet filled with metal boxes of my father’s slides. I would love to find time to view them, or even better, to transfer them to disks or save them on the computer “some day”.

     Then there are the things I have left from my first husband who died in his thirties. I have a box with the tie he wore at our wedding and letters he wrote to me. Maybe my kids will want them one day, but then again, maybe they won’t. These are stashed In our very crowded attic.  I believe there is an old cricket bat of his, as well as family trinkets from his New England clan that can trace their ancestry back many generations.

     I have lived in my current house for thirty-three years now. I have done a fair amount of traveling, so naturally, I have my own “treasures” that evoke memories of those trips and the people I was fortunate enough to meet. I have photos and art from various countries, and then there are my own collections that represent my personal interests and obsessions, depending on which person you ask.  There are paintings, posters, ceramic figures, postcards, greeting cards, mugs, garlands and wall hangings portraying my family’s favorite, canine, the diehard Scottish Terrier, as well as photos of our own Scotties. There are cardboard cartons of papers, and notebooks filled with my own poetry and other writing (before the days of computer archives).

       Then there are the toys and books belonging to my four kids who have no place to store them. Now that my youngest and her daughter live with us, we also have boxes of Gabby’s outgrown clothes and her toys grace a few rooms in our house.

     Lest you think I am a hoarder like my mother-in-law was, I can assure you that I have a good-sized home, a bit  cluttered by some standards, but not unbearable, and not anything you might see on a TV show about people who can no longer function, due to the disastrous mess that surrounds them. Ours is a very old house, so  it lends itself easily to being filled with momentoes, rather than with simple, sleek, modern furniture and open space.

     I do like my things and can literally walk around my home and see an imaginary slide show of all of the lives that are represented by the “stuff” around me.  Sometimes looking at these things evokes smiles and sometimes some tears, but mostly I don’t have time to dwell on them because I am too busy. They get dusted periodically and then I permit myself a moment of connection with them, calling up names, faces, places and feelings.

     Now that I am at the age some consider “retirement age”, though that is not really on my agenda, it makes sense that I am beginning to wonder what will happen to the generations of possessions that surround me each day.  None of us like think about the negative aspects of aging.  Most prefer to deny our chronological advancing as much as we can and to focus on our experience and wisdom, or our fantasies that we possess them.   A few of us are  fortunate and can remain in our homes and care for ourselves, but most of us ultimately will require some help, will choose to downsize our living quarters, or will have this chosen for us, due to circumstances.

     Long ago, after we moved back into our home following a fire and the terrible tragedy of my first husband’s death in that fire, I vowed to never again take for granted my home and the things I was lucky enough to have in my life once more.  Most of what we had was destroyed or damaged in the fire.  I have never forgotten my vow to myself. Part of my routine on an almost daily basis, is to make sure I notice things in my surroundings and appreciate and take pleasure in them.

     In the end though, I recognize that many or most of the material acquisitions that belong to me and that belonged to multiple people before me, will end up being tossed to the four winds, or possibly at the thrift shop, or in the garbage dumpster. I am sure my adult kids and grandkids will choose to keep certain objects, but they will be faced with an even more imposing job than I faced, simply due to the fact that I have outlasted the members of my family of origin.

     I imagine that when one of my kids picks up an antique book of maps given me by a dear friend during one of my trips to India, or finds a bent and tarnished silver baby cup from one of my first husband’s ancestors, there will be some fleeting interest. I am sure that when someone comes across old love letters, or sets of leather-bound books my father purchased with great pride on time payments in the 1930′s, there may even be some animated discussion among my survivors. My suspicion  is though, based on my own experiences, that life will move forward and most of what simultaneously enriches and confines my world in the present, will be clutter that isn ‘t particularly needed or wanted, beyond a few miscellaneous treasures. This seems a reasonable forecast of the future.

    I intend to continue reminding myself to take pleasure in my surroundings and that means enjoying some of the special posessions in my midst, but it is clearly time in the life cycle to begin to at least think about who will want what and to get rid of some things.  It’s definitely time to stop acquiring a lot more.  I may give in to temptation on occasion, but I need to think twice about new purchases.  Did I really need those two  1800′s cobalt pottery pitchers made in a town where we used to live?  Do I really need another Scottish Terrier statue? I hope to still be around for a lot of years, but I am going to make a pledge to actively begin the grueling task of decluttering before too much more time has passed.

     The most important thing, I think, is to begin to “download” the events and remembrances I absolutely want to leave for posterity . There are family anecdotes, values and learning that may die with me, and these are the true gifts I want to leave for my kids and grandchildren.  I don’t believe I am a terribly materialistic sort, but in the next decade I want to focus a  lot less on the wordly goods in my little dominion and a whole lot more on decluttering.  It’s not going to be easy, but I am starting to feel the need for more visual and physical space. Clearing out some seems to help me do what is  more crucial to me than ever, which is to reflect, create and positively interact with others. It’s impossible to interact with a Chinese vase, don’t you think?

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     Speaking of clutter, one kind of “clutter” I welcome is a batch of comments, so how about taking a minute or two to comment directly on my blog at www.coachirisblogs or on on Facebook, if that is where you first accessed this.  Did you like this post at all? Did you disagree with it? Did you relate to it in any way?  Let’s hear from you, please. Subscribe to this blog if you enjoyed this post, or explore older ones. Also watch for the launch of a couple of my new web sites and take a few moments to visit one that’s up and running at  www.meetcoachiris.com .

http://www.flood-pictures.com/wp-content/gallery/flood-pictures-2/cover-me-said

This is not the river I thought I knew
that once carried duck clans and lillies
on its modest back, rocked them to sleep
with tender ripples now transformed, 
declaring war on all that lies in the path of boldness

In the silence when creatures creep sneakily,
i am lulled into half-sleep, pretending serenity
in truth my mind’s eye is a tense sentinel
awaiting the fury of floods from the past, 
memories of the dead ones and mistakes
that fly by to squeeze my heart till nothing flows

These memories bear me no ill will
 in fact I pray to them at times,
their trust proven over years of trials and tears
they have not abandoned me wilfully
but I often feel boarded up and empty

If a talisman, a gaudy religious trinket
would help to plug a small hole in a life
that spurts out things to make me shiver,
things that shout playground taunts
drowning out the rational brain,
I would buy a truckload.

I  force myself to live in a present
 never wrapped in splendid paper
I try hard  to keep a small finger in the wall,
so the floods are somewhat tamed
while I do my best tending
to bread and butter business.

I am tethered, though, my range of motion small
adhesions thickly formed to prevent me
from moving too far from the plugged up place
even much-craved half-sleep is full of worry
working its way into creaky joints the gym and I trick
the mind into forgetting.

Somehow, in the New Year, I will find a way
to dip apples in honey, to clear wax from my ears
so I can hear the hundred notes of the ram’s horn
and when it is time to empty pockets, cast off sins
I will remove the finger and let the waters flow,
eyes squeezed shut, hoping I won’t be carried away.

Public Domain Photo by Carol Weinsheimer

     I got a beautiful flower arrangement, a dish garden, from my friend, Ruth. (The Belle of Cowbell: the Bipolar Therapist from Willow Grove, PA-http://ruthzdeming.blogspot.com/). The card says, “Now you have plenty of time to contemplate the universe.”  She’s right!

     For those of you who don’t know, I fell down a flight of stairs at a dear friend’s home on Sunday and ended up with a broken nose, sutures, rug burns, contussions and bruises all over, and symptoms of a concussion. I visited my friend at her lovely home on a large wooded property, so I could have a brief getaway from the stress that has been accumulating due to the illnesses and problems of multiple family members, and also due to the flooding issues we have had at our home. It didn’t quite work out the way I had planned.

     Two of our family members are dealing with endings and consequently, so are we. As some of my readers are aware, my mother-in-law is in an assisted living facility for dementia patients. Her memory is very poor and she is emotionally labile, but still retains some of her lifelong personality (and anxieties).  With each passing month we witness more decline. My husband’s brother has recently been diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer. This has been a shock to everyone. Others close to us are wending their way through various life crises of considerable magnitude, doing their best to come to terms with the past, to embrace today, and to find joy instead of pain.

    I am here, resting, which is not always easy for me, and mending.

    When I think about it, this pattern of “ending, wending and mending” is repeated throughout our lifetimes. There are always endings of one sort or another. We experience the end of a favorite season, the end of a school year, the end of childhood, the end of adolescence and the advent of adult responsibilities, the end of innocence, the end of health. We live through or watch the end of relationships, the end of marriages, and end of life as people and pets who are close to us die.   We are rarely ready and prepared for the endings.  It is more often the beginnings for which we prepare ourselves, though they happen on their own regardless of our preparation, because nature has the power to create new life out of nothingness.

     We are always starting fresh. We are forever wending our way through new adventures, new challenges, new life stages, and also through new personal and even spiritual crises. Hopefully we are learning as we travel, how to be better and emotionally stronger, how to be more peaceful, more purposeful, more loving, and more forgiving to ourselves and others. We cannot avoid the winding roads and washed-out bridges of life. We must figure out how to cross them, using all of our faith, creativity and the tools we have acquired prior to reaching the places where we suddenly find ourselves temporarily stopped and stumped.  We learn by trial and error and we  move on. We have little choice. When times are very tough, we may feel lost and alone. We may even contemplate a shorter route to the end that perhaps seems easier because we believe it will curtail our heartache, but taking such a road heaps agony and torment upon those who love us and who are left to fight through their own darkness till they happen upon a flash of new hope and purpose.

     When we have experienced the pain of an ending, regardless of what type, we must somehow begin anew at wending our way through the grief and the fear that accompanies such endings. We must grow from that grief and fear. The growth occurs even as we do our level best to fight and prevent it, and try to wallow in our own suffering.   

     Too often we isolate ourselves and feel we need to make our way through what we perceive as a hell designed uniquely for us. We do so because we cannot imagine that anyone else can remotely comprehend our distress. We do so at times because we may actually believe we have done something to deserve the agony we are enduring, or have neglected to do something to prevent whatever has happened.   We have little or no belief in the possibility that there is redemption and that there is a future for us.  

     At times like these we may feel we are traveling through a tunnel.  We know the world goes on around us. We sense the rush of the river above our heads and all of the life forms within it that seem so removed from us.  We don’t feel that we are a part of anything or that anyone can truly know our emotions. It may feel that we will never mend, but  the  mending happens in spite of us, if we let it.

       I very much like the quote by Peter S. Beagle, who said, “Heroes know that things must happen when it is time for them to happen.  A quest may not simply be abandoned, unicorns may go unrescured for a long time, but not forever, a happy ending cannot come in the middle of a story.”

     Most of us are not heroes, though, or we surely don’t think of ourselves as heroes. We find ourselves crushed by loss,  by mistakes and various other life mishaps and tragedies. One tale of life may have ended, but there are other tales already taking shape while our wounds are still dripping fresh blood and our tears are raining. The letters and words are forming on blank pages as we sit in mourning, confusion, heartache and paralysis.  That is simply how it works.  If you have lost a loved one, I wish you peace and that happy memories will soon grow larger than the sad ones.  If your life has been hard lately due to any kind of ending at all, I hope you will think about where you are in your story and will see that all of our stories go on, even after we are not here.  We can’t control the Universe. Once we realize this, we can take the risks needed to feel better, to  face a new day and to resume our quests.  I wish I could promise the rest will be easy and that you will be led automatically to that happy ending, but I can’t. You will keep on wending your way through the world, fitting together small pieces of the puzzle as you make your way (and maybe even making a little sense of things).  You will live and you will mend.