Embrace the Fummer

I love this time of year--the strange time when summer the heat of summer is not quite over but the cold of winter isn't here yet either. It is too hot for sweaters during the day but too cold for shorts at night. It isn't quite summer and it isn't quite fall--it is in between--"fummer" if you will. It got me thinking about all the times throughout our lives when we are in a fummer--not quite one place or the other--we are simply on the road. Not quite in that perfect relationship, not quite figured out the job, not quite happy. We are in fummer--actually most of our lives we are in that in between place--we just don't realize it or embrace it. To often we are waiting for the next season or long for the past season. We are fantasizing about the snow or depressed because the days by the pool are gone. We aren't enjoying the fummer when it is sunny and bright during the day and cool enough to have the windows open at night. We are dreaming about when our job will be perfect and missing out on the fact that we had a great meeting this morning or received a compliment from a boss today. We lament 'the one that got away' rather than seeing the funny cute woman at the coffee shop who talks to us every time we are in there. We miss the fummer because we are too busy looking at our past or leaping into the future. Enjoy your fummer! It won't be here for long!!

Life Lessons

It always amazes me how life seems to present us with the same lessons over and over again in different forms until we really get it. Speaking your needs is one of those life lessons. It is an important part of living intentionally--if we don't speak our needs we don't let people see our authentic self. A friend of mine is learning this lesson--first he learned how to speak his needs with his family--how to stand up for himself and be genuine in how he lived his life. Then he had to learn how to do it with his boss in his workplace how to speak up when he needed more time for a project of more help with an assignment. And recently we were talking because the same lesson came to him with one of his friends. Here he thought he had learned the lesson--he had figured out how to speak his needs and live genuinely and then he noticed he wasn't doing that with some of his friends--he was hiding himself because he was scared of sharing his needs. "Wow he said to me--isn't it amazing that the same lessons come to us in a variety of different costumes" So true. It is our responsibility to keep an eye our for those costumes/situations and embrace the lessons they give us.

Welcome

In both my presentations and my private practice I am fascinated by the use of stories. The stories we tell ourselves, and the stories we tell each other. I believe stories play an invaluable role in life. Our stories define who we are, they help us express ourselves and they give us a common ground to understand each other. This blog is to share some of those stories. Stories from my own life and others that illustrate the struggle and joy we have in living a life with passion, purpose, balance and awareness. Please check back regularly and start paying attention and listening to the stories around you.