OUR BLOG

If you’ve been following me for a while, you probably know that about six months ago we adopted a puppy, bringing this little bundle of fluff and joy into our family.  Like a good business owner and coach, I didn’t take this decision lightly.  I actually considered the move for quite some time and did my due diligence before taking the leap.

Picture me in my happy place, spending time at our condo in Puerto Aventuras, Mexico.  And I’m riding in my golf cart along my favorite “jungle” path, watching the workers leave for the day.  There’s always a stream of workers coming in the gate at 7 am and out again around 5 pm … a flood of construction workers, often carrying big heavy toolboxes on their shoulders or on their motorcycles, alongside the wait staff for the hotels and restaurants, walking or riding their bikes.

The folks I get to interact with are uniformly happy, gracious, and kind-hearted.  Is there any resentment when they see me in a golf cart, clearly not headed to lay concrete block or take orders on a hot beach from people who aren’t always as gracious as they could be?  I’m sure there’s some.  But I’ve never seen it.

What are you grateful for?  As a life coach, I ask myself and my clients this all the time … not just at Thanksgiving.

And, so often, it’s the people in our lives, good health, and material abundance that we tend to focus on.  That’s all good. 

And yet, there are the miracles of life we tend to take for granted … like the beating of our hearts, which will do their thing some 100,000 times today … the magical thing that is high fidelity recorded music … the seed that waits years before flowering in the desert  … the miracle of the sun rising yet another day as the earth rockets through space at 36,000 miles an hour.

May I offer you this Taoist prayer, which connects us with the essential … the miraculous … the possible.  I think you’ll enjoy it.

It may be obvious, but the quality of your life depends on the state of mind and body you spend most of your time in.  The more time you spend in positive states, the better life is.

Lord knows it’s easy to slip into a state of irritation or disillusionment … anger or overwhelm.  There are plenty of negative emotions to grab ahold of.  And when you’re in an emotional funk, are you really enjoying life?

They say you’re either part of the problem or you’re part of the solution. 

Not always true, of course, but it does offer us a lens through which to evaluate our thinking and behavior around any number of issues.  Are we helping or hurting?

Do we choose to complain or even make things worse … or do we open our hearts and think and act constructively … with compassion?

Turns out our new puppy is something of a life coach.

Now, he’s not a talkin’ dog, so all the coaching he does is by example.

Four things impress me about the way he approaches life.

I do my best to take on the same practices I recommend to my life coaching clients.  Do as I do seems to resonate with folks more than Do as I say.  Go figure.

One of those practices is a morning “meditation” of some sort where I might write my gratitude list or read something inspirational or uplifting.

Recently I was reading passages from a book … Recipes for a Sacred Life by Rivvy Neshama.

She relates a story told to her by her friend, Julia Dean.  It made me cry when I read it and it still grips me days later.

Because I’m a life coach and business coach who’s been practicing for 20 years and I’ve learned a few things, people sometimes make the mistake of assuming I have it all together.  Uh … no.  I struggle with the very same things everybody does.

And there’s a very personal challenge I’ve been dealing with for over two years I want to share with you, because I’ve discovered some amazing life lessons as a result that could be helpful for you.

We’ve all had challenges with the pandemic … some health-related … others personal or financial.  We’ve all heard stories of people feeling isolated, experiencing rifts in their families, etc.  And I’m sad to say my family has been impacted by “philosophical” differences.

Bottom line?  I haven’t seen my family in over two years. 

A beautiful soul has left us.  Thich Nhat Hanh was a Buddhist monk and a revered teacher.  I just learned of his passing at age 95 on January 22 of this year in the place of his birth … Hue, Vietnam.  He wouldn’t have referred to himself this way, but I like to think of him as the ultimate life coach, and so I was very drawn to him.

His wisdom, his kindness, his compassion, his calm appreciation of the world around him in every moment presents us all with a wonderful example of what it means to be truly mindful and connected to what really matters during our time here on earth.

“We incur suffering, but we create unhappiness.” ~Matthieu Ricard

Matthieu Ricard is often called the world’s happiest person.  Why?  Because they hooked him up to sensors monitoring brain activity and the happiness centers in his brain lit up like a fireworks display.

Does that prove he’s the world’s happiest person?  No. It tells you the media love a good headline. 

But it also tells ya the guy’s really happy and, indeed, he’s the happiest person the researchers have ever tested.

Why is knowing this significant?  Because if “the world’s happiest man” tells you something about happiness, he’s probably on to something, and it’s probably well worth listening to.

So, what gives with the quotation?