Massive Breakthrough

I just had the most amazing coaching session with my peer coach, Jennifer.  

We started out by following up on some stuff from last week, and then she asked me what I wanted to talk about today.  Really, I didn't have anything pressing (or so I thought) that I wanted to talk about.  We started talking about how I'm going out of town on vacation for a week starting this Sunday, so I didn't really know if I was going to keep my commitment to thirty minutes a day of coursework during that time.  She asked me what it would be like to just give myself a break from my coursework for that week.  What?!?  What kind of craziness is that? 

All joking aside, I started wondering out loud whether I would actually be able to really give myself that break.  I mean obviously, I could say that I was giving myself the break.  But would my brain let me?  Would I be able to let go of the shoulds and really take a break?

This led into a conversation about blogging, and how (as I've mentioned before) I'm not sure that the five days a week thing is working for me.  There are aspects of blogging that I love, for sure.  I love knowing that there's an audience out there who wants to read what I have to say!  I feel important, and I feel connected.  And with the "have to" aspect in place (I made a commitment to five days a week, and I will honor my commitment), I don't really get to figure out whether I actually want to blog, and if so, how often!

From there we started talking about how ever since 2002, which was the last time I was employed by someone else, I've had all this guilt about my life.  The message has always been more or less the same...I should be doing more.  Whether I was in school (I should be studying more or doing more with my time), or whether I was running FitnessWave (I should be doing more marketing or I should be growing the business more), or whether I was trying to figure out what to do with my life (I should be figuring this out faster or being more productive with my time), or now in my coach training program (I should be doing more coursework).  Always the same message.  Never enough...should, should, should.

Who is imposing all these shoulds on me?  Who can I blame for always feeling like there is something hanging over my head?  I want to beat this person up!!!  Oh wait...it's ME.  I'm doing this to myself.  Again and again and again.  Regardless of my circumstances.  ME!

And why this is particularly interesting to me is that I can see that I'm already doing it to myself with coaching.  Sliding down the same slippery slope.  I should be getting more clients.  I should be getting speaking engagements.  I should be putting out a newsletter.  I should, I should, I should.

I do not want this life full of shoulds.  Jennifer asked me if I'm willing to take a look at this and see what it would take to break down the shoulds.  HELL YES I AM WILLING!!!!

This is huge. 

My whole life is run by shoulds.  Most, if not all of them imposed by me.  What will be available to me in my life when every time a should comes into my head, I ask myself "Do I want to?"  We could be looking at a whole new me, people.  And a whole new life created by that whole new me.

I'll give you a moment to digest that.

So, what's the first step?  I present to you...two experiments! 

Experiment number one we will call the Blog Experiment.  Starting this week and until otherwise notified, I am modifying my commitment to blogging.  I am committing to a minimum of two blog posts per week.  Unless I want to write more.  Additionally, I am taking the week of 3/4 to 3/11 off of blogging completely.  Unless I want to write.

Experiment number two we will call the Coursework Experiment.  For the week of 3/4 to 3/11, I am committing to doing no coursework outside of my coaching calls and teleseminar.  Unless I want to do some.

And now, the key to these experiments.  When the shoulds come up (and they will come up!), I get to ask myself, "Do I want to?"  If the answer is yes, awesome!  I will do whatever that thing is that I want to do.  If the answer is no, then I get to tell the should to go f#!@ itself, and in celebration give myself a knowing smile.

I am committed to stop should-ing myself to death!!!  Hooray!!!!!!!!!!!  :)

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Halfway Point

It would seem that I'm at the halfway point of my coach training program.  In the first half of the program, I had one set of peer coach, peer client and peer group.  Today I had my 12th and final session with my peer client, and my 12th and final required peer group call.  I'm a little behind with my peer coach since mine sort of went missing for a few weeks.  I've already been assigned a new peer coach and peer client, and I get to do twelve sessions with each of them before completing my certification.  I actually already had my first session with my new peer client this morning!  My peer coach and client come from the group of the last module that I was in.  So my first set of peer coach, client and group were from the San Francisco module that I participated in in November 2011, and this new set of peer coach and client are from the L.A. module that I participated in earlier this month. 

In this second half of the program we will be doing peer special interest groups (P-SIGs) focused on our area of specialization, and these groups will be with people from all over the country, I think.  We won't be assigned to these groups until the end of March.  We had to pick a first and second choice, so I picked Life Coaching as my first choice, and Transition Coaching as my second choice.  I was originally going to pick Health and Wellness Coaching as my second choice, but in my call with my new peer client this morning we got to talking about it and I had second thoughts.  I really saw that all of life can be seen as one transition after another, so coaching around transitions will likely come into play no matter what type of coaching I end up doing.  Even if I get my first choice of being in the Life Coaching P-SIG I may still listen to the calls for the Transition Coaching P-SIG to see what there is for me to get from it.

I'm excited to begin the second half of the training!  I'm plugging along on my coursework and definitely making progress, which is a great feeling!  And I'm excited about the New Jersey module that I'm going to at the end of March.  Yay coaching!!  :)

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Reliving Special Moments

Today Donovan and I went to the Catamaran for Sunday brunch to celebrate our six-month wedding anniversary (which was last Tuesday, 2/21).  We got there about an hour before our reservation and went across the street to the Mission Beach boardwalk and walked along the boardwalk for just under an hour.  Then we went back to the Catamaran for brunch.

We sat outside on the patio, which is where we had our morning-after breakfast with family and friends the day after the wedding.  The brunch itself was okay...nothing to write home about in my opinion.  But being back at the place where we got married was so great!  We sat out on the patio for quite a while, eventually ordering a Mai Tai, which is our favorite drink that they make.  And it didn't disappoint!

After brunch we went upstairs to the ballroom where we had our reception and looked around there a bit reminiscing about where everything had been set up for our wedding.  Then we went back down and walked around the grounds.  First to the pier where we had taken some of our fabulous wedding pics, including a few of my favorites.  I was being a total dork and showing the girls who work in the booth on the pier pictures from our wedding.  Come to think of it, I showed them to our waitress, too...  :)

Next we went over to the grass under the palm trees where there had been a wedding earlier in the morning, so the chairs were all set up kind of like ours had been.  There were even petals in the aisle!  I made Donovan stand more or less where he had stood waiting for me, and I walked down the aisle (giggling all the while, of course) towards him.  We re-exchanged rings just for fun, too.  :)

Walking down the aisle today.  :)

After we were done with the rings, we started walking away and this group of people came over to the setup and started setting up their own mock wedding.  I ran over and gave them my wedding ring to use for their fake ceremony.  It was hilarious!  And yes, I got my ring back...  :p  After that we went down to the water where we had taken more fabulous photos with our wedding photographer and walked around a bit.

It was so magical being back at the Catamaran.  We have so many AMAZING memories in that place!  And getting to walk around to all the places we had special moments and relive them was super fun.  And how cool is it that we live twenty minutes away and can come back and do that any time?

We definitely want to go back and stay there for our one year anniversary, and I also want to go back in the summer and do the Friday night luau for more reminiscing!!

I've Launched!

You may have gotten an e-mail from me in the wee hours of the morning this morning, announcing my big news.  No, I'm not pregnant, though it was fun to play with the wording of the e-mail subject!  I've launched the website for my life coaching business!  www.know-your-greatness.com

 

Sample from the website

Earlier this week on Tuesday when I had my coaching call with my peer coach, Jennifer, I was stuck on finishing the website.  I had a lot of the pages and the content, but I was unsure what to do for the home page, that first impression.  I originally had it as the page about coaching, and was totally stuck on what to write as content.  We talked about some different approaches that I could take, and I made a promise to be done with the website by 5:00pm yesterday (Thursday).  Yesterday afternoon I was in between appointments, and it was pretty clear that I wasn't going to get the website done in time.  I texted Jennifer and re-promised to be done with the website by midnight.

Last night we hosted the get-together with our 2010 Wisdom group from 8-10pm.  So around 10:45pm, I sat down to work on the website and get it done.  I enlisted Donovan's help with the project, because I was still stuck on the home page.  We started toying with the idea of making the coaching page a separate stand-alone page, but then I really had no idea what to put on the home page.  Donovan had a fairly vague idea that the home page should have my voice, whatever that meant.  He wasn't particularly clear about it.  With about 45 minutes to go before my promised deadline, I started throwing some words down on a page, and actually ended up with something pretty decent.  We re-worked it for quite a while, and got it to a place where I was really happy with it.  I spent a little more time refining all the remaining pages, and at around 12:30am I declared the website DONE!!!   YAY!!!!!  :)

Part of what was driving me to get the website done was that I felt that I couldn't really launch myself as a coach without a website.  So once the website was done, I could launch myself!!  (Yes, I like saying that.  :) )  So the next promise I had made was to send out a mass e-mail introducing my coaching business to everyone I know and offering a complimentary coaching session to anyone who is interested.  Also, to plaster my website all over Facebook, again with the offer of a complimentary coaching session.  I sent the e-mail around 1:00am, and then this morning I did the Facebook stuff.  It felt really great to get it all done, and a little nerve racking, too!!

Three weeks ago, when I went to L.A. for Mod II of my coaching program, I wasn't really doing much about creating my coaching business.  It seemed like something I would do a few months down the road, when I finished the certification.  Something in Mod II lit a fire under my ass, because the week that I came back I created the Facebook page for the business and started working on the website.  And here I am, less than three weeks later, launching myself as a life coach to the world!  Amazing how things can change so dramatically in such a short period of time!  Really makes me wonder where I'll be six months or a year from now!!  

Cutting it Off?

I'm going to get a haircut tomorrow, and I'm toying with the idea of cutting a significant amount of my hair off.  I don't want to go back to really short hair, probably ever.  Not my thing.  But shoulder length could be good.  Donovan always talks about this photo, and how he really likes my hair in it:

And, he also really likes my hair long, which is why I've continued growing it out, even after the wedding.  Having long hair does allow me to do fun things like pigtails and Pippi Longstocking braids.  But the reality is that nowadays I wear my hair up probably 90% of the time.  Either in an actual ponytail, or a makeshift bun, anything to get it off my back and my neck.  And washing it is a definite pain in the ass.  And the longer it is, the less it curls. 

What do I always say is the beauty of hair?  It grows back.  So, if I cut it to shoulder length tomorrow and hate it, I can start back down the almost two year path to get it back to its current length!  :)

Six Months!

Today is our six-month wedding anniversary!  On one hand, I can't believe it's already been six months, and on the other hand, the wedding and all the surrounding festivities seem so long ago!  I so wish that I could go back and re-experience that whole amazing wedding weekend...it was so much fun!

Married life is treating me very well.  We have built (and continue to build) such an amazing life together, and we're not afraid to do the work and grow together as a couple.  Is it all puppies and unicorns all the time?  No.  Why?  Because we're human!  And, we love each other immensely and have a great respect for marriage and what it represents, and we know that we can work through anything.

I really wanted to go to the Catamaran today to commemorate the occasion, but it didn't work out with our schedules.  We're definitely planning to go there for our one-year anniversary though!

So very grateful to have the love of a man who is so wonderful, supportive, accepting, loving, fun, funny, smart, geeky, adventurous, and so many more things.  So lucky to have him as my best friend and companion in life!!!

Happy Dance

One of the benefits to the coaching program that I am in is that I get assigned a peer coach who coaches me throughout the program.  One of the structures I had put into place with my peer coach a couple of months ago was to do a minimum of 30 minutes a day on the weekdays of coursework for my certification.  For a while, this commitment was effective, and I was getting stuff done and more importantly, feeling more on top of things.  Then a few weeks ago my peer coach sort of disappeared and I had no coach for a few weeks.  Guess what happened?  Accountability structure gone...therefore, no 30 minutes a day of coursework!  And while I have been working on establishing my coaching business (website, etc) these past couple of weeks, which is great, I still need to complete my coursework to get my certification!  And when I'm not doing any work on my coursework, it sort of hangs over my head like a black cloud.

This week I got a new peer coach (yay!).  Because I have a commitment not to suffer over things that I have control over, the first thing I asked to work on was this me-not-doing-my-coursework thing.  We talked about ways that I could change how doing the coursework occurs for me, and we talked about ways that I could make the coursework fun.  We came up with a new structure that I've done twice now (Friday and today), and I think I like it!  The new structure is this:

1. I will take my laptop upstairs to the recliners (or out to the patio if it's nice enough outside) so that I'm not just sitting at my desk like always, and turn off my Internet access.
2. I will blast a fun song and dance around before getting started.
3. I will set a timer for 30 minutes and do my coursework and nothing else for those 30 minutes.
4. When the timer goes off, I will stop working, blast another fun song, and do a Happy Dance!!!

Later, if I want to, I can do more work on the coursework, but the 30 minutes is what I'm committed to.  I will set the intention to do this in the mornings so that it's not in my space all day, and that may not always happen.

Having the ritual aspect of it works for me...making it a totally separate entity in my day that once it's complete, it's complete.  And doing the Happy Dance is super fun!!  I feel great because I've done what I said I would do, and I get to celebrate!  Just in those two days that I've already done it, I feel like I've gotten so much work done!  Yay!!  :)

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Cholent

That's an odd title for a blog post, isn't it?

For you non-Jews out there, cholent (pronounced like "choont") is a traditional Jewish stew, usually made on the Sabbath.  It's something I grew up eating, and have never made myself.  Until now!  A week or two ago my mom invited people over for cholent, and hearing about it totally got me in the mood to make it.  What is in cholent?  Well, there are many variations.  My mom's version has sauteed onion; red, white and garbanzo beans; barley; potatoes; chicken and eggs.

I got the recipe from her on Friday, and went out to buy everything I needed.  The hardest things to find were marrow bones, which you use for flavor.  My intention was to make it on Friday night so that we could eat it on Saturday, but that didn't happen.  I did start the beans soaking on Friday night, though, so by the time I put it all in the oven, the beans had been soaking for over twenty-four hours (which is apparently good for getting the gas out of them?).

Last night, with Donovan's help, we got it all ready for the oven.  Sauteed two onions, de-skinned a bunch of chicken thighs and drumsticks, peeled potatoes...and then, into the pot it all went!  Sauteed onions in the bottom of the pot, then all the beans and barley mixed together, then the marrow bones, then the potatoes, then the chicken, and then the eggs (whole).  Spices in between the layers, and then covered the whole thing with water.  Into the oven to bake on high for a couple of hours and then on a low heat overnight.  It was quite an interesting experience!  I've never dealt with marrow bones before, so that was new and exciting.

We were watching Pirates of the Caribbean (inspired by our trip to Disneyland last week), and I kept hearing this sizzling sound coming from the kitchen.  Overflow!!!  Yeah, I put too much water in, and the liquid was overflowing out of the covered pot and onto the bottom of the oven and creating quite a mess, burnt smell, and smoke.  Donovan quickly prevented smoke detectors from going off by putting a fan in the window to blow all the smoke outside, and turning on the vent fan on the microwave.  It took a while for all the smoke and stink to clear out.  Thankfully, all was not lost, and the cholent continued to cook unperturbed.

All day today we smelled the yumminess while the cholent cooked and cooked and cooked.  Finally tonight (after cooking for twenty+ hours) we took it out of the oven so we could eat it for dinner.  The pot definitely looked like it had seen better days.

My poor pot...

I separated out all the components and made us up bowls with the bean/barley mixture in the bottom, the chicken (taken off the bone) on top of that with a piece of potato and an egg.

Chicken, potatoes, marrow bones, eggs and bean/barley mixture (in the pot)

Aside from needing lots of extra salt and pepper (I had no idea how to spice that much food ahead of time!), it turned out delicious!  The only thing missing was Mediterranean pickles.  They are the perfect addition to cholent!  We now have food for several days, especially the bean/barley mixture!  I had no idea that three cups of beans and two cups of barley would make such a huge amount of food!!

I'm very proud of myself for stepping up into the ranks of Jewish women everywhere and making my first cholent.  :)

Getting Ready!

This coming Tuesday, our kitchen project begins. Bob, Michael, and possibly one or two other guys are going to start tearing out our kitchen on Tuesday morning. Bob is also going to start working on turning our sliding glass door into windows. So what does all that mean? It means that our big project for this weekend is to get the entire kitchen totally cleared out!!!

We actually started on this a little bit last weekend, and did some work during the week. But today we hit it hard. We're not just taking everything out of the kitchen, we're going through everything and getting rid of what we don't need. Since a lot of what is in the kitchen is Donovan's, I mostly took stuff out of the cabinets and drawers and he went through it all and decided what to keep (with my input, of course). Goodwill is going to be getting quite a lot of stuff from this phase of the remodel!

We kicked ass on getting stuff out of there today. We're probably about 85% done, and will finish the rest tomorrow. Then we'll have the rest of the long weekend to play! What was funny tonight while we were getting dinner ready is that we both kept opening cabinets and drawers to get what we needed, only nothing was there! So we laughed at each other a lot... :)

It's going to be interesting not having a kitchen for 3+ weeks...we'll do our best, and we've agreed not to go crazy trying to full-on cook with no kitchen. I'm guessing there are a lot of rotisserie chickens from Albertsons in our near future... Thankfully we timed it so that we're going to be gone for one of the three weeks of no kitchen, which will be really nice!

I can't wait for our new kitchen!!! So excited!!!!

A Great Twenty-Four Hours

Wednesday night Donovan and I drove up to Anaheim to spend the night in preparation for our day at Disneyland.  Well technically, we drove up to Placentia to the Residence Inn there.  As we got closer to the hotel, we realized that we had actually stayed there before in December 2010 for one of our Worldworks courses.  I didn't even realize it when I made the reservation!  Because of my platinum status with Marriott, we got upgraded to one of their two-story awesome loft rooms that has a master bedroom, kitchen and family room downstairs, and a loft bedroom and another full bathroom upstairs.  The space was sort of wasted on just the two of us, but it was fun anyway.  We got into the room about 11:00pm and I ended up watching most of The Horse Whisperer on TV.  I haven't seen that movie in *years*!!

Thursday morning we headed to Disneyland.  Clearly it's been a while since I was there...I don't remember the parking structures!!  We waited for the tram for a while, and then decided to walk the half mile to the park.  We got our annual passes (yay!) and then headed into California Adventure to get our passes for that night's World of Color show.  For anyone who hasn't seen that show, it is a MUST SEE!!!  But more on that later.  On our way out of California Adventure we decided to do Soarin' Over California, which is my favorite ride there.  It was super fun!  We headed over to Disneyland and got in line for Star Tours first thing.  I had some hesitation about doing a motion ride like that, especially right after doing Soarin', but we did it anyway.  In hindsight, probably a bad idea!  I didn't get sick, but I definitely felt "off" afterwards.  We walked around the park for a while and got to see the sights.

Eventually we headed out into Downtown Disney to get lunch.  We figured the food in the park wasn't going to be our best choice for healthiness or tastiness, so we ventured out.  We ended up eating outside at this Mediterranean place that was pretty good.  After walking around some more we went back into the park and I humored Donovan by going on It's a Small World.  I'm not entirely sure why he wanted to go on that ride, but he did, so we did!  I think I have a little bit of Small World PTSD, having gotten stuck in there for what seemed like forever one time...and no, the song doesn't stop playing when the ride gets stuck!  We headed into Toon Town and visited Mickey's house, and then went for an awesome ride on the Monorail.  Did you know that at the front and the back of the Monorail train they have these secret compartments that have an awesome panoramic view?  Neither did I!  One of the workers that I was talking to told me about it, and we rode in the back one.  So cool!!

Possibly the highlight of my day (up to that point) was at the Nemo submarine ride (which we didn't actually do), where they had animatronic seagulls doing the "Mine! Mine! Mine!" thing.  I'm not sure how long we stood there watching them, but it made me really really happy.  :)

After that we went and did my favorite ride at Disneyland, Pirates of the Caribbean.  There was practically no line at this point, and we went right in.  It made me really want to watch all the movies.  I'm pretty sure I've seen the first two, but I don't know if I've seen the third and fourth.  We opted out of Indiana Jones (another of my favorites) and Space Mountain in consideration of my motion sickness.  Only so much it can handle in one day!

We headed over to California Adventure and saw the Muppet 3D movie, which was fun.  Then the Monster's Inc ride, and then we headed over to get our spots for the World of Color show.  Somehow, even though there were people who had been waiting for an hour by the time we got there, we got kick-ass spots for viewing the show.  We were near some really nice people who we ended up talking to while we were waiting.  And then, the show started.  Ironically, I had been talking to this woman about the fountain show at Bellagio in Vegas which is my favorite thing about Vegas and which I could watch it over and over again.  She and her family had been in Vegas and somehow she hadn't managed to see the fountain, which she was super bummed about.  I told her that she absolutely needed to see it.  As a loyal fan of said fountain show at Bellagio, let me just say that it doesn't hold a candle to what the people at Disney put together.  The World of Color show was SPECTACULAR!  It was AMAZING!  It was jaw-dropping...literally.  I'm pretty sure I stood there with my mouth gaping the entire almost thirty minutes.  It has a TON of fountains, colors, lasers, movie projections, fire...I can't possibly do it justice in trying to describe it.  Just trust me that you should definitely see it!!  For a short preview of the show (and a little bit about its making), you can watch this.

It was an unbelievable end to a really great day.  Part of what made the day so much fun was having the annual passes.  It took away the stress of having to cram everything into one day.  We could just say "we'll do that next time," where next time could be next week or next month or whenever we feel like driving up there!  It made the day so much more relaxed, which I think allowed us to enjoy it all the more.

We'll skip over the fact that I acted like a giant brat on the way home, and call it a really really awesome twenty-four hours.  I can't wait to go again!!!

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A Day of Love and Chocolate

Ah, Valentine's Day.  A day where we're told that we have to buy our loved ones flowers and cards and balloons and of course, chocolates.  A day where 10% of the year's proposals happen (according to this site).  A day all about love.

Wait...a day all about LOVE???

Okay, I'm calling myself out.  I may pretend to be cynical about Valentine's Day, but really, I love it!!  I love that there's a day all about love!  I love that people decorate their workplaces with hearts.  I love that the whole holiday is pinks and reds and purples.  I love giving cards and balloons and gifts, and I love receiving them!  :)

Is the holiday too commercialized?  Yes.  Is it ridiculous how much the prices go up on flowers?  Yes.  Is it insane to try and actually go out for dinner on the day itself?  Yes.

Here's the thing...  I am a very lucky person who is able to express my love for the people in my life every day.  I tell people, I show people...it's not a problem for me.  Not everyone is that lucky, and some people need one specific day a year where they can express their love.  Sad, and...true.

My box of Shari's Berries

This year I made a request for Valentine's Day.  I heard a commercial on the tv last week for Shari's Berries, which I've been wanting to try for years.  I promptly came downstairs to the office and asked Donovan if he would get me Shari's Berries for Valentine's Day, and he did!  I got three different kinds of chocolate-covered strawberries: white chocolate, milk chocolate with almonds, and dark chocolate with little itty bitty chocolate chips.  There were also chocolate-covered maraschino cherries, and four dipped cookies.  Fun!!  Tonight after they were delivered I tried a cherry and a half of each of the three strawberries.  The dark chocolate one is the best, then the milk one with nuts, then the white one.

It was different for me to actually ask for what I wanted versus waiting to see what I would get and then potentially being disappointed.  And Donovan seemed to appreciate my asking, too!

I did struggle a little bit today with the idea of giving without an expectation of receiving anything in return.  This morning I gave Donovan a Valentine's Day card right when we woke up.  Then at lunch time I took him a cute little teddy bear and two red heart balloons with another card to his work.  I had another card waiting for him when he got home from work.  And really, I did all those things because I wanted him to feel special and loved.  And, I had to keep reminding myself that it didn't matter if he did anything for me, that it was enough to have him feel special.  All day I kept checking outside the front door because I was *hoping* that I was going to be getting Shari's Berries, but I didn't know for sure.  And all day there was nothing outside the front door. 

Donovan got home from work and opened his third card.  Finally at about 7:45pm I couldn't take it anymore, and the little girl inside of me got the better of me.  "Did you do anything for me for Valentine's Day?" she asked.  Seriously, not more than thirty seconds later, the doorbell rang, and there was my box of Shari's Berries!  :)  A little while later when I was enjoying my strawberries, I asked whether or not I was going to get a Valentine's Day card (which I did...).  I'm such a dork!!!  As much as I know that my husband loves me, I guess I still want to feel special on these silly commercialized holidays!

All in all, a fun day filled with *extra* love (and chocolate!)...which is never a bad thing!!!  :)

Disneyland!

Yesterday as we were laying in bed for half the day (teehee!), Donovan brought up the idea of going to Disneyland sometime soon.  I suggested that we could go this Thursday (his day off for working 4x10s), even driving up on Wednesday night and staying for Marriott points.  We checked our schedules, and...Yay!  It works!  Today I booked us a room at a Residence Inn about six miles away from Disneyland, and we're all set!

I can't remember the last time I went to Disneyland.  It's definitely been a few years!  I hear there's all sorts of new stuff, and I'm excited to see it all!  Hopefully on a Thursday it won't be too crazy busy, but who knows?  We're debating whether to get the Southern California select annual pass.  It gets you into the park for 170 days out of the year, and costs $199.  As long as we go back at least one more time in a year, it'll pretty much pay for itself.  And we can park-hop as much as we want to.

I love that Donovan's 4x10s allows us to do stuff like this in the middle of the week!  We get to go and have a little kid adventure!  I'm especially looking forward to Pirates of the Caribbean and Space Mountain (which hopefully won't make me sick!), and Roz told me about a cool show at California Adventure called World of Color that we'll hopefully get to see.  It's going to be so much fun!!!  :)

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Staying Put

With the wedding and all the special occasions that went on in the second half of last year, it felt like we were practically never home and available on the weekends. It was all good stuff, of course, and it seemed hectic.

So far this year there have between only two weekends where I/we were unavailable.  It's been really really nice to have all but one weekend per month where we're around and available.

This weekend has been fabulous. Friday night we went on a very nice date in honor of Valentine's Day. Yesterday we hung around the house and did stuff on our computers and then watched a movie. Today we stayed in bed till after 2:00pm (Lazy Sunday!!) and got to visit my friend Crystal's new baby boy. It's been relaxing, somewhat productive, and just really nice.

It's great to know that we're also here and available for the next two weekends!! This probably sounds very commonplace to many of you, but it's not for me!! I love our life, and I love how active we are and how much stuff we do. And sometimes, it's just nice to stay put and be home. :)

Brussels Sprouts

Brussels sprouts are a bit of a mystery to me. I don't remember eating them when I was young, and I know people talk about them much like they talk about fruit cake.

Somewhere along the way in the past couple of years I discovered that I actually *like* Brussels sprouts! My mom's chef, Susie, makes them super yummy. I mimicked a recipe she did, sauteing chopped leeks and chopped Brussels sprouts together, and it is GOOD!!

Donovan and I were debating tonight about what a Brussels sprout actually is. My friend Crystal calls them mini cabbages, which I like. Donovan says they're Iris-sized. :)

Whatever they may actually be, I'm happy to have another green vegetable to love. Don't worry, broccoli, you're still number one with me!! ;)

Five Days a Week?

When I started this blog in October for the "Blogging Challenge" with my cousin, Sigal, I committed to writing five days a week.  With the exception of one week off around the holidays (I think), I've done that every week since the middle of October.  It's been an interesting experience, as there have definitely been days when I didn't want to write anything, or didn't have any idea what to write, but I had a commitment to five days a week, and I did it.  What's cool is that through my blog, people who maybe don't have contact with me that often are able to keep up with what's going on in my/our life.  And it's always fun to find out who's reading my blog...sometimes totally not who I would expect to!

Yesterday I started wondering whether the five days a week thing still suits my needs.  I haven't come to any conclusions about it yet, and I'm taking a look.  As I start developing the website for my business, one of the things that I want to do on there is a blog.  Obviously it's going to be much different from this one...more "professional" topics, etc.  So maybe one day a week I want to devote to that blog.  Not sure!  I definitely want to keep blogging here.  It's great writing practice, and coming up with ideas sometimes stretches me for sure!  And like I said, it's fun knowing that there are people all over the world keeping up with my life through this blog.

So...it's a question, and not one that I need to answer right away.  In the meantime, if you have any ideas for blog topics, either for this blog or for my coaching blog, let me know!  :)

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P.S.  I went looking for an image to put on this post, and am cracking up about where I found this image.  Check out the link above to see why it's funny...

Putting Myself Out There

Today I began the process of putting myself out into the world as a coach.  I created a Facebook page for my new business, Know Your Greatness Coaching and put it out for people to "Like" (like me, like me!!).  I also started working on my actual website, which is still very much a work in progress.  It's quite scary, taking these steps.  It makes the whole coaching business thing very real!!

I'm not feeling particularly confident about the website.  I don't have any content in mind for the various pages that I'm going to create.  I also want to have a professional blog, and am not sure what things to write about.  I feel like I have to have all these very "coachy" ideas, and I'm not even 100% sure what area I'm going to specialize in!  Also, if my business is called Know Your Greatness, do all my posts and all my content need to be about knowing your greatness?  Yes, this is all the stuff that runs around in my head...

Anyway, the fact that I'm taking these steps is a pretty big deal, so I'm going to celebrate that now, and worry about the details later!  :)

Thank You, Body!

I have spent the last twenty-something years "dealing" with my weight.  Various forms of diets and programs, various states of being overweight, various states of being active (or inactive).  Throughout all of that the message was pretty much the same..."I don't like my body the way it is."

Yesterday during my coach training, we were talking about coaching clients around the subjects of health and aging.  Our trainer, Keith, was talking about resistance and how it leads to pain.  I can't remember exactly what he said, but all of a sudden it dawned on me...I have been resisting my body for most of my life.  Not just not accepting my body, but actively resisting it.

I have but one body in this lifetime.  And instead of thanking it for all the multitudes of things that it has allowed me to do and experience so far, I resist it.  I get angry with it.  I insult it.  I abuse it.  This amazing body of mine, that for three years allowed me to train first for several 100-mile bike rides and then for several triathlons, including a half-Ironman.  This body that after doing two or three workouts in a day would say to me "You want to do that again tomorrow?  Okay!  And again the day after that?  Okay!"  This powerful machine that is limber and strong and ever-regenerating.  This vessel that in a few months is going to allow me to create life inside of me.  While I have enormous respect for the human body in general and how astounding it is, rarely have I turned that inward to my own body.

Through this realization, a new door is open to me.  I now have the opportunity to really thank my body for everything it gives me, and to treat it with the respect that it has earned.  To keep present in my mind at all times what a gift my body is to me.  With as strong as I suspect the mind-body connection to be, this gratitude for my body may have power beyond my knowing!

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Home Sweet Home

I got home a couple of hours ago from my coaching weekend in L.A., which was really great. :)

And it was really really great to come home to my husband, who I missed very much while I was gone! :)

More to come this week...

We All Have 'Em...

I'm at my second iPEC weekend this weekend, and it's going really great!  The people here welcomed me with open arms, and I'm learning some good stuff.  :)

One of the exercises we did yesterday centered around our Gremlin, that little voice inside our head that tells us we're not good enough.  There are 25 of us in the course, and as we went around the room, I heard the same message with slightly different flavors.  Not perfect enough (mine), not pretty enough, not smart enough, etc.  And while I know that we all have this voice in our heads, it really sank in last night.

No matter how outwardly together a person may seem, whether it's that they have the ultimate career or all the money or the perfect body or the perfect family or whatever assumptions we make about them, they have a voice that tells them that they're not __________ enough. 

Wild, huh?

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The Brain is Funny

In December of 2010, Donovan and I began a three and a half month leadership program through WorldWorks, a transformational company.  The program, called LP, took place in Orange County.  In those three and a half months we made countless trips to Orange County for weekends, evening modules, a community service project, and introductions.  Overall, LP was a fairly traumatic experience for me, and I chose to suffer through most of it.  I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with the program.  I could have chosen a different experience for myself, but I chose to suffer and be traumatized.

Tonight I drove up to LAX for my iPEC training weekend which starts tomorrow morning.  I drove the same path that we always drove when we went to Orange County.  Up 15 north, across 78 west to 5 north and then 405 north.  And as I passed all the landmarks that we would pass on our way all those times, my brain started to flip out a little.  Reliving the trauma and the suffering.

It's been almost a year since we stopped participating in the program, and I'm still discovering how deeply it affected me.  Hopefully I can make new memories for my brain to grasp on to when I make this drive north.  Happy, positive memories.  :)

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Module 2

I'm heading into the second weekend of my iPEC coach training program this weekend.  I'll be driving up to L.A. tomorrow night, and the course starts Friday morning.  This is going to be a different group of people than at my first weekend, since I did the first weekend up in Emeryville.  I'm a little nervous about being the new girl in an already somewhat established group.  Thankfully the course leader is the same as I had the first weekend, and he was great.

I'm looking forward to what we're going to learn and experience this weekend.  From what I hear there is a lot of coaching that we do, which is good.  Also, we're supposed to spend some time going over the different "majors" that we have to pick from...executive coaching, small business coaching, health and wellness coaching, life coaching, relationship coaching, sales coaching, etc.  I'm interested in getting some more information about those.

I've been slacking on my coursework these past couple of weeks, so I'll really need to step it up when I get back.  I'm pretty sure I have what I need for this weekend, though.  Oh, this is funny...  One thing we have to do for this weekend is our Gremlin project.  To figure out a name for our "little voice" and figure out what variety of "I'm not good enough" plays most often in our heads.  I pegged mine as "I'm not perfect enough" and after doing a survey on Facebook, decided to call mine Mary Poppins.  We have to bring a physical representation of our Gremlin to Module 2 this weekend.  I found a Precious Moments figurine of Mary Poppins online, and decided to get it as my physical representation.  Interestingly enough, the figurine is called "You're Practically Perfect In Every Way"...is that awesome, or what?  So it arrives today, and it's broken.  Not into like a million pieces or anything.  A flower broken off her hat, and the umbrella broken where it should attach to her hat.  I'm not going to send her back, since I need her for this weekend.  And of course, if you think about it, it's perfect that she's not quite perfect.  :)

I do wish that Donovan was going with me again!  He considered coming with and just hanging out in L.A. while I did my course, but his time will be better spent here.  So, I'm on my own for the weekend.  It'll be an adventure!!  :)

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