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Many years ago, my friend, Amy, pointed out that I was constantly dreaming of someday ... never happy with where I was at. Always imagining myself in the future, somewhere else, rather than being content with where I was at, whether my dreams involved a new relationship, a new home or a new career. “You better watch out,” she warned, “or one day you’ll wake up and realize that life passed you by ‘cause you were always looking for something better.”

At the time, her words grated against me like an annoying mother trying to keep her kid’s head out of the clouds. And I thought, hey, that’s her “issue” not mine. I mean, what’s wrong with dreaming about a better life?

But the other day, I ran across this quote from Mother Teresa, posted on a friend’s Facebook page, and I thought hmmm …: “May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be … May you be content with yourself just the way you are. Let this knowledge settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for e

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A few years ago when my husband turned 50, I jumped on his case to schedule his inaugural colonoscopy. Fifty is the magical age, at least when it comes to screening for colon cancer. While my husband isn’t predisposed to colon cancer, I’ve known enough people who have been diagnosed with the disease way too late or just in the nick of time. And I certainly didn’t want to see that happen to my guy.

The thing is that people often think they’re beyond the reaches of colon cancer, or that the disease is fairly rare, but the truth is that in the United States colorectal cancer is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer and the third leading cause of cancer both in men and women.  In fact, in 2011, the American Cancer Society predicts that about 141,210 new cases will be diagnosed and 49.380 people will die of the disease in our country alone. And though there is certainly a genetic component to colon cancer, even if

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Admittedly I'm a sucker for inspirational stories.

So when I heard that Trisha Meili, aka, The Central Park Jogger, was going to be the keynote speaker at the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center’s Faces of Change luncheon, I leapt at the opportunity to hear what she had to say.

I probably would have attended the fundraiser anyway, because I am so grateful for the many ways the Rape Crisis Center helped me

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Years ago, I couldn’t understand why older adults who called themselves “snow birds,” would fly south to “winter over” in warmer climates like Florida or Arizona. Oh, I got it, to a certain extent. Cleveland winters are not for pansies. They are cold and icy, and in some years, seemingly endless. But picking up and moving to a warmer climate for three or more months? Well, that always sounded a bit extreme, even given the extremes of our weather patterns, which can bury us in snow or turn our homes into ice castles.

But after this past winter, when we were pummeled with more snow and ice than I can remember since the winters of my youth, I finally got it. And who knows? Maybe one day I will proudly join the ranks of snowbirds and fly south for the winter.

I don’t mean to complain about the weather, because, after all, it’s finally sprin

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A couple years ago, I was working with a client who wanted to incorporate more “fun” into his life. When I asked him what he enjoyed most in life, he drew a blank. It had been a long time since he’d had any fun, he admitted.

 

During a coaching session, I helped him remember a time when his life had been more joyful and spontaneous. And we explored some ways that he could incorporate more fun into his life.

 

Then, I presented him with a challenge: wha

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In my last ShareWIK post, I talked about how we sometimes need to give ourselves permission to rest.  But as one of my coaching clients pointed out, sometimes it isn’t about getting more rest: it’s about finding ways to feel less overwhelmed. Good point!

 

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Tomorrow will come but it’s important to focus on today. If you live and breath in the moment, you will feel less overwhelmed and more in control. Here are five tips to help you control your life.

In my last ShareWIK post (http://www.sharewik.com/blogs/item/rest-is-not-a-four-letter-word), I talked about how we sometimes need to give ourselves permission to rest. But as one of my coaching clients pointed out, sometimes it isn’t about getting more rest – it’s about finding ways to feel less overwhelmed. Good point!

If you’re like many of my coaching clients, you may feel overwhelmed when life “becomes” crazy busy. While we can’t always control the circumstances in our life, the one thing we can control is the way we resp

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Do you need to be seriously ill in order to give yourself permission to rest and relax? If so, you’re hardly alone. In our culture, where being crazy busy is often worn as a badge of honor, many of us believe that “rest” is a dirty four-letter word.

Years ago, I bought into that theory. In order to give myself permission to rest, I’d have to have the flu, preferably with a fever and the chills. Like many people, I grew up in a family where being busy was a positive attribute and resting was equated with being a big fat slug. Resting was acceptable when you were seriously ill, but otherwise it was best to keep on moving.

Later, that message was reinforced in Corporate America, where the equation, seemed pretty simple: crazy busy = increased productivity and profits. For a short time, I worked at a company that pushed that equation to the limit. It was a place where no one seemingly took sick days even when they were seriously ill, and though we received generous vacation benefits, few people dared to take time off. When I quietly inquired about what was up with that, I was told that employees were scared that if they took a vacation, their jobs wouldn�...... [ Read the rest of this story ]

After my Mom died, the littlest things seemed to set me off. A woman in her 70s singing off key. A beautiful set of silver candlesticks that my mother would have loved. A redhead in the grocery store who could have been cast as my Mom’s identical twin. Suddenly, there I was, out in public, tears streaming down my cheeks thinking oh no, not Niagra Falls again!

Although I’m a big believer in the healing power of tears and feeling our feelings rather than suppressing them, as I was standing there in the frozen foods section with tears in my eyes, I suddenly wished I was one of the stoic ones. Strong.  Graceful. And most importantly, dry-eyed.

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A few weeks ago, my friend, Linda (not her real name), emailed me to see if I had time to talk. She’d recently made the difficult decision to transfer her beloved father into a “memory unit” in a nursing facility, and she was struggling, not so much with her decision, but with all the emotions that were bubbling up inside her, as she watched her father, who has Alzheimer’s Disease, slip away a little bit more everyday.

“It so sad to watch,” she said. “It feels like I’m grieving, even though he’s still alive.”

I could so relate to what she was describing because my beloved father-in-law, John, who died about a year and a half ago, also had Alzheimer’s disease and we, too, had made the painful decision to transfer him into a special memory care unit after he continued to decline week after week after week. At first, we bristled at

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