Joyful Jubilant Learning

Low-Digit Score for Digital Learning

Hearing the words “digital learning” make me feel a little jittery and shuddery.  For me, they grate on my psyche, like the screech of fingernails or errant chalk on a blackboard grates on our ears.

There!  I’ve given myself away in the first paragraph.  Even my analogies are old-fashioned, and definitely non-digital.  (Hey all you teachers out there, do you still use blackboards and chalk?)

Avoiding Risky Behaviour
My financial planner dubs me “risk averse”.  I don’t think he meant it as a compliment!  With digital learning, it’s not so much that I’m “risk averse”, as just a bit slower than most of my colleagues here on Joyful Jubilant Learning.  To put it kindly, I’d estimate my score on the Digital Learning Scale is in the lower digits range.

When this topic was mooted, I sighed, knowing that I had a couple of choices. 

1. Try something new and pretend I’d enthusiastically “learned” yet another digital skill to keep up with the Jones’ (or in this case the Rosa’s, Tim’s, Steve’s, David's, Joanna’s, Karen’s etc)
2. Take my usual path into digital learning and be subdued and moderate and DOWNRIGHT BORING.

Excuse me, your honour ...
Let me step up to defend myself here.  After all, Outrageous Extraverts don’t really like to be seen as boring.

In my circle of friends, (the ones in Australia not the blogosphere) people are constantly admiring of my computer skills, online discoveries, trips into the world of websites blogging and social networking, and forums. To some people, I'm an early-adopter.  So clearly this is all a matter of degree.

Of course, there are some exceptions to this admiration.  There’s my hubby SweetP, the mathematician who weaves spells with numbers and computers that I couldn't even try to fathom.  Oh and of course Lovable Geek.  My son the IT manager is pretty scathing about his mother’s digital failings. 

To them I’m a bit sluggish, forever paddling in the shallows instead of getting out there where the water runs fast, dangerous, and exciting.

Take my hand...
So come with me into MY world of digital learning, where gentle paddling is just fine.

• Let’s start with something simple.  I have three Blogs and write as a regular contributor on several more.  Here on JJL, even that’s a bit sub-normal.
• I long ago realised that using good old Google Docs is by far the easiest method to prepare, collaborate, edit and share your writing.  That's how Karen Wallace and I wrote our book from opposite ends of the country.  It’s not fancy, but it does the job.
• The urgent need to find out information on my family history before all the oldies “kick the bucket” has had me hunting for good basic genealogy software.  I found PAF.  By sheer force of will, I figured it out, taught my sister, and crammed it with all the information we have.  The fun started when I uploaded it onto a few genealogy sites and started making connections with distant relatives and digging deep into the Irish heritage that surrounds us.
• Having tried Facebook and felt like I was being conned every time I was “poked”, I’ve left that to Lovable Geek and all his “friends”.  Give me a chat over the phone, or a glass of wine with a friend any day.
• Speaking of chatting brings me to something I am getting very intrigued by – Voicethread.  Joanna Young has brought it to us here at JJL, and Karen Wallace has followed over at Calm Space.  For the moment, I’m dipping my toe in the water with comments, but I know I’m hooked enough, and can see great value in this engaging and much more humanly-digital technology.
• Despite what I’ve told you, I’m a notorious Gadget Queen so I’m not necessarily averse to change or digital tools.  I adore my toys like my Palm PDA, Nokia mobile, Olympus camera, Canon scanner, IRiver mp3 player etc.

Let's find the root of the problem
I think my problems with digital technology stem from overwhelm.  The sheer paralysis that accompanies so much choice makes this poor, indecisive Libran completely overwhelmed.  So, I like to be a follower in the digital world, and listen to the leader’s sage advice on what paths might prove useful.

Much as I hate to be out of step, (and boring as it might be) I’ll happily stick to my low-digit Digital Learning Score.  I’d much rather keep learning at a pace that suits an Outrageous Extravert.  After all, by definition I’d rather be out there talking and learning by osmosis, rather than by research.  That’s just a bit too methodical and scientific for my liking.

Oh good grief, that’s another thought that might bring on the shudders!

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The digitally archaic Chris Owen of Pink Apple is an Aussie-based Relationship Specialist and blogger who shares the Secrets to Successful Relating.  Her humourous style brings many readers to her blogs Take A Bite and Apple Tart.

Together with Karen Wallace she has also co-authored Save Our Xmas Sanity a pre-Christmas Must-Have for all frazzled women!

Confessions About a Cuppa

Each night, a little after our dinner, and usually as we settle down to relax, SweetP (Love of my Life) makes us both a cup of tea/coffee.  It’s a nightly ritual, the kind of ritual that happens in many homes. maybe even yours.

I enjoy the cuppa.  I like being waited on.  It gives me a break.  Now,  I must confess that most nights, I barely notice it happening.  But, I certainly take for granted that it will. 

It’s a gesture of love on SweetP’s part.  However, I don’t especially feel “Loved” for receiving it.  If I’m honest, it's a gesture that rolls off me, like water off a duck’s back! (Hmm, I’m definitely portraying myself badly here!)

However if, over our cuppa, SweetP began a conversation, then that would be entirely different.  If he was sharing with me his feelings about his boss’ management style, or asking for my opinions on a family dilemma, then I’d feel cherished and extraordinarily special.

Why?  Because to me, quality conversations are my life’s breath!  Acts of service, like the night-time cuppa, don’t refuel my “love tank”, but a quality conversation will have me feeling loved in seconds!

This isn’t about gratitude, or lack of it.  This is about a crystal clear, laser-directed, message of love.

Getting the Message Across

If I want to ensure that SweetP knows how much I love him, and take the shortest path to helping fill his love tank, then I just need to sit next to him on the couch, put my head on his shoulder, and hold his hand or stroke his arm!

How did I make those discoveries? 

By reading a book – Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate.

Even SweetP, a man who reads about one book every 3 or 4 years, has whipped through this book, chuckled at the stories, and said “WOW” a few times.

What’s the Point?

“Love Languages” I hear you dubiously muttering!  “What’s the point?”

Perhaps we should try looking at this from another angle.

How do you feel when you travel to a country which speaks a different language to your own?  Many people in that situation can eventually feel alone and a bit isolated.

Imagine being in that country and having a crisis happen, (eg getting sick or losing your passport)?  THAT’S downright frightening! When you’re desperate, the sound of someone speaking your native tongue is like a gift from the gods, and relief washes over you.

Chapman has a simple premise.  Just like we all have a dominant speaking language, we also all have a primary love language.  That language is the shortest route to a heart-nurturing sense of feeling loved.  Armed with the conviction that we really are loved and lovable, relief washes over us.

And in times of crisis when we most need the support of our partner, that message needs to be delivered crystal clear and hitting the target with laser-like precision.

Let’s Get on With Lerrvvin’

There is no question that for humans, feeling loved is a primary human NEED.  It’s a need only marginally less important to us than food and shelter.

So I figured that sharing with you a book about love might just build your emotional intelligence and the pleasure in your life!  After all if you need love, you might as well get as much as you can!

This is one of those books that has stood the test of time.  Written back in 1992, Chapman explores a surprisingly simple and extraordinarily effective premise.  The quick real-life-stories (and don’t we always relate best to them?) help the reader identify their own love language and that of their partner.

This book never seems to go out of print, and it’s in every local library.  When you ask around, many people have read it or at least heard of it!  Why?  Because it gets talked about and persistently requested.  That says something!  This is no esoteric, psychology book, this is simply teaching a really useful skill!

While it could be perceived as a bit “daggy” *(uncool), it’s a book with a simple message, an easy style, and excellent word-of-mouth referral history! 

So Who’s the Book For?

This is for building relationships with ANYONE.

While the book is aimed at couples, once you can recognize the five languages, this is SO applicable across any medium to long term relationships.  So, your kids, your friends and family, your work colleagues, all of them could benefit from your new knowledge.  It’s real gold!

Why Bother?

We all do things for our partners, or people we care about, to show our affection.  But if they don’t perceive our gestures as loving then, despite our best efforts and endless reassurances, their love tank can end up out of fuel.  Just like your car without fuel grinds to a noisy halt, so too can our relationship end up going nowhere!

Most couples have different primary love languages.  So, if we don’t bother to learn our partner’s love language and insist on following our natural inclination to express love in our OWN language then, love will likely shrivel and die.

If you value your relationship then I reckon it’s worth spending some time on this book!  It has definitely got long-term and tangible benefits.

Virtually every couple I work with in my Relationship Coaching practice is advised to go and read this book!  I have yet to find someone who doesn’t have some kind of “aha” moment and new understanding of their relationship from reading it.

I suspect it’s no accident that the book has spawned a whole series of Five Languages.  There are versions for Teens, for Men, for Women, for Singles, for Families and now most recently the Five Languages of Apology.  That’s next on my Reading List.

* If you've never heard the word "daggy" before, then you need to spend some time with a few Aussies!  A true "dag" is an unpleasant bit of leftover "stuff" stuck in the sheep's wool near it's backside.  (Need we say more?)  However being a dag in modern Aussie idiom is to be quaintly and appealingly naive, old-fashioned, and definitely uncool!

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Chris Owen of Pink Apple is an Aussie-based Relationship Specialist and blogger who shares the Secrets to Successful Relating.  Her humourous style brings many readers to her blogs Take A Bite and Apple Tart.

Together with Karen Wallace she has also co-authored Save Our Xmas Sanity a pre-Christmas Must-Have for all frazzled women!

An argument for Escapism.

Oo dear! I'm in a weird place.

How? I find myself arguing AGAINST learning being the exclusive domain of non-fiction and books of an  apparently intellectual bent.

Here I am, in February, the month where we all prepare for next month's A Love Affair With Books, and I'm not reading anything that's theoretically intended to teach me things.

Oh the irony!  It seems SO incongruous that I, the voracious consumer of books, the person who's always got a book to recommend to her clients, and has a pile of half-read books by her bed, is without book learning for the month! 

I feel like the poor duped Emperor in his New Clothes in the old children's fairy story.  I'm embarrassed and awkward.  Shy of opening my mouth, and wondering why people are looking at me, bug-eyed with puzzlement!

Here I am on JJL, in the place for learning - especially the absorption of knowledge from books, arguing that we sometimes need to avoid book learning to learn our most important lessons! 

It's hard to imagine myself somehow on the same side as Kevin Eikenberry's derisive local farmers of his childhood.

But like it or lump it, THAT has been my learning over the last two months.

You see, yet again I wore out late last year.  The pattern repeated itself for about the fourth year in a row and STILL I haven't GOT the lesson well enough to take effective defensive/evasive action. So I took some time off! 

Poor Rosa, our gentle shepherd here at JJL, began to wonder if I'd dropped off the face of the earth. 

But all I'd done was stopped reading to learn.  That included emails, blogs, newsletters and especially books that focused on personal and professional self-development.  I wanted to STOP learning and soaking in endless information, however much it might improve me, and instead heal me by shedding as many expectations of myself as I could.

I've been trying to trust my INTUITION

I've been trying to BREAK THE HABIT of working till destructive oblivion, when faced with stress, profit/loss statements, or the phone going quiet!

I've been learning to TRUST that I will somehow KNOW when I am ready to pick up another little part of my life and slip on a newer more effective style of achieving what I need.

But that's not say that I haven't been reading...

In fact I've been using fiction to escape.  I've worn a track to my local library and "hoovered" up books like the vacuum cleaner sucks up dust! I've returned to my old childhood summer activity of lying inside a dimmed house, to keep the Aussie summer heat at bay, and immersing myself in another world.

But it's strange how the lessons happen anyway.

For a change from my crime fiction I picked up a recommended memoir by Australian journalist and publisher Susan Duncan.  It was relaxing tucking into a different taste, some easy-reading, and quite novel-like piece of non-fiction.  But, in Salvation Creek, I came up slap-bang against new knowledge.  I felt equally assaulted and relieved by words that summed up my current lethargy. 

"... the part of my nervous system that thrived on adrenaline has worn out..."

"... I fear being called on to give more than I'm capable of ..."

At the time, it felt like the sky thundered and the world shuddered as I read and re-read, and wrote and re-read those words.

What now?

When I read them out to Karen Wallace, she chuckled at my naivety.  Karen would have used different words but for her it was patently obvious that was what was happening to me! The question "Didn't you know?" hung on the phone line between us!

Well no!  I'd never thought of it that way but it sure as hell explained why I felt the need to heal and nurture myself, and may continue to do so for a while yet. 

When you've spent most hours of every day of your life running like a bull at a gate, and banging your head a lot, it takes more than a couple of months of slow activity to undo those old habits.

So despite avoiding all book-learning opportunities like the plague, the learning (like life) got under my guard.  Thank heavens it did!

Where to from here?  For once I'll plan that when the time is right.  And that isn't yet!

Based on the fact that I reckon there's stuff to be learned everywhere, I guess I'm called to ask some questions of all JJL readers. 

1. Why does fiction get put aside by many as a waste of good reading time? 
2. Has anyone else learned "stuff" from avoiding the intellectual books and immersing for a time in the reverie of escapism?

While knowing I'm not alone won't stop me from continuing my slow healing journey, it'd sure as hell help me feel less weird!

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Chris Owen of Pink Apple is an Aussie-based Relationship Specialist and blogger who shares the Secrets to Successful Relating.  Her humourous style brings many readers to her blogs Take A Bite and Apple Tart.

Together with Karen Wallace she has also co-authored Save Our Xmas Sanity a pre-Christmas Must-Have for all frazzled women!

 

I'm raising MY glass!

Well here I am over in Aussie Down Under and I'm raisin' my glass.

It's great to be part of the team!

Happy Birthday JJL

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Chris Owen of Pink Apple is an Aussie-based Relationship Specialist and blogger who shares the Secrets to Successful Relating.  Her humourous style brings many readers to her blogs Take A Bite and Apple Tart.

Together with Karen Wallace she has also co-authored Save Our Xmas Sanity which is currently rescuing frazzled women as the Christmas decorations start appearing in the stores!

The Secret's In Hitting The Spot - YOUR Spot!

The biggest thing I've learned this month is that there are consequences for non-punctuality, or leaving things for Ron!  (Whose Ron?  He's my mate!  Well actually he's Aussie slang for "later on", but that makes him a closer mate!) 

So there might be consequences for tardiness!

What consequences?

Well, when you're one of the many authors at Joyful Jubilant Learning, the consequences can be dire!  If you are silly enough to leave your writing till late in the month, so many ways of looking at Making A Difference have already been taken!   (Woe is me!  What am I gonna write about?  Cue: weeping, wailing, gnashing teeth, and violin crescendo!)

Karen Wallace on her blog The Clearing Space has very elegantly tried to suggest how advantageous it is to be fashionably late to the party.   SweetP (love of my life) is always hinting that I may enjoy life more, if I wasn't so determined to run so close to the "punctuality" wind.  My son, Lovable Geek, just thinks I'm a disgrace and disrespectful because I'm not obsessively early!  (I THINK he still loves me despite that fatal flaw!)

Well, maybe they're right.

Maybe being late in the month in the big JJL Make A Difference Gig has been really stupid!

First Joanna Young jump-started the reflections with her musings on the power of words.  That got us all thinking!

Then, I noticed Rosa Say used words to lead and intrigue, by nominating some of the JJL authors to teacher roles - university lecturer roles no less!.  I wonder if any of those nominated have ever seen themselves as skilled in those areas (or ever added them to their CVs).   And yet Rosa was right.  She zeroed in on how people made a difference, without realising, by their words and gift of self to JJL. 

Rosa, I really "got" this concept, until you had me as a Science Teacher! But then again, maybe you ARE right Rosa! (SweetP!  Stop it! Stop snorting!  I CAN be logical and rational!  And just because "real scientists" don't believe in human sciences ...  Oh forget it, I'm not feeling very logical right now!)

Then came Karen Wallace's big revelation to herself, (the rest of us already knew) that she does and can make a difference every day of her life.  Good grief, she's been selling herself short!  The along came Greg Provance's articulation of how making a difference requires us to BE A DIFFERENCE!

See what I mean?  Brilliant thoughts and contributions all!

So what's left for me to say?

I have just one small shy little offering in this massive gig!

Making A Difference is about Picking Your Spot.

It's about knowing confidently what's the right spot for you by believing in yourself.

It's hitting the target dead-centre, finding your niche in life, relationships and work, and hanging on for the roller-coaster ride!

You see, I might be late, fashionably or otherwise, but the spot for me to share in wasn't right till all those things had happened.  Until all those words were shared and marvelled at.  All those concepts had been debated and shaken into certainty.

Making A Difference isn't always mountain-moving. Sometimes it's just about chipping away at the right spot to find the diamond!

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Chris Owen of Pink Apple is an Aussie-based Relationship Specialist and blogger who shares the Secrets to Successful Relating.  Her humourous style brings many readers to her blogs Take A Bite and Apple Tart.

Together with Karen Wallace she has also co-authored Save Our Xmas Sanity which is currently rescuing frazzled women as the Christmas decorations start appearing in the stores!

 

Help I think I've hit Non-Learning, and it's NO FUN!

There's a real down-side to being a contributing author on a site devoted to learning i.e. our much-loved Joyful Jubilant Learning!

What is it?

Being in a vacant learning space! 

How would YOU like to be stuck in a sticky spider-web of hopes unmet, and dreams unfocused and paralysed?

Yeah!  It's NOT pretty!

So as a desperate attempt to free myself from the sticky web of non-learning, I'm taking a different tack and hollering to you all!  I'm going to tell you what I think I need to learn! 

Now some of you may have answers that might help - you problem solvers you!  Some of you will empathise and be prepared to stand in front of the web and send encouraging words as I wriggle my way out.  Some of you may feel better just because you know you're stuck too, and won't say anything except be grateful you're not the only one! 

And all of those are fine because really my reason for writing is as much about understanding myself as it is about asking for help or inspiration!

So what do I NEED TO LEARN at the moment?

1. To stop!
   To appreciate that when I'm feeling stuck, the answer is not to pedal like crazy, but instead to stop.  See my head "gets" THAT.  Well it KIND of gets it!  But I can't seem to stop myself from pushing myself harder and harder, working longer and longer, and spinning my wheels deeper and deeper into the rut!
   Has anyone got any suggestions?  Before I wear myself into an early grave?  Because the way I'm currently managing my self-imposed workload has me feeling like I'm on that slippery slope!
   Does anyone else have this problem or am I the only freak at the party?
2. To write again!
   I know Rosa will say that there's no such thing as writer's block and I tend to agree but I just can't seem to find the right words to say.  There are half-written drafts of insubstantial crap sitting in my blog.  And I've got to tell you this article may yet join them, because as with the rest of the drafts I feel like I'm grasping at wisps of smoke and finding nothing in my hands!  I can't put words to this sucked-dry feeling!
3. To make my Palm Tungsten T5 Hotsync again!
   Ever since my son, Lovable Geek, installed Office 2007 on my pc, I can't reload the software from Palm effectively.  (and I've tried about 20 times!)  Having spent many years with these wonderful electronic diaries on my computer and in my Palm, I am now LOST without a diary.  I've had to return to sticking appointment cards in my purse and hoping desperately that I'll remember to put them into Outlook when I get home.  Because Outlook is my saviour! 
   You know how your short-term memory can only held 6-8 items at any given time?  And you know how when you try to add another item something in the current list has to drop out so your brain will continue to function?  Well THAT's why Outlook saves my sanity.  Appointments, tasklists, contacts all sweetly wrapped up in one box!  And a box that is supposedly easy to transfer to my palm Pilot!  But it isn't!

HHHeeeelllllllppppppppp

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Chris Owen of Pink Apple is an Aussie-based Relationship Specialist and blogger who shares the secrets to successful relating.  Her humourous style brings many readers to her blog Take A Bite.

Have YOU Learned How to be a Grown-Up Yet?

SweetP (love of my life, significant other, spouse, other 'alf, lover, old man, my husband) says he never wants to really grow up! 

That's a bit tricky to achieve when he looks at three very adult men - his kids, and his role as Father of The Groom in a couple of months!  Fortunately, for his sake, he hasn't had his nose rubbed into his real age by the presence of grandchildren yet, but we can only assume that's just a matter of time!

But what he's really talking about is that he never wants to lose the "kid inside him".  The kid still holds those delightful child-like qualities of wonder, imagination, curiosity and an endless capacity for fun.

The kid, alive and well inside SweetP, is part of the jumble that makes us who we are.  Some of us lose that kid forever, even before we lose the body of a kid.  Some of us don't even know what the "kid inside me" is like nor how to recognise it.

So having reached a certain chronological age (be it 15, 18, 21 or whatever) and being grown up are FAR from synonymous.

Recently I've been helping a client find his place as a grown man. This is especially difficult for this late-twenties bloke when he's the only child in a complex and dysfunctional family.   

His parents have been partnering in a destructive and toxic dance for a long time. With just three of them, they expect that he will always remain a part of their dance, as he has been through childhood. 

But he's sick of it!  He's sick of the fights, the tug-of-war to get him to take sides, the failure to take responsibility for individual choices and actions, and the emotional blackmail that has all been part of daily life for them.

For him, it's exceedingly difficult to detach and make choices that will allow him to be the grown-up he is by age.  When you're an only child, the sense of obligation is heavier and more onerous, even in the face of what seems to be the "bleeding obvious".

It's got me thinking.  Having to weather the storms of my own role in the sandwich generation, caught between parenting your parents and trying to stop parenting your kids, I'm left wondering how grown-up am I?

• So when are we REALLY grown-up?
• What are the signs that we've passed that milestone? 
• Is it something we should celebrate or mourn?
• Can we speed up or slow down the process at will?
• Are there others around us sabotaging us growing up, at age 20, 40, or even 70?
• What lessons do we need to learn before we ARE grown up?

You know what?  Despite the title Relationship Specialist, I don't know if there's one answer or a million.

So, what do you think?

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Chris Owen of Pink Apple is an Aussie-based Relationship Specialist and blogger who shares the secrets to successful relating.  Her humourous style brings many readers to her blog Take A Bite. 

Shh! I'm Meditating!

Indulge me a moment here, and let me take you on a little personal journey …

One day long ago, I had a revelation. 

I realised that my levels of endless, daily anxiety and worry were actually quite different from most of my fellow pedestrians in the street.  And I don’t mean in a good way!  Encompassing anything and everything, my anxiety was at significantly higher levels.

Hhhmmm!  A not very exciting discovery!

The most apt description for this generous gift from the gods is to say that I possess a “Trigger-Happy Anxiety Button” Let me just call her, my mate THAB.

The reasons for this dubious acquaintance with THAB are really pointless to explore too deeply.  I figure that knowing WHY won’t change the FACT that I possess this not-so-cute, hard-wired button!

Following this discovery, came the research into HOW to manage it.

My delving revealed Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work at the renowned University of Massachusetts Medical Center.  For many years, Kabat-Zinn had been researching stress management and its impact on health issues.

His 1991 book Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress Pain and Illness was quite an eye-opener.

As a chronic sufferer of debilitating headaches - that one had caught my eye - despite the mouthful of a title!

So began my episodic relationship with mindfulness meditation.

How Do I Blog? I Don't Know I Just DO!

See that face?  That's me!  Well clearly it's not ME as it's a bloke, and I'm not!  But it is a symbolic photo of me realizing that a big oops has happened!!!

You see I promised the rest of my Kupuna mates that I'd write about How I Blog, on the 1st December.

Well here it is the 3rd, at least it is in Oz, and fortunately still the 2nd in northern climes where many of our readers are based.  And I haven't written my blog post!

EEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKK

The drugs I've been having for my back have been having some vague therapeutic effect, but along with them comes a high dose of haziness and frequent sleeps.  Hence my forgetting my commitment.  But that's just an excuse, so let's get on with it!

So How Do I Blog?

My first response is:

Bloody hell, it's obvious! I sit down, log in to Typepad and start typing.  What's so exciting or informative about that?  Surely NO-ONE wants to know that!

Now don't forget that my head is just a bit fuzzy and not strong on conceptual thinking right at the moment!

Maybe they don't mean "how" in the literal sense!  OOOOhhhh   Now I get it!

Blogging for me has several purposes.

1.     It allows me to write.

It asks, in fact practically BEGS, me to write.  But just maybe, this blog writing will also inch me closer to that Big Hairy Aggressive Goal of mine to write a book!

Sometimes there's an intended topic to my blog post, but most often not.  Finding a Title for it is always a drama!  But that's usually the last drama cos I leave it to the end, and pray that some kind of dumb inspiration will come my way!

Really, just sitting down at the keyboard is like me giving me permission to be someone who has value and deserves to be heard.  (Yeak I know, Shrink heaven, hey?)

Often though, the "how" is just to start telling a story or expressing an opinion about something I've read or has generated strong feelings for me.  It might be a client's story, (cleverly disguised of course), another blog post, a book I've read, anything really, that'll prompt me to sit and start typing.  With my blog as part of a relationship coach's website, my musings, thoughts, and questions usually lead to a deliberate point about communications, or throw down a challenge to improving a relationship.

2.    To be authentic is critical for me.

So sometimes a blog post, even though it's based around my business, will be more of a personal insight, often vulnerability, self-doubt, and uncertainty are part of the package!  They ARE me.  They are how I learn - from my experiences.  I'm seeking to find others whose experiences might resonate with mine and be prompted to look at their circumstance from a different perspective.
In the meantime, you can't miss me in there!

My friends tell me that reading my blog and even my web page content is like literally hearing  my voice say the words!  So I guess that means I'm on track on the authenticity front!

But there's a personal purose to the authenticity, the disclosure, the vulnerability and the expression of intentions.

Holiday Learning? Let Me Get My List!

I notice that people find it so surprising!

It's such a deeply ingrained part of me now, that I find it puzzling that anyone else finds it surprising! But, obviously, it doesn’t match what people believe they know about me.

What? You're a little confused?

Well, in some ways, so am I.

I don't remember when I started to say with such a depth of feeling, "Oh God, I HATE Christmas"

Why are people surprised? Because the “me” that people usually see is the passionate, enthusiastic, people-focused, family-oriented, Christian, traditionalist!

So how did that “me” and my Christmas Attitude become so incongruent?

I'm really not sure.

But it was in comparing notes with my dear friend Karen Wallace that we realized that our combined experiences, and opposing perspectives, might be able to help others who had the guilty secret of Christmas not being the pleasure it's supposed to be. So we created SOXS.

Traditionally, the holidays are meant to be a joyful time. But there's often a price both financially, and in stress by the bucket-loads. And it's usually women who pay it.

So, having co-written SOXS and worked hard to promote it, it's now November 20 and I have to walk my talk.

It's time to leave the Bah-Humbug attitude behind and face my negativity and self-imposed "shoulds" about how I'm going to manage Christmas this year.

There are also two strong motivating, but polar-opposite, factors in the need to limit my stress as I move towards Christmas.

The first is that my body has gone on strike.