Somehow 2024 seems like a long time in the future, yet here we are. I remember when 2020 seemed a very long time in the future.  What catches me is that 2020 happened 24 years AGO. Hard to believe when you’ve lived through it all. Changes upon changes. Sigh.

Norm and I had COVID over Christmas. What a drag. We were both quite sick and are still not at 100% recovery. It wasn’t just us.  Many people spent the Christmas season fighting the many variants we have come to know. I’m not sure what to think about that.  We stayed in Nova Scotia so that we could spend time with relatives here and eventually we got to do that.  Deliveries from masked friends and relatives allowed us to cook a small turkey and open presents on the 25th.

I also had time to spend on my decluttering project. I read and sorted old files, courses, and articles I had written, my life’s work. Much of it will be repurposed for the next project.  I think we have found a catchy name for it. “RISK Taking” or “Why take the RISK?” RISK is of course an acronym.  Relational Intelligence, Skills, and Knowledge.  This 10-module self-paced program will be coming to you in the new year through a partnership with “At the Helm.” https://atthehelm.ca I am excited by this new challenge. It is good to be back at the keyboard.

I do hope that all of you had a good holiday season and that you all have things to look forward to in 2024. Whatever it brings, this year provides new opportunities to start again, to reimagine what is possible for each of us. Look at what you want to have, be or do. See that others have or are or do that thing and ask yourself… Why not me?

I always resolve to be a better version of myself in January. My New Year’s resolutions list includes …

#1 Only write on the days you eat. #2 Zumba three times a week. #3 Eat only food that was once alive #4 Get lots of rest. #5 Feed your mind, heart, body, spirit, and soul daily.

That should keep me busy.  What does 2024 hold for you?

Take care, my friends, and Happy New Year 2024

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It feels like a miracle. So many people have reached out to connect. I am so grateful for all of the lovely comments on the Facebook page, the notes on LinkedIn and the comments on WordPress. I am overwhelmed by the response, and I would like to thank all of you. People from every aspect of my former lives are represented in the comments I have read. Halifax, St Albert, Grande Cache and Calgary are all represented. Colleagues and friends from teaching, mediating, curling, tap dancing, family, friends, clients, coworkers and bosses are all in the mix. I am humbled and grateful. Thank you.

That question … the one that starts with “If a miracle happened, how would you know?” … is a question I learned in the 90s and one that has stayed with me. I don’t often ask myself that question. I do not remember ever asking myself that specific one. It seems that Christmas is a good time of year to ask it. What would a miracle look like for me in this 60-10th year of life? A comfortable life? Check. A wonderful, loving partner? Check. A family who are happy and healthy and who make me very proud? Check. A project to work on? Check. Friends and family to play games, to laugh and tell stories with? Check. Someone to read my blogs? CHECK.

Life can be difficult. It can be therapeutic to consider how it could be better. What are the measures of wellness and happiness for you in your life? What is your miracle? Draw that picture and then ask yourself how you can get one step closer to that miracle. Check for evidence of the miracle. Make a list and check it twice. I have heard that others do that this time of year. (wink) (old school emoji) (smile)

Life is good.

What is your miracle? How will you know it has happened?

Journals a Reprise June 2021

Off to get my second Covid Vaccine, today. The world is still waiting for me.  I am getting ready to travel again, to explore a new version of an old world … a post covid world.  Should be interesting.

I pulled this blog from 2008.  It is about journaling as a way to record and inform learning.  Studying PULSE requires sensitivity to the tense that someone is speaking.  Journaling and then going back to notice the tense that you use more frequently can help you tune in to the tenses in a conversation which can be used to guide participants to common ground and resolution. 

Journaling is more than that for me.  I know that there have been times in my life where my journal has helped me focus, helped me see things as they were, not as the horrible mess I had created in my imagination. Journaling allowed me to appreciate who I was, what I had and what I was doing and gave me the courage to do more, think more and feel more about the good things in my life.  I came to realize that I can create a better life for myself by imagining a better life for myself and moving toward it. 

Journaling is more than a record of the past.  It becomes a record of the future you are creating with your intentions. Have a good one.  It is a choice you can make. Take Care.

Journals – Creating Reality July 2008

Journaling has been an important part of my life for the past 20 years.  I don’t write every day and I don’t beat myself up if I forget or get too busy and miss a day or a week of entries.  I do not use my journal as a record of my everyday life but as a record of the thoughts that just won’t go away until I see them on paper.  Writing is powerful.  It makes things real and somehow solvable.  Writing about something that is on my mind takes it off of my mind and puts it on a piece of paper somewhere that I can refer to later if I choose to … or not.  At least it is not rolling around in my mind driving me crazy.

Journaling truly keeps me sane.  It also allows me to formulate new ideas and synthesize issues and look at things in a different way.  When we have participants Journal at PULSE we ask them to write.  It doesn’t matter what they write, just write.  Once they have written we ask them to read it over and then notice whether they have written about thoughts, actions or feelings.  We ask them to use coloured dots to categorize their journal by placing red dots by feelings, yellow dots by actions and green dots by thoughts.  It is also possible to use the red for past, yellow for present and green for future categories.  When people do this, they begin to see patterns in their writing that begins to help them understand more about their own predispositions and maybe even Enneagram types.  Are they in the Head Triad thinking about the future, Heart Triad feeling about the past or Body Triad acting in the present?

It is already, August of 2021.  Over the summer I have had family and friends join me here in Halifax.  It is always wonderful for me to spend time showing people around and reacquainting myself with this wonderful birthplace of mine. Climbing the rocks at Peggy’s Cove and sailing in Halifax harbour are two of my favourite things to do and it is great to have someone to do those things with, things I am not as likely do on my own.  This blog from 2008 reminds me that thinking positively helped me to create this new reality… living back in Nova Scotia and doing the kind of things I LOVED to do as a child.  Imagining this journey allowed me to work toward it and to notice when opportunities presented themselves.  The pull to show up here again was strong and I am happy that I was in a position to take advantage of the situation and move myself gently and slowly back to a life that helps me feel like a kid again. Thinking positively generates positive experiences and making and keeping the Four Agreements with yourself works to create a life you can be proud of, one that FEELS right and good.  Recognize the contrast between what makes you feel comfortable and what might be uncomfortable for you. Find those experiences that give you a sense of awe and appreciation and do more of those. Make comfort the rule and not the exception. You will be happy that you did.

Exceptions – THE RULE – and The Four Agreements – October 2008

It is interesting how we focus on the rule and not the exception.  Often it is the exception that will teach us the most.  That is what Appreciative Inquiry is about for me.  It is a search for the exceptions to the overwhelming focus on the negative.  When you ask “Where is this solved?” you get new information and new approaches.  I have been asking myself this week…”When is life NOT a chore?”  “When I am happy and worry free?”  Myself and I are talking about focusing our attention on the positive in our life and creating more of that.  …. I think it is working!!!!

One exception for me is when I read old blogs and think … “that is something I would enjoy reading if I were someone else.”  That encourages me to keep going, to write and write until something profound finds its way on to the page.  I like to write and to share my thoughts on the screen or in my journal.  For me it is a comfortable way to process and move from the past to the future with deliberate intent to do my best. 

I am reminded of the Four Agreements (RUIZ), some of which I will reframe here.  Always do your best: I think doing your best is all you can ever expect of yourself.  As long as you have been conscious and deliberate in your attempts to arrive at whatever destination or dream you are chasing then you can look yourself in the mirror and smile.

Be impeccable with your word – To me that means “Say what you mean and mean what you say.”  It is the beautiful combination and balance of the Gentle and Honest pieces int eh GHOST protocol.  If you are only gentle and not honest you are not impeccable.  If you are honest and not gentle you are not impeccable.  Be impeccable with your word.

Check Assumptions – If you have a “leemer” – which is the name for the nagging instinct that tells you that something is not right before you know that somethings not right – if you have a “leemer” then check it out.  Ask!

Get Curious – It is not about you – that is my version of what Ruiz identifies as “Don’t take anything personally”.  In my quest for positive reframes I have some to understand the intention of that Agreement is to be emotionally mature – to detach without disengaging.

The rule is be good to yourself and treat others the way they would like to be treated.  It is often referred to as the platinum rule.  We have accepted it as one of the PULSE Rules.  The four agreements are also congruent with PULSE thinking, doing and feeling.  They provide another foundation for this appreciative work.  Look for what works and do more of that……  that’s the rule.

Sometimes a message comes to you from your past and you wonder if you will ever solve the problem, you set out to solve years ago.  This post from 2014 reminds me that I am still a multiple even though I am very single.  I have even more email addresses than I did then and I have purchased more property.  I have not matured enough to SETTLE DOWN.  And I guess that’s okay for now.  Seven years and the world I have imagined for myself, where things are simpler is still an illusion.

I am stepping away from one adventure and opening up to experience new things.  Many people my age they are looking for new and different things to do with their time and for me it is about focus.  I want to do less.  I want to be known as one person with one identify, an integrated self, with the wisdom that comes with having experienced multiple lives.  I choose happiness and creativity in whatever form makes me smile.

The same plan … integration.

Nouveau Plan October 2014

One of the things that kind of drives me crazy is the number of identities we have these days.  What I mean is that we have multiple email addresses and multiple phone numbers and multiple addresses that we send things to and live in from time to time.  We carry multiple devices and identification cards and have multiple passwords for multiple favourite websites.  We have become multiples.

Do you wake up each morning wondering where you are and who you have to be that day?  Are you asked for a password or a PIN number more than twice a day? Do you feel like you’re being is consumed by the multiple interactions with machinery that guide you through the day?  It is weird, isn’t it? Mind numbing actually.

Maybe it’s the fact that I have just returned from Hawaii and the Aloha spirit is still in my soul.  I have been fighting the multiple aspect of my identity for almost a year now trying to consolidate who I am and what it means to be me.  No easy task.

Is it even possible to have one address, one email address, one credit card, one password and unity of purpose in our day and age? I am struggling. It is especially important as I research happiness. Me and thousands of others have been doing that for a long time. I saw Hector and the Search for happiness in the theater the other day. It’s a great movie with a great message.

Happiness is experiencing all of your emotions and understanding the contrast. Happiness is a choice. Circumstances are not the cause of happiness because different people experience the same circumstance as happy or sad. It is all relative. So, can you be happy in a world that only knows you through machines and numbers and passwords? It seems you can. All you need is one person to know you and love you anyway.

I am still going to work toward a single identity. I am going to find a password that meets ALL the criteria ANYONE has set for passwords and use it. I am going to wean myself to one email address and change the address on my driver’s license to reflect where I live most of the time. I am working on integrating myself and my identities. It is my Plan Nouveau. How else can you be one with the universe if you are not first one with yourself?

Have a great day.

Thirteen years later and I am not sure how I would describe fun.  I enjoy life.  I like to travel and I enjoy working with people in other places or learning about other cultures.  I am playing the piano more since Covid lock downs forced everyone into their own spaces to find things to do.  I spent some time improving my French which was fun and interesting.  What I noticed was that it was very difficult for me to write under the stress of Covid.  It was weird. And of course, travel was out of the question. With restrictions lifting who knows what to expect.  One thing is for sure.  I am writing again and that is FUN.

Holidays will be weird going forward.  I hope to spend some time at the University of the Virgin Islands in the fall and I do plan to be on the Big Islands of Hawaii over the winter.  I do plan to go back to Alberta to celebrate birthdays with my family later this month.  All of that will be fun for sure.  I find myself also really looking forward to my brother and his wife coming to Nova Scotia for a visit soon and my dear friends from the Edmonton Area will be down in August.  Three of the four visitors I am expecting this summer have never been to Nova Scotia.  It will be fun to show them this delightful place and explore things with them that I might not explore on my own.

Maybe fun is just the things that make you smile.  Let’s go with that.

Holidays August 2008

Tomorrow morning, I leave for a week in Hawaii on the big island.  I am taking my computer to do my blog and my golf clubs to complete a couple of rounds and I plan to spend a lot of time doing very little.  I might read a book or sit by the pool or go for a ride in a helicopter.  It will be fun.  I have been searching lately for a definition of fun.  Other people I know have hobbies and pass times that excite them.  I am not sure what mine is.  I travel.  I golf.  I write.  I entertain.  Are those my FUN??

What do you do for fun, to relax??  I am not sure I even know how to turn it off and just have fun.  We’ll see.  We’ll call this research into the experience of fun.  Hmmm. That may make it work and not play or fun.  I will let you know.  Aloha.

Today is a difficult and confusing day for me. My whole life I have celebrated Canada Day as the day my country was founded. As a social studies major in my Bachelor of Education Degree, I learned more about the people who were here before European contact. It was new to me. We had lived our lives in the firm believe that this was our country, that we, the Europeans, had conquered those who came before us and that we were civilizing this great land.

Today, as more unmarked graves are found near old Residential Schools, I am sobered by the fact that the conquering continued, that people, children, were murdered so that we could ‘civilize’ this country. Today Canada seems tarnished for me and that makes me very sad. I want to be proud, but only a generation ago, Indigenous children were taken from their homes and given to Eurpoean families to raise. Children were taken away and raised in residential schools or day schools far from their families, culture and way of life and it is estimated that more than 4000 of them never came home. I am trying to imagine how frieghtened and confused they must have been and what horros they could have endured. I can’t even begin to do that. It hurts me deeply.

There is an image of Indigenous children that began to circulate after the mass grave of 251 children was located in British Columbia last month. It depicts small children holding hands and the caption reads.. “It’s going to be okay now. They have found us.” It makes me cry everytime I think about it.

I have always been a proud Canadian. I have even run for Parliament … twice. How do I reconcile my long-held version of Canada with this image of children being mistreated and murdered? I am depending on this government to do the right things, what ever they are, to help heal this gaping wound for our Indigenous people and for all Canadians. These children were our children. Our European ancestors married Indigenous people. We could all be mixed blood, Metis people and we should be proud of those stories from our family that point to that possibility and we should grieve together … all of us … for our loss.

For many of us this is truly NEWS. We have lost our innocence and must accept that the Canada we know and love still has untold mysteries for us to discover, many we will not be proud of. We can do better and we will. We MUST.