Coaching

For my birthday present, I gave myself a life coaching certification course. It's a 6-month course and I'm thrilled to be doing this. I love the idea of helping people come to their own solutions for issues in their lives.

When I was around 18, I remember reading a book about Super Thinking. Most people only use about 10-15% of their brain capacity. This book focused on harnessing more than this 10-15% of your brain to learn more and become a genius. (Supposedly Einstein used 20% of his brain). I don't remember much about the super thinking, but I remember one seemingly unrelated chapter about living a wonderful life. The book's author wrote that approximately 10% of people are what he called insane. They have a chemical imbalance in their brains that prevent them from living a totally fulfilled life as society traditionally thinks of it. He then goes on to say that 10% of people live lives that he considers "sane." According to this author, a sane life is one in which all the parts are working. Sane people have jobs they love, healthy relationships, security, abundance, play a part in their communities, etc. In other words, they are happy with everything in their lives and are truly living the lives they want to live. What about the other 80% of society? They are what he called "unsane." There is no chemical reason why they are not living the lives they way, but for whatever reason they are in unhealthy relationships or jobs that make them miserable, etc. In one way or another they are living lives that are out of alignment. They have the power to change that and become sane, but they don't. When I was 18, I remember reading this and thinking 1) I want to have a truly sane life and 2) I want to help others to do the same. And so I'm becoming a life coach.

Life coaching is a very sane career for me, but it's also the perfect tool to help the "unsane" become sane. Life coaching is a co-creative relationship between the client and the coach where the life coach supports the client to come to their own solutions to create positive change in their lives.

My ideal for my coaching practice is to combine reiki with coaching. I'm a reiki master and have seen reiki's miraculous effects on every area of people's lives. It works for physical healing, but also helps people emotionally and mentally. It aids in bringing spiritual clarity and evolvement. It is also relaxing and stress-relieving. I believe it's a perfect complement to coaching and will help supercharge any coaching efforts.

The perfect thing about all of this is that both the reiki and the coaching can be done remotely. Reiki is traditionally a "hands-on" practice, but works equally well with distance treatments. (At Reiki Level II, practioners can practice this form of treatment).

So anyway, I'm embarking on this new path and I'm really thrilled. I'll let you know what happens next. You can let me know if you're interested in having a life that's more sane.

Birthday Celebration

"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
~Abraham Lincoln

Last Thursday, I celebrated my 35th birthday. I had a really great birthday. P. and I started off the day (after dropping off the kids at their respective schools) by going to an auction. A few weeks ago we were at the very cool house of some friends for a party. P. complimented our hosts on the great furniture they had. They smiled smugly and said "we get everything at this amazing estate auction. Do you see this couch? We got it for $25. See that table... $15." And on it went. They said that they go every Thursday morning and there are definite deals to be found. I've been eyeing my increasingly shabby living room furniture and dreaming of a room makeover for quite a while now, so the lure of this amazing auction was just too great. I asked Peter if we could go on my birthday. And we went.

It was quite an experience. The auction starts at 9 a.m. with box lots. We arrived about 20 minutes earlier so that we could inspect the items and figure out what we wanted. I immediately saw a gorgeous arm chair that I loved and a really cool side table. We also had our eye on a Louis XVI-style love seat and a kitchen table. We registered with the auction, received a paddle, and then found our friends. The auction started promptly at 9 and the auctioneer flew through the items. If you were distracted in the slightest, you could easily miss an item. At one point I looked down at my phone to respond to an e-mail and I missed three items. Anyway, my favorite chair sold for far more than I was willing to pay ($175), but we got the cool mid-century modern side table for only $10. We stayed until 11:30, but had to leave before they got to our kitchen table and other interesting items. We're DEFINITELY going back though. That was fun!

Later, my buddy Steve took me out for a lovely lunch at Gulf Stream. I had a delicious seared scallop salad and then we shared an ice cream sunday. The server brought it out with a candle on the top. I blew out the candle and wished for more yummy meals like that one. Delish!

That night I had a low-key dinner with the family. I was suffering from a pretty bad cold and decided that I would try to rest up for my fabulous M Party.

I told P. that I wanted a party to celebrate my special birthday. I thought that a Martini party would be fun. I also had seen packs of moustaches at a party store in the "Fiesta" section, and thought it would be really fun to have a Mexican Fiesta party. P. combined the ideas and threw me an M Party- replete with Moustaches, Martinis, Mojitos, Mediterranean food, Mexican Music, M&Ms, Merlot, etc. Anyway, we threw the party and it was a blast. It's rather impossible to not have fun when you're wearing a fake moustache... and when you're drinking a mojito... and when you're eating my husband's amazing Moroccan Tagine. So all in all the party was a rousing success. If these birthday celebrations are any indication of the year to come, there's going to be a lot of "life" in this year. :)