Happy New Year Everyone, I hope you enjoyed your time with friends and family and celebrated in the best way you wanted to.

It’s hard not to talk about resolutions this time of year, because that is what everyone is talking about. We are instantly bombarded with the question of what is your resolution – is it to stop smoking, to lose weight,  to budget, to save money, make your own lunch, to stop buying coffee in the morning on your way to work.  All of these are good goals but what else can we focus on? Have you considered your relationships? Like the one you have with food, dessert, coffee, nicotine, alcohol, weed? The one  you have with family, friends, your job, your colleagues? How do these aspects of your life look like? I often think about what is it that we are doing wrong with our resolutions, what is the missing link that prevents us from being successful?  Well I think it’s about our intentions. Have we clearly defined the aspects of our lives that we want to change?  This year on New Year’s Eve I took some time to do some writing, I broke my thoughts up into three sections:  First – what am I grateful for? Second – what do I need to let go of? Third- what are my intentions for the coming year?

Being grateful is an important part and step for moving forward. If it has been a difficult year, it gives you some time and space to think about what was good.  You might just surprise yourself on how many great things did happen to you, even if you originally thought it was not so great. Writing about what you need to let go of allows you to release any pain that is bottled up, helps you heal and creates space for new things. And lastly, writing about what your intentions are for this year allows you to paint the picture you want your life to look like. It sends messages to the Universe of the things you will be actively working towards, and energetically things will begin to transform. 

Each day begin with a breath, an intention and telling yourself you love yourself and are able to move forward…you will see you can achieve all of your resolutions!

Till next time, love yourself and your family

Pina

PS. Taking the Evolution course is also a great boost in that direction!

So what do you do when all hell breaks loose? You know, when you’ve had a week or two where all things seem to fall apart? Have you ever had such a week when all things go wrong?

…like in a week you find out that your aunt died, having endured a major fight with cancer and major surgery leaving her with one arm and half a torso, and she ends up dying of a heart attack. And that same week, you learn your mother has to go in for surgery, it’s not serious, but it needs to be done soon.  And while sitting with your sister on a Tuesday afternoon going through the list of things that need to get done, she gets a phone call by her doctor telling her she has breast cancer.   Not to mention, you didn’t get that position you applied for at work, your community development project in Africa is going slower than originally planned as the shea butter that was supposed to be selling at 2 Christmas shows this month failed to arrive on time, which meant cancelling the shows and losing the funds…all this does not exclude the blurred days, the weeks that followed going to several appointments, feeling an array of emotions, and bad hair days. And wondering why those pants you bought three weeks ago no longer fit.  And all this is not without wondering about the friends that reach out, friends you thought would reach out but don’t..the run on sentences…and the mind chatter that you wish would just shut the fk up?!

So, what do you do?

Well, taking a break from it all is a good start.  Just Stop.

BREATHE..yup, we need to do it every moment of our day to continue to exist. It sounds simple enough but it’s amazing how we forget when you feel your life is a mess.  With all that goes on in everyone’s life, it’s important to stop and breathe… stop for a minute to regain focus, strength and gain clarity.

Stop doing, or try doing what you think you should be doing, you are usually just spinning your wheels and not getting far anyway.  So turn off the phones, the ipods, the facebook, the msn, the twitter, the tv, turn off the lights and shut your mind down.

Breathe…focus on that for a while each day, see what happens. My guess is that at some point on some random day, you will find strength and the courage to move again.

Til next time, love yourself and your family.

Pina

It’s Thanksgiving time again, the weekend for family and friends to get together to “enjoy a feast in each others company”. A bit corny, you’re probably thinking. I got scolded today when I was at one of my childhood’s friends house enjoying an amazing dinner with friends and I gave that answer when we were asked, “What are you thankful for this year?” After making a mini fuss about it, I was punished to go last :P. Making our way around the table, everyone had a few seconds to say what they were thankful for this year. Some were thankful for their travel experiences this year, others were thankful for new jobs/careers, and some were thankful for the new people in their life, and also the old who are still around. As I looked around the room, I realized how happy I really was to be right there, sharing that moment with most of my dearest friends. Dating back from my diaper days to my middle school days to high school and then university.. it’s amazing to see who has stuck around till now. I know whatever happens, they are always the people that I can turn to for whatever reason. There are some that are closer than others, but I can accept that fact, and it’s often that friendships change too over the years.

When reflecting on what I am really thankful for this year …

- The special someone that has entered my life and has become my rock, my other half.

- Having a direction for my career path and getting a clearer vision of what I want to be, where I want to work, what I want to be doing for the next couple years of my life.

- My family, that has stuck together through the best and the worst times.

- Knowing Mimi for 15 years. RIP.

- And of course, Twitter!

What made 2009 so special for you this year? What are you thankful for?

It’s that time of year again; my father has reaped the benefits of his hard work in the garden. Our Thanksgiving is about gathering to have a taste of the garden harvest, taking the first sip of the still fermenting red wine, and to celebrate the life of my grandfather now past.  Who said you had to stick to the Pilgrim’s story when you have your own story!

Over the last 13 years, my sister has cooked Thanksgiving dinner and for the last 13 years, she has managed to make a different dish, either the potatoes, the squash, the stuffing, and even for me as a vegetarian, she makes a different fish dish.  There is a different recipe, different flavour and different presentation. We are excited about what she will cook up each year.  So I began to think, what is different about me this year? What’s new about me? Do I have a new recipe for how I live my life? What is different about you? What have you gathered over the past year that has added value and makes you a better you at this time in your life? What have you dished out, let go and gotten rid of?

The table is full of food, the wine is passed around several times between each course, and inevitable I forget to bring the salad to the table..and the same conversation ensues…’ohhhh catzo!!!, wat, my mom say…..I forgot to bring the salad upstairs………Shema!! Watsuposetodo now? Who wan salad?…no one ma, we are all full…ohhhh che fregatura…wat a waste of good olive oil!!!….

It is by far our best family tradition!  What are you bringing to the table this year?

Till next time, love yourself and your family

Pina

P.S…I bring the apple crumble

If you’re a parent you’re going to love this. According to a British study children who eat too much candy maybe more likely to be arrested for violent behavior as adults.
Yes the next time you and the kids are shopping and they all scream for ice-cream or an O’Henry bar you’d better watch out. The next thing you could be shopping for is a lawyer.
Now I’ve said this before, these types of studies always make me laugh because the variables are humongous. A British group called the Economic and Social Research Council paid for the study. What they do and why is never explained but to think that this group followed a bunch of kids for 40 years to see the results of eating too much candy makes me cringe.
Lets be real when you’re a kid candy is fun and parents like sweets because it gives them a bargaining tool when they want their kids to stop bugging them. So you see candy is a win-win situation.
Of course this study makes me think of a few other things children do that could have detrimental effects on them becoming respectable adults.
Kids who grow up throwing alot of stones might eventually pitch in major league baseball, which of course leads to steroid use. Kids who make snow angels may be more likely to be lazy adults since laying down gets huge applause as a kid, not so much as an adult.
Young kids who ride bikes will continue to ride two wheels into adulthood which leads to bike gangs and charges of living off the avails of prostitution. Kids who show their pee pee will eventually become politicians who have affairs while still in office. Little kids who go around screaming because they are having fun may lead to screaming in the House of Commons like some adults do.
Children who blow alot of bubbles because it’s fun could grown up to be adults who blow smoke up people’s butts. How about those kids who paint their faces. As adults I can see them painting their faces and going to Leaf games and just being obnoxious.
As you can see there are many things children do that might lead to shocking behavior as adults, but here is the solution. BE A PARENT. Eating too much candy isn’t going to do anything except maybe rot your teeth. We cannot blame candy companies for adults being violent but we can blame bad parenting. By the way how do you spot a bad parent? Easy, they’re the ones who don’t give their kids any candy.

Clichéd or not, it’s worth repeating. 2 ears : 2 eyes : 1 mouth… use proportionally!

Seems easy right? We should spend twice as much time listening and watching as we do talking. But is it that easy? Do we really value listening and observing?

Let’s think about that for a minute. When’s the last time you came home from a party, a night out or some other social function and said ‘wow, that Scott is a really good listener.’ Probably never.  On the other hand, the life of the party is the person telling jokes and keeping things going. So do we value speaking over listening?

Absolutely!

And we can look further than our social worlds to know that’s true. Think about work, for instance. Who gets ahead – the person who speaks up or the person who listens carefully? I would argue that our whole society is structured to reward the best communicators.  Despite some prevalent ideas about how important listening is, we’ve come to define successful communication exclusively in terms of what comes out, not what gets in.

And that makes my job as a therapist and coach even harder! I’m the person who must listen and observe to do my job properly. By virtue of necessity/experience I see the incredible value in listening over talking. But convincing others of that is not so easy.

How many times have you heard yourself or someone else saying ‘if he had just said that in the first place’ or ‘why didn’t she tell me that’s what she wanted’. We all have. And we all nod our heads in agreement when we hear this. We understand how frustrating it is when others aren’t communicating with us effectively.  Or maybe they are and we’re just not listening?

Communicating isn’t only about talking. It’s also about listening. Instead of nodding our heads in agreement or making those statements ourselves what would happen if we said ‘what was he trying to tell me’ or ‘was there something I might have missed?’

In other words, what would happen if instead of putting our misunderstandings on the inability of others to express themselves we started thinking more about what they’re trying to tell us and how they’re saying it?

My guess – based on a lot of experience in my own life and the lives of my clients – is that we’d start hearing things we thought weren’t there. These are typically things we don’t always want to hear and I’m pretty certain they’re going to be said in ways very different from the way we’d say them but the messages are there if you do the math: twice as much listening and watching as talking! And as painful as it might be in the short term to make this change our understanding of others is bound to grow exponentially.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not letting those strong silent types off the hook. You gotta use your words too. But they have to be willing to take that on as their own growth challenge just as much as you have to be willing to take on your difficulties in the listening department. Change starts at home.  So before you point the finger at others take a minute to focus on yourself first. The results will be amazing.

Scott McGrath, M.S.W., R.S.W.

Coach – Therapist – Consultant

www.scottmcgrath.ca

Celebrations are a powerful way to draw family together. What else could possibly lure a grown woman to board her 73 year old father’s cigar scented Buick, along with her also adult brother and sister, and drive 900 km to Chicago.

The lure, a celebration of course: the 499^th Convocation at the University of Chicago. My nephew was graduating with a Masters in Social Sciences. It was important to the all of us to be there, important enough to commit to a road trip.

Now the idea of a road trip, with the family you grew up with, can

fill the most loving heart with trepidation, angst and a sudden desire to want to cash in all your long hoarded travel points and book a flight rather than be trapped, for 81/2 hours, in a vehicle haunted by all that made you leave home in the first place. Fortunately, the current economic times prevented any of us from doing so. I say fortunately because I discovered something. What was a revelation to me was how fun, inspiring and rewarding this trip turned out to be. When I reflected on why that was, I realized it really came down to two things: acceptance & appreciation.

My Dad is extremely outgoing, positive and a jock in every sense of the word. Every morning, while in various Chicago breakfast spots, the four of us, started our day, at my Dad’s request, by high fiving each other or putting all our hands on top of one another and flinging them into the air with a victory cry of “Wooo!”

Why would three adult siblings so willingly enter into this morning ritual without hesitation or regard to how foolish or juvenile it might be? We did so because we stood in appreciation of our Dad and acceptance that this was his way of expressing his joy at having all of us together. Maybe not our first choice, of how to express ourselves, but hey, it did the trick.

What previously may have driven us nuts was simply now a tender moment of family fun and unity. What changed? Nothing more than a shift in our perspective. A choice to come from a place of gratitude seeped in appreciation and acceptance. We chose to be happy to be together, realizing it was a rare occurrence and the fact that the ringleader, of this whole mission, wanted us to have a sign of solidarity, as we started each new day together, suddenly became humourous, playful and engaging.

Irritation, annoyance and frustration are the easy places to go to. They are the habitual places especially when something is being asked of us. But the recognition that you have a choice-you can respond rather than react, from that habitual place, can completely transform an experience.

What was interesting was that the four of us had spontaneously chosen to appreciate our time together, to know that this was not about us but about celebrating a young man whom we all love. My brother, sister and I accepted that each of us expresses ourselves differently in ways that are unique to us and that can be a good thing because it takes us out of our comfortable, complacent and sometimes dull way of being.

Acceptance and appreciation made this road trip, this celebration, one to be remembered with laughter and a sense that it can be good to hang out with your family even with, or maybe even because of, all their foibles, demands and peculiarities.

Life is a journey and what better way to highlight that than a road trip!

Michelle Keeley

Business & Personal Coach

www.fruitionstrategies.com

..BE THERE…

For today, put your points of view aside; throw away your expectations and your ego, let go of your fear and just don’t show up but be there! Be there authentically, lovingly and with compassion.

We can all make the choice to go to the next family dinner, excited about seeing everyone, or we can cringe at the thought of sitting through another dinner or we can go feeling detached from everyone not caring whether you show up or not, in which case you do no one any good.  We all have our family quirks, we function or dysfunction in a certain way, and in some ironic way, it all works.  Every now and again, you get some news about the extended family, whose getting married, who had a child, who passed away, the usual updates.  Till one day, the family is thrown a curve ball, a jolt no one expected. That was my family, not 2 weeks ago. My sister discovered a lump in her breast. Her telling me gave a lump in my throat, I am not quite sure I have been swallowing properly since.  Ok, I said with a deep breath, I asked her what were the next steps and how can I be of help. She then began the process of telling the family. She sat the parents down; she spoke to our sister and even sat down with our niece and nephew.  So now what? What do we do? What do we say?

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