There's a word for that...

My word for 2015 is COMMITMENT - I got fed up with resolutions, I made too many, couldn't remember what they were and lost the list anyway.

Having one word is much easier.

Last year my word was CREATIVITY and I had a blast with it.   Not only did I sew, draw, knit, crochet and paint furniture, I also practised new ways to approach familiar situations and behaviours - looking for a better, more creative way to handle life's challenges.

This year using COMMITMENT as my guiding principle is helping to ground much of what I learned.


Last year I had so many creative projects on the go they colonised the bedrooms and it would take me hours to clear up my stuff to make room for visitors. So in January COMMITMENT saw me gathering my stuff and moving it all into one designated room.  My husband generously offered me his study and I created a lovely office space for him on the upstairs landing (nicer than it sounds, honest).  The spare bedroom is now ready for visitors at a moments notice, I have a perfect space to work in and everything has its rightful place.

February's COMMITMENT was to unfinished business.  All the half finished projects from last year got put on a list and I slowly worked my way through them.  Not just the pyjamas I hadn't finished sewing, or the blanket/quilt/baby hat I was still working on, I made a concerted effort to listen very consciously to the voice inside my head that nags me about stuff I have or haven't done, or berates me about situations or relationships that need attention.  Again, I wrote them down and slowly worked my way through them.... okay some didn't get addressed right away, but I am much clearer about them; I now know what I have to do and have set myself some deadlines.

March's COMMITMENT is to a fresh start. The house is clean, the cupboards sorted, the charity shop donated to.  With the longer days I go for a lovely morning run with the dog through woodlands and a water meadow.  Each time my heart is filled with such gratitude not only that I am surrounded by glorious countryside, but that my body is still able to move with relative ease and that I can start each day with health giving habits.

April's COMMITMENT will see the start of me Making Wednesdays Matter and establishing a more focussed approach to the things I want to achieve in 2015. We've a busy year ahead - loads of family weddings, a little granddaughter to delight in; projects in the house and at work that we want to get on with and I know that creating focus will help things to run smoothly.

I have no idea what the rest of the year will look like but I do know that using COMMITMENT as my lens I am learning to see things differently and create successful outcomes with much greater ease.

6 easy steps to Commitment

 
• Make some noise. Write down what you would love to achieve this year and tell someone. There's something about saying it out loud and having someone witness it that helps the process. Your projects could all be fun but make at least one something you know is going to be a challenge but will make life easier in the long run.  Here are just some on my list:  sew a dressing gown, learn to knit fair isle and socks (not necessarily at the same time), put the decades of photos into albums, move the garden shed...
• Be Self-Centred.  The first stage is to commit to yourself first - to make your own success and happiness matter too. This has to be something that is important to you and not done to please others or to keep the peace.   If you find yourself fighting the process - stop, go back and check if the outcomes are really what you want. 
• Fire up your neurons.  We are natural problem solvers and asking yourself the right kind of question  activates the mind's own search engine.  Questions like 'what would commitment to this task look like?' will fire up those brain cells and you'll soon be coming up with creative solutions. 
• Make a cup of tea.  The unconscious Creative Mind works in images and metaphor and is a powerful driver of your behaviour.   Help harness this resource by gathering images that help you see what the finished outcome will look like.  So gather up some magazines, make a cup of tea and leaf through the pictures - its all 'research'.  Whilst Pinterest is amazing - having a note book, vision board or even a box with a pile of ripped out pictures as physical reference helps to anchor the process and harness the power of your Creative Mind.
• Beware the Kiss of Death.  Two things act as a Kiss of Death to Commitment: guilt that you're not achieving your goal and fear that you will lose your freedom if you do.  Make your goals realistic and achievable, keep checking in with yourself: are these ideas/goals/dreams important to you? If so keep asking yourself what commitment looks like - and give yourself time to listen in, the answers will come.  
• Phone a friend.  Sometimes its good to talk things through when you get stuck. Its good to remember that asking for help is not a sign of weakness but of leadership - it communicates that you want to lead your life.  If you don't have someone to call on who wants you to achieve your goals  - put it on the list!  And give me a call :)

5 Daily Habits for Successful Relationships

Simple principles to help your relationship flourish.

1.     Commit to the relationship!
There is an art to commitment, it doesn’t mean just sticking around.  Commitment simply means making the other person’s success and well-being as important to you as your own.  Doing so creates an environment where problems and difficulties are more easily addressed.   Committing to the process of mutual understanding and forgiveness, no matter how many conversations it takes or how uncomfortable it gets, makes a relationship a safe place to deal with anything that comes up.

2.  Communicate openly and honestly.

When we feel something strongly and either don’t have the courage or the know-how to express it, it puts the relationship under strain.  To be open and honest you have to research how you are feeling and learn to communicate it skillfully. Telling the truth doesn’t need to be unkind but withholding information can also be used to wound another. Honest and open communication is a life-long learning process and strengthens the relationship.

3. Learn the art of forgiveness.

Blame and criticism erode the relationship. You may not be aware of being critical or complaining, although you may be aware of it in your partner! Remember, it takes two to run a cycle of blame and complaint, but only one to break it.  Find new and creative ways to communicate what does and doesn’t work for you, and take full responsibility for what is going on for you within the relationship.   You can change virtually anything you want in the relationship by breaking your own patterns and cycles.  

4.  Do things that make you happy.

Its time to get a life!  By doing things that you find stimulating and fulfilling you create you feel inspired, which brings fresh energy and life to the relationship. Everyone needs something that gives them meaning, that motivates them and gives them purpose.  Making the other person your reason for living is like being an emotional vampire, you'll suck the relationship dry!  We all have to find our own unique contribution and feel fulfilled by it and trying to find validation through our partner’s achievements will only lead to feelings of inadequacy or resentment, which erode trust and confidence. 

5. Express your appreciation.

Never assume your partner knows how you feel, it is important for you and for them that it is communicated. When expressing appreciation make it genuine, personal and specific to the other person and do it as often and as creatively as you can! It may be something you say, something you do or even something you stop doing, but letting someone know how much you appreciate them could make their day - and yours.

If you need support working on these daily habits, why not try a Family@Heart course?  It's a great way to help you put these principles into action.  New courses starting in September. Contact me to book your place.

Fighting for Love

Couples don't have hundreds of arguments they just have the same argument hundreds of different ways.  It can start with a silly domestic about the washing up or who put the empty milk carton back in the fridge and then suddenly, like a forest fire, get out of control, fanned by hurt and fuelled by any unresolved emotional litter lying between you.

A relationship heartbreak in the early days is like hairline fracture; it hurts but it doesn't stop you loving one another because you're powered by the passion and attraction of the 'Honeymoon' energy.  However,  when the relationship moves into the next phase of growth - the Power Struggle  - the fracture makes itself felt. A stumble or falter in the relationship suddenly sparks the pain of that earlier hurt and you find yourself hurting twice over.

By the time you get to the next phase - the Dead Zone -  the damage done by those unhealed injuries undermine the stability of the relationship and result in a catastrophic breakdown.

However, there is another way.

All relationships carry the burden of unresolved heartbreaks.  Some will be from the relationship itself, many you will have brought from your past.  Learning how to identify which is which and addressing the emotions you try to hide from yourself or your beloved is a vital practice for a healthy, strong relationship and will take you to the next level of relationship - Partnership.

You know that old joke '"How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" "Practice, Practice"'?  Its the same for Partership.  Practice in relationship means commitment to communication and learning how to talk about emotions.  Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes Love, so that when something imperfect surfaces it can be met with compassion and be healed.

Relationships are the breeding ground for pain and joy.  It takes emotional courage, honesty and good communication skills to open up the subject of old hurt in a relationship and to work through all the phases of the issue.  However in doing so you each get back something of yourself you'd lost all those years ago, and create space for greater love, partnership and intimacy.

So what are you really fighting for?

Need help working this out? Relationship Training helps you make sense of what is going on and gives you the tools you need to do something about it.   Contact Kim for more details.

Can you say the C word?

Commitment: Heaven or Hell?

Its a word that brings conversation to a halt, makes people uncomfortable and can be very upsetting.

I'm talking about the biggest C word of all - Commitment.

People get scared of commitment because they believe it means being tied down, but true commitment is actually the key to freedom. 

Simply put, commitment means becoming emotionally engaged.  It takes effort, it takes courage and it certainly takes practice - but the long term benefits far outweigh the short term discomfort of learning something new.

And Commitment gets your life out of the doldrums.

The journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step.


If the idea of commitment fills you with dread, then its likely you're  trying to run before you can walk.  Let's  break the process down into manageable chunks. 

Commitment is an art and a practice and has several levels. 

Level 1: Its all about you!
You can't solve any problem if you're overwhelmed or lack confidence, so the first level of commitment needs to be to yourself. 

Taking care of yourself is not a selfish act, it's a sign of leadership.  It is a clear communication that you are ready to lead your life rather than have life lead you by the nose.  If you feel like your spinning too many plates or that you are constantly firefighting - its a sign that you've let life run away with you by putting everyone's needs ahead of your own.

The guiding principle here is:  I am worthy of self-compassion.

There are lots of resources out there to help strengthen the commitment to yourself (including inspiring and helpful video and book pages on this blog) It's also why I created the Family@Heart course; it taps right into this level and opens the door to a whole new way of living.

Level 2: Honest Communication
You're the common denominator in all areas of your life.  Whether its family, friends, work, health or finances, how you feel about yourself will dictate how successful you feel about life, and how well you enjoy it.

As your confidence and self-worth improves the next level of commitment is to living your life wholeheartedly.  You may begin to recognise behaviours and patterns in yourself or your relationships that are not helpful and the skills you develop as you commit to your own well-being will help you communicate more honestly about them.  The guiding principle here: Its important to me that I am authentic with you.
  
Level 3: Partnership
Partnership means creating a relationship based on equality. Most of us were not fortunate to experience a healthy model of partnership growing up and have very little to work with when it comes to creating it in our relationships.   Unhappy relationships are built on foundations of competition and inequality so the guiding principle here is: your success and happiness is as important to me as my own.

Partnership refuses to use the real dirty c-word in relationship - compromise.  With compromise everyone loses, commitment at this level makes resolution the goal - an outcome that everyone is happy with.  It may take longer, it may be difficult at times but this is what true commitment means: the process of mutual understanding, forgiveness and acceptance no matter how many conversations, or how difficult they may be.

The paradox is that when you get to this level you might discover some relationships are over, but the decision to move on is reached through love and understanding rather with blame and guilt - and the fall-out is far less damaging to all involved.

Marriage, parenting, caring for elderly parents, running a business: all require high levels of emotional maturity in order to create successful partnership. You can't get to level 3 without working on yourself, but the moment you start taking care of yourself commitment changes from being something that strikes fear in your heart to a way of opening up to a wholehearted life.

Ready to get started? Sign up for the next Family@Heart course in May.  

Make the commitment to yourself first here! 

Tale of tails.

I'll never forget the question that changed my life.  

I had promised the children we could have a dog and we finally chose a beautiful German Shepherd called Ella. She was very glamourous -  like a kind of doggy 1950s movie star: beautiful, intelligent and very high maintenance.  

But she never lay still.  She'd pace the house and began to chew the walls.  Sometimes when I opened the back door she would race across the field to the local school because she could hear children playing football.  I knew she only wanted to play but she'd run off with the ball and when I went to get her, a replacement for the punctured football in my hands, the headmaster warned me that it would only take one child to be scared and the dog would have to be put down.

I tried everything to help her settle - hours of walks and training, took her to classes, I even hired a dog whisperer!  I lovingly cooked tripe and baked healthy treats to make sure it wasn't her diet that was affecting her.  Then one day, out of the blue, my mother-in-law rang up and said "I don't think the dog is working out.  You have done everything you can, you're exhausted and I think you need to let her go."

I was so shocked.  I thought I'd hidden the toll that taking care of the family, running my business and trying to make the dog happy was taking.

The thought of getting rid of the children's beloved pet was agony.  I knew they would be devastated, especially the youngest.  I kept trying to calculate which would be the least damaging -  being a stressed-out mum for the rest of the dog's life or giving her away and ruining the children's childhood to save my sanity.  Every time I thought about getting rid of the dog I'd feel guilty and cruel and berate myself as a bad mother. Every time I thought about keeping her I wanted to shoot myself.

Then a friend asked me a life-changing question: '

'Are you willing to disappoint another in order to be true to yourself?'

I chewed that over for days but I knew the answer straight away.  I found a home for the dog and told the children we needed to let her go as she wasn't settled with us.  It was awful, one of the children just walked to the corner of the room, turned his face to wall and wept silently. They were heartbroken, we all were, but my friend's question kept ringing in my ears and, like a mantra, gave me the strength, courage and compassion to help us all through.

Ella was happy in her new home on a farm and, would you believe, four days after she'd gone a black kitten turned up at our back door and never left.  Despite asking around we never found where she came from but we all firmly believe she'd heard our heartbroken cries and came to help.  She's still taking care of us.  

It took a couple of years for the children to work through their grief and loss.  I never felt guilty, though.  I was sad for the children and I was sad that things didn't work out the way we'd all hoped.  Whenever we talked about it I always apologised, but I also forgave myself.  I knew I had done what was best for us all - including Ella.  

I learnt so much from this experience, but most valuable of all was the question itself.

Are you willing to disappoint another in order to be true to yourself?* 

(from 'The Invitation' by Oriah Mountain Dreamer)

Having a Domestic & a marriage-saving pancake recipe.

What do you do when you and your partner have totally different opinions about how the family handle domestic chores?

Just last week my teenage son deposited his considerable pile of dirty laundry next to the washing machine.  Heigh ho, I was doing a dark wash anyway so I loaded his in too and set the machine off before going to work - reminding him to hang it up to dry when it was finished

When I returned home I discovered that he had indeed emptied the washing machine - straight into the tumble drier.  When I asked why, my husband replied 'Oh, I told him to just chuck it in'.

Thank God for email.  I was so livid I made myself a cup of tea and went to check mine knowing I needed to give myself some space before I said anything I might regret.

The next morning I felt ready to discuss Laundrygate.  I didn't want to talk to my son - yet - I needed to clear the air with my husband first.

To be honest, even though I was making delicious banana pancakes for us both, he did not meet my request to talk with the greatest of enthusiasm.  In fact, when I asked if we could talk about the laundry incident he promptly walked away and started looking out of the window!

To be even more honest, I was nervous about opening up this topic anyway - it could so easily fall into an argument about who was right and who was wrong.  So I decided to start there - to explain that I felt nervous, that I was worried about bringing up this subject and that it wasn't about blame or criticism,  I wanted to talk about it because I was upset about what had happened and there were some important issues I wanted to clear up.

My husband turned back from the window (the pancakes were ready) and we opened up the conversation.  I explained that I had wanted our son to hang up his laundry for several reasons; firstly, not because I want to be the Laundry Police; our son is on the verge of adulthood and my focus is no longer on being a 'mummy' but on helping him develop the skills he needs for adult life.  The experiences in my own life and in my work have shown me that household issues can become a REALLY BIG DEAL in a relationship and as a mother I want to help him understand that domestic skills are also important life-skills.

Secondly, the drier is a greedy beast that devours fossil fuels and is not something to be used unthinkingly.  If I had been doing the laundry I would have hung the wet stuff up to dry.  It can be a boring, mind-numbing job I know, but having a good system helps the general flow of laundry traffic.

But there was a third, even more important issue here, and it was the one that had the biggest charge for me.  When I really investigated why I had felt so upset I realised that I felt I was being cast as the mean one by asking my son to do the laundry and that there was a game of Good Cop/Bad Cop going on.  You know, the one where one of you is the nice, kind, cuddly parent and the other the mean, strict, stressy one?

The Bad Cop tells them to clean up their room the Good Cop laughs and takes them out for ice-cream.  The Bad Cop asks for the dishes to be cleared away, the Good Cop starts a tickling game.  The Bad Cop sticks to bedtime routine the Good Cop lets them stay up as long as they like.

In most relationships one partner tends to be more 'disciplined' than the other and the roles can sometimes reverse, depending on circumstances.  There will always be differences of opinion and ways of handling situations, but the important thing to remember is the impact playing Good Cop /Bad Cop can have when there is no awareness of the dynamic, or when it is being used to score points off each other.    Unresolved issues in a relationship makes the Good Cop/Bad Cop game really nasty; the conflicting messages are confusing to the children and create stress, plus in the race to score points the children are forced to choose and by doing so they suffer.

Even though I'm long in the parenting tooth this dynamic is an old pattern in our relationship and, like a pernicious weed, it keeps coming up just when I think its all gone.  However, I am committed to addressing my part in it and it's not that I want to be the Good Cop, I just don't want to play the game at all anymore.  I want to keep building partnership and I know that in order to do so I have to be willing to change the way I handle the situations that trigger me.

Instead of falling into Bad Cop mode ( blame & punishment) I gave myself some time to identify what it was that really bothered and then talked about it.  It wasn't easy, I went off track a few times, but I kept reminding myself that to change the pattern I needed to remain open, communicate honestly and set my goal for mutual understanding.  How to have a difficult conversation

It would have been easy to dismiss this event as just a domestic hiccup, but the small events offer a great opportunity to work on relationship and deepen the partnership.  Sometimes working on the 'silly' stuff is much more effective - and easier - than having to address the same thing when the problems become serious.  Plus the benefit is that by doing so you learn how to build a strong foundation of true partnership for your family to grow up on .

Here's a link to the recipe for marriage-saving pancakes and another to get in touch if you want further help!

Reconnection

She stumbled to the edge of vulnerability.
I'm scared, she cried.
Me too, he declared.
They sat on opposite sides of the divide and wept.

She stumbled to the edge of vulnerability.
I'm scared, she wept.
Me too, he sobbed.
You'll judge me, she said.
I'm not enough, he whispered.
I've made mistakes, she confessed.
I've got it wrong, he announced.
And together they rebuilt the bridge
.

TeamGB: you had me at 'on your mark'

I'm exhausted.  


I've rowed, run, biked, swum and wept.  With pride, with joy, with heartbreak.  All from the comfort of my sofa.  And it's only the first week of the Olympics.


Watching the Olympics is a rollercoaster of emotions.  These amazing athletes give their all and their best.  All week I have been celebrating and commiserating, feeling so so proud of TeamGB for their talent, their dedication and their heart.


Whilst the rapidly growing tally of medals is filling us all with pride, the real talent I have witnessed is the team's sheer class.  Each athlete interviewed has shown such gratitude, humility, integrity, respect and love not just for their sport but for the support they have received, for the encouraging cheers of the home-crowd and for their fellow competitors.  


They have communicated what it takes to be an Olympian; not just years of dedication, focus and skill but also love and appreciation for your fellow man.  


We may think we're just cheering our country on to win, but as we join in the collective cheer we are all being trained in the most noble skill of all - human empathy. 


It feels great to be part of something much bigger than just one person, to be joining a collective ocean of good will. 


Let's all go for the real gold.  Community.

I'd rather be committed

The actress Rita Wilson says that, after 23 years of marriage and knowing what she knows now, she would still marry her husband, Tom Hanks.  

This got me wondering.  I have been married 30 years and knowing what I know today,  would I still marry my husband?  Please don't misunderstand me, I love my husband and I am happy with our life together - but the question tugged at me like an insistent child wanting my attention. 
  

I went for a run and thought about the question.  I took the dog for a walk and contemplated it.  I worked in the garden and ruminated.  I did the ironing and pondered. You can probably tell, I gave it a great deal of thought. Having asked myself the question I wanted to be honest, really honest, both with myself and in my relationship.  

After a couple of days I discovered what had been nagging at me. Saying yes this time would mean giving 100% commitment and this thought had triggered an old belief that commitment means the end of freedom, a loss of identity, a surrender of power.  

You'd think that after all this time and given the nature of the work I do, I would have worked this one out, but as a coach I believe its important to keep doing personal research!

Our beliefs are like computer programmes, they have their own intelligence and can be extremely powerful. They develop from our childhood experiences and grow to run our lives. Even though as adults we decide we won't do things like our parents, the buried programmes start running with or without our consent.  

You begin a relationship believing you'll live happily ever after and then one day wake to discover you and your Beloved are out of the fairytale and into a nightmare, with no idea how you got there. 

A healthy relationship needs at least one person willing to communicate about a problem.

Giving yourself 100% to the relationship means making your partner's success and well-being as important to you as your own.  It is the fastest way to escape the trap of old, self-defeating beliefs and offers the best route to true freedom - the freedom to be yourself. 

Commitment to reaching resolution rather than settling for compromise, to being understanding and being understood rather than merely being right or feeling wronged will lead a relationship back from the edge and onto a whole new level of intimacy, love and friendship. 

By uncovering my old belief I was able to make another - more conscious - choice: to commit to partnership and equality. 100%.

And so, dear Reader, I married him.

How about you?

How Self Centred are you?

When there is harmony and balance in a relationship, opposite characteristics help to build a great partnership but in stressful situations, those same differences can drive people apart.


Blame and criticism  create further distance and push the relationship to extreme polarities, usually resulting in frequent arguments or - if there is a fear of conflict - deadness.   When this happens our tendency is to try to get the other person to change, but being Self-Centred means having a better understanding of yourself, learning to recogninse when you are in reaction, knowing how to centre yourself and respond effectively to any challenges you meet along the way.    

   

We have an inner and outer reality.  If you give yourself no time for inner reflection or place little value on your inner world, you will find yourself easily influenced by outside events and will easily be knocked off-centre.  This can show up as a loss of confidence, withdrawal, low feelings, difficult relationships, poor self-image, loss of motivation, feelings of failure - to name just a few!

Being Self-Centred is a powerful remedy for relationship problems.  With a strong inner centre you regain self-awareness, greater confidence and self-worth.  With a shift in emphasis from your outer world to your inner reality, rather than always being in reaction to external triggers, you find resources such as improved assertiveness, resilience, compassion and greater understanding.  It enables you to communicate with greater confidence and address challenging circumstances and behaviours, it also helps maintain and strengthen your self-worth.

To fulfill your potential you need a healthy balance of opposites both within and without.  Becoming Self-Centred allows you to be open and able to respond rather than react to your world.  You become calmer, more peaceful. You learn when to say no and when to say yes and are able to communicate both effectively.  You become the leader of your life, rather than at the mercy of circumstances.   

And by taking your place in the centre of your own life, you help those you love to do the same in theirs.

A Call to Loving Arms

I don't want this to sound like a battlecry, however as I want to make a call to arms - loving arms.  


Research has shown that  supporting and strengthening women is the most effective path to creating lasting change and stability within society. 


As human beings we are wired for connection and as women we are built for relationship: we're equipped physically, hormonally, neurologically to nurture, to empathise and to build community. 


The majority of my clients are women - they are the ones who feel something is wrong and want to do something about it.  Some have talked to their partners and persuaded them to come along and work on their relationship together, but often the men think its the women who have a problem and everything would be okay if they 'sorted themselves out'.   The women then lose heart and either give up on themselves or on the relationship.
  
My research, training and the inspirational clients I work with help me see over and over how much true intelligence and wisdom there is in a woman's ability to feel.  In a world that has lost heart, this is a powerful - and life saving - resource.


Calling all women: you have what it takes to lead your loved ones, your family, colleagues and friends to a new level of relationship. Your heart will tell you what is working and what is not - don't ask the men to fix the relationship, it's not their job and never was.   Trust your intuition, listen to your heart, reclaim the feminine gifts that you have in abundance and together we really can make the world a better place. Don't give your man the keys to your heart and put him in the driving seat, he won't to know where he's going, he wont admit when he's lost and certainly won't ask for directions!


Courage - from the French word for Heart - is what it takes, so let's take courage and make a small step in emotional evolution - and a giant leap for all mankind.


Here come the girls!


If you'd like to be part of the evolution contact me at Relationship Training.  I'm running courses for courageous men and women who want to live wholeheartedly.

Forget the pearls - I'm going for gold. The benefits of setting goals in relationship

I’ve always enjoyed setting myself goals and love to have a project on the go, but consciously setting goals in relationship used to be an alien concept to me.  When my husband and I did so, it resulted in a huge change in our lives.

We decided one day to write up a list of the things we wanted for our relationship.  He was very serious and put finances, renewing our wills and improved health on the list. I added better communication, a change of lifestyle and, spooked by the finances bit, also insisted we put in some fun goals.  

Talking about the issues on our list was nerve-wracking to begin with but it helped us realize that we both wanted to live a more wholehearted life.  As a result of communicating more honestly we reached a greater level of partnership around finances, and re-writing our wills enabled us to open up helpful discussions with the wider family about the importance of them; we had health checks, started a fitness regime and went to Rome (that was one of the fun goals), plus we moved into new offices and moved house!

When we resist change in our relationship – believing it will be for the worse – the rot can set in. The fun, the thrill, the excitement dies and takes the relationship with it.  As a result of consciously setting goals in your relationship you can reconnect and start to enjoy life together again.  We didn’t just move house, we moved our relationship to a whole new level, and achieved much more than we had believed possible. Now we work on relationship goals every year and are about to set goals for 2012.  As well as it being an Olympic year, it’s our 30^th (Pearl) wedding anniversary, hmmm…. 

Why not give yourself a few quiet minutes and ask yourself ‘what would I like to have happen in 2012?’ and see what surfaces?   

Fatherhood

“In many ways, I came to understand the importance of

fatherhood through its absence-both in my life and in the

lives of others. I came to understand that the hole a man

leaves when he abandons his responsibility to his children

is one that no government can fill. We can do everything

possible to provide good jobs and good schools and safe

streets for our kids, but it will never be enough to fully make

up the difference. That is why we need fathers to step up, to

realize that their job does not end at conception; that what

makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the

courage to raise one.”

President Barack Obama

What is your ‘North Pole’ Challenge?

Many young men returning from war are showing us how miracles show up in today’s world. When a miracle is defined as a shift in perception, there is the miracle of modern medicine and rehabilitation programmes. Many of the men have lost limbs and yet with the progress in medicine and the dedication of the caring professions they are being shown a whole other way of looking at their new lives. Not only are they learning to live with prosthetics and disabilities but they are reaching levels of achievement that are truly awe inspiring.

Secondly, they are showing us the miracle of the healing process. How the human spirit can transform. These young men – yes they have lost their limbs, yes their lives as they knew them have shattered and yet they are using the very event that changed their life to push themselves to greater levels of achievement. They are showing the world what a True Hero is. How many times do we use the excuse of events from our past that shattered us to prevent us from really shining, from achieving our purpose? These young men are showing us what is truly heroic: a vulnerable and challenged individual using those very qualities to achieve great success and inspiring and motivating others to do the same time.

These young men have acknowledged their pain, they cannot deny the events - they happened. Often their health, well-being and many of their dreams for the future have been shattered by them too. However, with support, guidance, healing and determination many have set their sights on a greater goal than self-pity. The papers are full of reports of the new goals these young men set themselves.

"In the Walking with the Wounded polar challenge, four disabled soldiers are changing one extreme environment and form of ordeal for another in pursuit of a world record." reports Tom Coghlan in an article in The Times, 19th Feb '11. "They are part of a team who will become the first group including amputees to reach the North pole unaided. Despite their broken bodies they will each be hauling about 130 kilograms behind them."

So what is your North Pole challenge, your greatest goal? And what event do you need to acknowledge and address, heal and rehabilitate from in order to achieve it? Everything that happens in life is part of our training for our purpose; the events that take place give us the tools and skills we need to achieve our goal. Sometimes we just need help, support, guidance and a healing process to see it that way. That shift in perception, that willingness to change how we respond to past events, becomes our own personal miracle.

My miracle came in reading that article. Those Heroes, those brave young men have helped me to recognize my fears and have inspired me to take another brave step in my life. I recognize I have been holding myself back, immobilized by old fears and beliefs. I am ready to embrace the Hero in me and take the next step and the next and the next…. Are you ready to take yours?