How do you answer the call to business and the call to family, especially when the time commitment conflicts?

Today my Dad is back in the hospital.  It feels like we’re beginning that long hopefully slow to arrive end of life cycle with several trips to the hospital some more critical than otheers.  And I face a quandary.  He’s bored out of his mind, wants to come home, wants people to come and visit and someone to talk to.   I’m the one who lives closest to him – the other sisters are hour or more away, but I’ve got a business to run.  I spent the weekend in the hospital with him, but I’ve got to get some of my work done too. 

Quandary:  How to decide where to spend my time and how much time to spend where?  What are the priorities and values I am to call upon to make this decision?   Does love mean I drop everything to be by his bed?  What about love for my business and need to make a profit?  What about love for the family for which I am working to provide some extra income?

I remember watching a movie about an up and coming Olympic skater who was killed in an auto accident just before tryouts.  He’d made it all the way to tryouts.  The last scene was of his father, a small business owner who had never seen his son skate.  He had a business to run and needed to make money to pay for his son’s skating lessons addition to regular family expenses.  He thought he would get to watch him skate someday – but that day never came.

I don’t want to have those feelings left over when Dad’s departure comes, but I also can’t be putting my business on hold every time he or one of my kids or my husband gets sick.

I know this isn’t unique to me.  It’s something we all face as business owners, especially if you also are a single parent.  I’m wondering what others do.  How do you decide where to put your time and energy, especially when it seems like you are being called upon to spend it in more than one place / event at a time?

For me, this time I asked, “Is Dad safe and well-cared for? (Yes)  “Is this illness, at least at this time life-threatening?” (No)  “Does he NEED me there or is it more a matter of convenience – a keeping him company in an otherwise boring situation?” (No he doesn’t need me there to prove I love him, just to be someone to talk to)  “Having spent the last 2 days there with him, can my business tolerate my absence and prosper?” (No)

Those are the questions I asked myself.  What are the questions you ask yourself?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Want to chat – to explore your options?  Drop me a line and let me know what you think at leona@simplyeffectivecoaching.com

Well for all you men who need a little more guidance in the art of meeting expectations, here’s someone who provides us with a few choice words Title: “These Are the Things You Don’t Say to Your Wife”

Hope You Enjoy – I think he’s a hoot!

I’m all about love – who isn’t? AND I’m also all about implementation, so when someone tells me to “forgive” another person and I’m still hurting or angry I ask, “HOW? Usually the answer is “just do it!” That didn’t make much sense!    No more than telling me to “trust?  Just trust!”

How do you “just forgive” someone who has hurt you? How do you “forgive?” Then one day I was introduced to Byron Katie’s book “Loving What Is”. This book provides the “HOW?”

At first glance it looks easy (funny how that is)! However when you get into the process, altho’ the process is easy, it’s takes time. When you are a newbie to “The Work” it simply takes time – to spill your thoughts and emotions onto paper and then get honest with yourself. There are four questions to answer – just four – and something she calls the “Turnaround”. What’s amazing is what happens when you take the time to answer thoughtfully and honestly. And with practice it begins to take less and less time!

Feeling stressed by a situation? Answer the four questions and do the Turnaround. See what happens with the stress. Bugged by someone? Answer the four questions and feel the shift happen deep inside you. I answered the four questions and am amazed at the changes that happened in a troubled relationship.

Byron Katie is also very generous. You can go to her website and download the four questions and Turnaround, a variety of worksheets and read more about “The Work” and how doing the work changes lives. Check out It’s all about implementation. When you think about it, what’s the good of an insight if there is no practical way to apply it?

Wishing you a Lovely week!

Leona

Last weekend I went on the annual Quantum Leap retreat.  Quantum Leap is a mastermind group I belong to.  At this retreat, which is a blend of work and play we celebrate with a chocolate fondue.  Each year we try out some new dippers.  This year our newest member, Lorina Shinsato  suggested dipping Ruffles potato chips into the chocolate fondue.  What a shock!  My first thought was blech but you’ve got to try it to believe it!  There’s something about the crunch of the potato chip and the salt that when dipped in chocolate delights the taste buds.  It’s really quite unexpected.

It’s like being in the mastermind group itself.  There are currently four members: a naturopath, a designer in vinyl, financial planner and me, the Life Coach.  We are different people with different backgrounds coming together to support the growth and development of each other’s business.  We’ve created a safe place to talk about what’s working and what isn’t, to challenge limiting beliefs and try out new ideas and get instant feedback from a variety of perspectives.  Like potato chips and chocolate:  Who’d a thought? 

This weekend limiting beliefs were challenged, comfort zones enlarged, new goals set, values aligned with actions, action plans devised and accountabilities established so that each of us will be growing and developing personally and financially.  It’s amazing to see what can happen in a supportive collaborative atmosphere! 

If you aren’t in a mastermind group and want to grow your business I can testify to the value created when you are working with people who have made a commitment to show up, share what is and what is wanted, what isn’t working, to be engaged and present with the others, receiving and giving support. 

If your mastermind group isn’t working I can help with a little facilitation.  If you aren’t in a mastermind group and want to be, call or email and I’ll help you get into one.  I have two right now looking for 1 or 2 more participants and you might be the one that’s a good fit. 

After all, who would have thought that Ruffles potato chips and chocolate would be such a great fit?

Doug was my first coach and now a good friend.  In those early days fear pretty much kept me paralyzed as I wanted to venture out into the world of coaching.  Doug was the first to tell me that fear is like the shadow of Godzilla only to find when exposed to the light of day, that it’s a wiener dog.  It’s a matter of perspective.

Today’s gift, if I could give you a gift would be the gift of Perspective. 

 Life provides many events, situations, joys, sorrows, frustrations and disappointments.  However, it’s not the event that makes or breaks the person – it’s how we respond to it – the meaning we give to it. 

I’ve quoted Viktor Frankl before because what he wrote is so meaningful to me.  A Jewish psychiatrist imprisoned in Auschwitz Germany during World War Two, enduring the unimaginable later wrote,  “In the concentration camps…we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints.  Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.” 

As we enter the holiday season with all its hustle and bustle, all the frenetic energy that goes into creating a just so “perfect experience”, as that person cuts us off in line or the store runs out of your favorite (fill in the blank), as the wants exceed the money available, as things just don’t go right, my gift would be a different “Perspective”:  to choose a different more empowering interpretation of the event unfolding before you, to embrace rather than resist or resent the moment.  As teacher, speaker, coach Jim Sorenson says, “Don’t let that guy who just cut in front of you, drive away with your good mood in his trunk”.  In that moment that event may feel like a Godzilla, but in taking a different perspective it becomes the wiener dog.

Doug Firebaugh once said, “Vision is the ability to see what is not yet – So you can create what never was.”

The power to Transform  would be wasted on someone who has no vision of what they want to create.  Our nation’s founding fathers knew what they wanted, in part because it was very clear to them what they did not want (an oppressive government).  Thomas Edison knew what he wanted in part because he knew what he did not want (light instead of dark).  John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagan are both said to have given us a vision of what we could be as a nation.  Inventors and leaders have vision: that inexplicable ability to see what does not yet exist.

What’s your vision: for business and life?  Did you envision working 80 hours a week or a lot less?  Did you envision yourself and your honey on a beach sipping Mai Tai’s while others make your money work for you?  Do you have a vision?  Do you have a plan for making that vision a reality?  If not, let’s chat!  If I can’t help you – I know people who can!

“What?” you say, “I’ve got enough problems.  I don’t need another one!” 

But what if what I gave you was different?   What if I also gave you different eyes? 

Duke Ellington, musician, composer of over 1,000 jazz pieces, and leader of his own Big Band, once said, “A problem is your chance to do your best.”  

What if you saw the problem not as an obstacle, but an opportunity?  What if you saw the problem not as a stumbling block, but a stepping stone?   

What if today the gift I could give you was the power to Transform any Problem into a Promise waiting to be fulfilled?  Would that be a gift worth receiving?  

My friend Laurie Fournier is into Transformation. ordinary walls, windows, doors, and even electronics into unique places to remind teens and adults of the greater values in life.  She’s taken an ordinary word like “Transform” and with her vinyl decorations transforms walls, windows, doors, mirrors and even electronics into unique ways to reaffirm the greater values in life – like Transformation. 

Remember:  You already have that power within you.  It’s a matter of perspective – of seeing things differently.  If you’re having trouble with your perspective give me call or send an email.  Let’s chat.

The caption to this picture is entitled “Rescuing Hug”.  The article describes the first week of a set of twins.  Apparently the hospital rules dictated that each infant was to be in his or her own incubator.  One was not expected to live.  A nurse fought against the rule and placed the babies in one incubator.  Placed together, the healthier of the two threw an arm over her sister in an endearing embrace.  The smaller baby’s heart rate stabilized and her temperature rose to normal. 

This afternoon I sat in a room with a group of former reticent, begrudging writers who like myself took on the challenge of writing several blog posts for November.  When we started some of us who were inexperienced struggled with the “Beginner Woes”:  those statements that run around in our heads when we start something new.

• “I don’t know what to write about.”
• “When I start to write my mind goes blank!” or the dreaded
• “I don’t have anything to write about that anyone would want to read!”

Others of us were more experienced some having written from early childhood.  For these folks it was facing the challenges of

• “I’m running out of things to say”
• “I’m bored with writing”
• “I’m bored with my writing” or the dreaded
• “How do I make WordPress work????”   

For one month we journeyed together learning from each other, inspired and encouraged by each other, but especially by Deborah Drake our facilitator.  Today we celebrated the end of one beginning and the continuing journey.  Some chose to read one of our own blogs or the blogs of others who inspired us.  As I listened, I was in awe.  There was such quality and diversity and respect for those who made any attempt.  But most of all, I was awed by the power of Encouragement. 

I found myself asking, “What could happen if in our schools, in the education of our future generations, these future leaders were encouraged to try something they were afraid to try, to not worry about grades or peer pressure or the humiliation of not being ‘perfect’?  What are we doing to our kids in school and at home that this sense of adventure and experimentation is squelched instead of guided?”   I worked with teens for a short period and saw it all too often.

Today I saw that “as we let our own light shine we [do indeed] unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”  It was amazing to behold.  It was a gift we gave each other, a gift we gave ourselves and it all started with Deborah and her gift of Encouragement. 

Yes, if I could give you a gift today, it would be the gift of Encouragement.  Pursue your dreams, make manifest the glory of God that is within you.  Live your life as only you can, for only you can.  You are a gift to the universe.

Bridges are amazing!  Just think of it – you are standing on one side of the river or canyon and you want to get to the other side but not get wet.  You might take a boat – if there’s one handy (and you know how to work it).  However someone came up with the idea of getting across the uncross-able expanse on this thing we now call “a bridge”.  Some say it was the Greeks during 13^th Century BC, others the Romans and some the people of Latin America, but I digress. 

Last week I wrote about Perseverance and you might be asking, “What in the world could building bridges have to do with Perseverance?” Consider this:  What keeps a bridge from falling?   

Support!  

As you look at the pictures of the various bridges, notice, that while the basic concept is the same, how it manifests is different.  For some it’s the power of the arc, for others the strength of suspension.  Either way, it’s support.   

If I could give you a gift it would be “Support”.  It might look like a network of people who value you and your dream: like guide wires they hold you up when everything looks like it’s going to fall into the chasm below.  It might be like the arc: solid structures and systems upholding you from underneath and with the upward thrust of the arc at its pinnacle sustains your movement above the unknown below.  Whatever your dream is, if you want to maximize Perseverance, create a support structure and network.  When the going gets tough and everything in you wants to quit – draw on your support. 

Tori Murden, the first woman to row solo across the Pacific, in her darkest hour when everything inside her wanted to call it quits, when all she had to do was make the call and the pain, agony, isolation would end, was greeted by a pod of dolphins.  They played with her and kept her company for several hours.  Her support came when she least expected it in exactly the situation surrounding her.  She said the memory of playing with the dolphins kept her going until she finished the row, weeks later. 

If I could give you a gift, it would be the Support to Persevere.

Dictionary.com defines Perseverance as “steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement” It takes Courage to have Perseverance:  to keep on when all around you say, “Quit!” when things aren’t going the way you planned and the results are delayed or seemingly nonexistent. 

How do you know when it’s perseverance and not obstinacy?  I know someone who’s been basically unemployed or underemployed for 8 years, yet he continues to look for work, talk with recruiters, go on interviews and do the work he’s offered.  He was offered the opportunity to live on Social Security Disability Insurance and could have taken it easy for the rest of his working years, but chose not to.  When challenged about his disability he replied, “I’m not disabled!  I can do everything anyone else in here can do!”   So he perseveres in the face of opposition, age, and illness.  He is courageous and persevering.

•   Henry Ward Beecher (1813 – 1887) said, “the difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will and the other from a strong won’t”.    



• Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784) wrote, “Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.” 

Is your business faltering?  Do you wonder sometimes if you should quit?  Been through or going through rough times?  Is your dream worth the effort?  Then if I could give you a gift it would be Perseverance. 

Want to know ways to maximize this gift?  Check in tomorrow for Perseverance – Part 2