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CONTENTS
1.Welcome Back!
2.Throwing on the Paint
3.10 Ways
to Live in Splendid Technicolour
4.Quotable Quotes
WELCOME
BACK!
After an
extended summer break, I am extremely pleased to welcome you back on this
Labour Day weekend for another instalment of the “Compose Your Life” coaching
newsletter. I hope that the changes of pace and season have allowed you to
return with renewed vigour and enthusiasm to your fall routines.
As a way
of “catching up” (did any of you notice that we’d skipped a bit more than one
month since the last edition?), I’d like to share two events which marked my
summer indelibly. The first was a collaborative coaching workshop offered in
conjunction with my dear colleague Anna Stowers, who flew over from Germany for
the event. Entitled “Coaching Tools for Personal
Leadership”, the 2-day workshop was offered at Montreal’s inner-city Padua
Centre to a group of young black adults enrolled in the “Youth in Motion”
program. Their trust and willingness to participate fully and
explore personally challenging issues using these coaching tools and
technologies made this workshop a fantastic experience for all involved. It was
truly heart-warming to witness the trust established by deep listening, and the
effectiveness and value of the coaching toolkit in such a setting.
The second
event to mark my summer was the realisation of a new project, the setting up of
a neighbourhood juice and smoothie bar called “Ô JUS”. You may well ask what
would cause me to be interested in such an endeavour, seemingly so different
from personal life coaching. But in point of fact, for me it is all related ...
Living life at its fullest entails connecting high levels of health, passion,
skills and contribution – and enjoying making the connections! So just as I
encourage my coaching clients to grow by embracing new challenges in line with
their values, I have followed suit - and deeply appreciated my own personal kit
of self-coaching tools in the process. The result? An exhilarating mixture of
stimulating new circumstances and people; huge learning curves; and multiple
possibilities each day to reframe difficulties as potential solutions ... These
recent experiences have certainly generated a deeper sense of compassion and an
understanding of project development and management, which will no doubt be
useful in my coaching in the future. For those of you who are interested in
experiencing the end result first-hand, I extend a warm welcome to drop in for
a healthy drink or snack along with a possible coaching conversation!
THROWING
ON THE PAINT
“Life
is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can”
--- Danny Kaye
When this
quote recently crossed my path, it struck me that it was a wonderful metaphor
for living life fully. It resonates with a sense of joyful, reckless abandon
which defies living in a boring monochrome state. More specifically, it sums up
my recent adventure in creating a beautiful colourful environment in which to
house Ô JUS. Believing in the strong
influence of our environment upon us, I consciously chose to infuse the
physical setting with light and positivity. The experience has been a most
rewarding one, and I would encourage each one of you to explore and enjoy
adding more paint on the unique canvas of your own life. Please read on below
for some suggestions of how to begin, and be sure to add your own strategies to
the list! I would love to hear back from you with your ideas on the matter ...
10
WAYS TO LIVE IN SPLENDID TECHNICOLOUR
-Rediscover what's important.Set aside time to
make a list of everything that's important to you and everything that you want
to do in life. Now cut that list down to four or five things. This is your personal
list of core values. As you begin to focus your life more on these things, you
will experience living in full colour!
-Simplify your life and consciously choose what you want
to eliminate. What about those things that are not on your short list of core
values? As Thomas Leonard, the father of modern-day coaching, wrote: "To
simplify is to make less complex. To eradicate is to cut things out. You don't
have to lop chunks of your life off unless you want to."
-Find your passion.Similar to the first tip, this one asks you to find
your calling. First, think about what you really love to do. Then try to incorporate this into the way you make your
living.
-Spend time each day to open your heart.As we develop an attitude of loving compassion towards ourselves and
others, it brings us one step closer to loving all of
humanity, one person at a time.
-Think
about life as one exciting adventure after another interspersed with quiet
times in between. Then begin to follow what excites you. Dare to take chances and dance
with risk rather than focus solely on what might
go wrong. As the saying goes, life is not a dress rehearsal – this is the real
thing, here and now.
-Access
inspiration by getting outside and paying close attention to Nature. Take pleasure in
Nature’s infinitely beautiful and evolving palette of colours and textures, and
allow yourself to marvel in her mysteries.
-Inhabit
your body-self and feel the joy of being physically active. Establish a
connection between movement and the creation of warm colours!
-Be positive. Learn to recognize the negative thoughts you have and
replace them with positive, solution-focused thoughts. It’s a wonderfully
effective way to banish pervasive grey tones ...
-Constantly learn new skills. Seek to improve yourself instead of remaining
static - not because you're imperfect now, but because it is gratifying and creates
an awesome kaleidoscope of colours. Self-acceptance is the starting point but it
doesn’t erase self-improvement - if only because the process of development is
life itself.
-Incorporate spirituality into your daily life. Discover whatever form this may genuinely take for
you – connecting with a higher energy source, God, Buddha, Jesus, Allah,
worship of ancestors’ spirits or nature. Then continue to access this power and
allow yourself to be infused with its transformative light.
-Be
in the moment. Instead of thinking about things you need to do, what has
happened to you, or worrying or planning or regretting, think about what you
are doing, right now. What colours are in and around you here and now? Learn to
do this through meditation as well as by bringing your focus back to the
present as much as you can in everything you do. Becoming aware allows us to
enjoy a vast array of colours as they truly are – natural Technicolor at its
best!
QUOTABLE QUOTES
“I
have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and
changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through
water, and altered the color of my mind. “ - - - Emily Bronte
“Circumstances and situations do
color life but you have been given the mind to choose what the color shall be.”
-
- - John Homer Miller
“The
kaleidoscope of colour which is my life shows the interesting choices I've made
along the way. “
- - - Antie Koekie
“An
unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.”
- - - Honoré de Balzac
“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or
usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky. “ - - - Rabindranath Tagore
“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its
thoughts.” - - - Marcus Aurelius
“Sit in reverie and watch the changing color
of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.” - - - Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow
“In our life there is a single color, as on an
artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color
of love.” - - - Marc Chagall
