Oy vey!  I remember when one of my favorite therapists told me that you’ll know when you’re setting a good boundary because you’ll probably feel uncomfortable.  I’d add to that that you’ll know when you’ve gotten to the end of your rope, when enough is just plain enough when noooooo (with a trail of o’s after the n) comes rolling off your tongue without too much time between the person asking you for a favor and your voice.  No, is a complete sentence.  You don’t have to justify your no.

Today I had the perfect NO situation come up when I was asked to do a “favor” for a relative of a good friend (now deceased).  Although I am prone to feel like there is always something more that I can do for someone I care about, I knew with this particular person that I had gone above and beyond helping them by being there for their relative, my good friend, during the last year of her illness when they could not be there.  I had also just worked through an exhaustive inventory of my resentments a week or two ago and had circled in on a vestige of my old self from years ago when I felt that “everyone owed me”…..so I’m very sensitive to those around me who may be coming from that particular place which this particular person has always seem to say and exhibit by her actions with others.  I heard out her request and was able to respond immediately with no and then suggested to her some services that she could Google of professional people who could offer her services in our area.

What I was reminded of once again is that people who don’t have boundaries, don’t respect boundaries of others.  Let me add to that.  People without boundaries don’t even recognize that there is such a thing as boundaries so the responsibility of raising them or setting them when they cross one is left up to you.

Only YOU can prevent anger fires!

Years ago, I remember hearing an interview with the comedian Steve Martin (who was, then, hitting the bright lights of fame from Saturday Night Live) and how he said that actually comedians are usually the most serious people he knew.   It was one of those Soooby Doo ruh roh moments for me because I knew I loved to laugh but I also knew that I could be equally as serious about life.

I’ve always been fascinated by what makes people laugh and what brings up that surging giggle wave inside of me.  We explored the thinking behind it in Philosophy class (absurdity of information, how info is received, etc.) but that still didn’t satisfy me.  Where I’ve ended up landing about laughing is that I have to just enjoy the results of whatever it is that makes us laugh because trying to dissect it out takes all the fun out of it.

For example, a good friend and I have often joked that because my humor can sometimes be so off the wall that if I ever took my act on the road, she would be my one psychic fan because she knows what I am conveying with very few moves and words.  I’m pretty sure my mom and I have that kind of connection too, in fact, I think I learned this particular brand of humor from her with its is very subtle movements and lots of history.  So, when said good friend and I were waiting for yoga class to begin and had gathered around us the accouterments of class such as the Tami mat, blanket and a chair, when I looked at the chair behind me and made a very simple gesture with my hands in a circle above my head, my friend understood that I meant to convey a scene of  Chinese acrobats  doing amazing gymnastics with chairs and each other.  Perhaps with some honing and practice, I could convey this kind of humor to more than one audience member.  I think that’s probably what the really good comedians do such as Ellen DeGeneres and Jim Gaffigan.

And then there’s just the physicality and emotionality of laughing itself.  Like at the end of every yoga class when our teacher would have us laying on the floor and ask us to just laugh as heartily as we could.  Some people would start out with that hesitant laughter, heh-heh-heh, and then sometimes there’d be someone who’d go way over the top almost to the edge of making you want to rise out of your yoga bliss and go bop them on the head!  Whenever the aforementioned friend and I would start laughing together we would end up cracking each other up and really laughing getting the whole class into an uproar.  Such fun.  It’s all the gasoline my inner-kid needs to find ways to keep the laughter going.  No wonder I used to get U’s on my conduct reports in Sixth Grade.  Who doesn’t want to laugh? Evidently my teacher that’s who!

There are all kinds of ways we can find humor out there in life.  In fact, I have seen the very quirky off the wall humor that I love caught in photos. Like the one my friend Kat found right after the very slight Earthquake that Washington D.C. experienced last year of  garden table on a rolling lawn with one chair askew. 

So if you’re ever feeling just a little blue or perhaps taking life just a little bit too seriously…find something to laugh about…your soul will be glad you did!

Photo that my friend P posted this week on FaceBook with a very sparse explanation saying, “this is how I feel today”….

They can still get your attention when they’re trotting along the sidewalk in your neighborhood!

Isn’t our Higher Power great (who I choose to call God) when it/he/she uses humor to get through to us? Like the other morning, for example. I was already ten minutes late driving to meet a friend for an early lunch downtown in the middle of the hustle and bustle and so when I came over the big hill in the cut-through neighborhood and saw a car and van stopped right in the middle talking to each other, I had all kinds of thoughts swirling through my head. Thoughts that I wouldn’t want anyone to hear!

Added to this was five years of accrued opinion and judgment about the kind of people who lived in big shiny new houses in the cut-through neighborhood. I use the excuse of being a writer for the reason that I create all kinds of “stories” about places and people before I even validate if they are true or not which is not necessarily a bad thing in itself at least not until I use those stories to form my opinions. Quite frankly, what I imagine can be so much more entertaining. But, sometimes what I make up can be very off track and full of the plaster of my disbelief that creates a wall between me and others.

Perhaps that is why my Higher Power sent in a pig, trust me the irony is not lost on me.

There I was fuming behind the wheel at the two ladies who had the audacity to continue talking. My slow-burning resentments of false origins were working up to a rolling boil until one of the ladies pointed to the side of my car. I looked over to see a big ole overgrown pink pot-Bellied pig rummaging through the green grass along the sidewalk with his little curly-cue tail switching all over the place. In a matter of seconds, my opinion of the women went from dislike to at least giving them a chance because of their concern for the pig.

I immediately put the car into park so that I could try to herd the pig from going down the street on to the busy highway. One of the ladies was calling the local sheriff, while still another neighbor pulled up to let us know she knew the pig (he was a pet) and was going to get the phone number to call the owner of the ranch nearby.  I’ve heard pigs were smart, but right after she told us that the pig lived in the neighboring ranch, he started walking across the street towards the woods backing up to the ranch he came from. I don’t know very much about pigs but I did want to make sure he kept heading towards home instead of the highway. I’m pretty sure I made a spectacle of myself running parallel to this pig when he took off in a trot back towards the highway and began squealing when I ran past him to head him off.  Luckily, his owner came along about that time and said, “that’s my pig” and began talking to him as he scratched the pig’s head saying, “Pooper, now what have you gone and done now” (can’t make this stuff up!).

Because I love animals a whole bunch and definitely trust them more than humans, ole Pooper really helped me to lower my wall of judgment and to look with a different eye and an open heart toward these neighbors of mine who took time out of their busy morning to make sure the pig lived to see another day.  I mean, pot-bellied pigs are pretty cute when they’re little and cuddly and can roust about within your arms, but when they get to the size of ole Pooper, well it takes a pretty open heart to find its way to enjoying his little maverick spirit.

I’m pretty sure that if there have been angels observing my life and betting on my ability to change my behavior and thinking, that when looking at the hard and fast way that I can put others into a box “just because” those betting that I couldn’t or wouldn’t change probably said, “when pigs fly!” but there must have been at least a few who were betting on my higher self and my ability to lower defenses pretty quickly hence sending out a pig on the run.

Thank you Pooper for getting a wild hair and deciding to go for a run! I needed that thump in my heart.

Via http://www.divinecaroline.com/22198/123509-pigs-don-t-fly/3#ixzz1m68rZPw6

Enough of this “if I only knew then what I knew now….”  all I know for sure is that I have right now this minute to act on and be in.  Well, and of course when that physics thing happens where I can be thinking two thoughts about the future, three about the past and one in the present simultaneously.  What I want to celebrate with you today is to list some of the things that I do now, that I didn’t do “back when”.

1.) I’ve been known to hang out in my pajamas well past noon but getting a whole lot of things done working at my desk right beside my husband who seems to love me in spite of no make-up or perfume!

2.) Return to college with fellow classmates many years younger than me.  Couldn’t face returning when I was 5-10 years older then most other students, but sure can do it now.  Acceptance or denial? Whichever it is, it’s working!

3.) Care about what is going on in my friends’ lives but in an interdependent give-them-a-hug kind of way and not the icky obsequious co-dependent way that I used to fall into way back when.

4.) Discover new aspects of my husband that I can enjoy, laugh about, respect every day, week, month and year.  This is a bloody miracle considering in my youth I was addicted to that aspect of relationships known as limerence which meant the very second the blush was off the rose, I was outta there!

5.) Fold my underwear and socks. True story.  I used to keep a really, almost fastidiously, clean home except for my dresser drawers.  It was just too much for me to fold my underthings and so I would stuff them into a drawer which meant that anytime I wanted a new pair of whatever, I had to fight with the drawer and everything in them.  Today I fold everything up neat and in it’s place so that it is so easy to open the drawer and pull what I need out.  It’s a shame though that only I get to see this great accomplishment (and, well, I guess now you know it too!).

6.) I weigh and measure all my food when I eat at home (three squares a day) and eyeball portions when I go out. Don’t eat in-between meals, don’t eat flour and sugar and don’t starve.  You can’t imagine how crazy I used to be about food.  Oy vey.  For instance, I remember one time when I was plowing through a box of Wheat Thins, for some reason I decided to look at what they called a portion size and nearly choked when I read “16 crackers” .  Have you ever seen how small Wheat Thins are? Why, 16 crackers was just the kindling for the fire?!! So glad I don’t have to eat that way ever again, one day at a time.

7.) I try to vary my drive when I leave for home to get out of the rut of doing the same thing.  Gives me a different perspective, helps me to stay focused and not in a day dreaming state while driving.  I don’t know if it’s a good thing or something that I should feel guilty about, but I know all kinds of baristas at various Starbucks all over Austin.

8.) I dance like crazy when a song comes on that I love, no matter who is around.   I’ve always danced a lot, but I was very, very careful to make sure that not too many people spotted me doing so.  Now, eh, why not?!

9.) Instead of feeling embarrassed when I am sometimes spastic in speaking and jumble words or flub sentences or what-have-you, I’ve worked in several sounds and facial expressions to mark it right in the moment which takes the attention away from it and definitely lightens the experience for any witnesses.

10.) I look for ways to make the people around me happy, most of the time.  I mean, hey, I’m human and so sometimes the scarfy side of me jumps out but for the most part I do my best to find ways to make others happy.  Cuz then we can laugh together and I really enjoy laughing.

How about you? What do you do now that you didn’t do then?

It’s crazy the way everybody, everywhere are talking about networking and connecting?!?!?  How many people have you had conversations with who “know” about social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn and maybe even signed up with them, but haven’t done anything with them?

It seems to me that the idea of networking and connecting with people has taken a head long jump into the pool of fearing people.  Really all that needs to be remembered by those of us who want to network or connect is what I’m calling “People ology 101″.   Think of that book “All I needed to know, I learned in Kindergarten” and you get the basic premise.

Some basic tips from your friend, Coach Lynn are;

1.) Be curious.  It’s good to be curious (just not in a creepy or overbearing way) about who people are and what they are up to.  Ask basic questions about how they are or what they do for a living and then zip your mouth, give them eye contact and really listen.  Prompt them with affirming sounds of listening (uhuh, oh my!, laughter, etc.) and re-state a few words or sentences they said for clarity if you don’t understand them.

2.) Be polite.  Manners never, ever, ever, never go out of style.  Basic phrases like please and thank you can go a long way.  Thinking of others before yourself.  Simple things like asking if now is a good time to talk with you, if you’re calling to make a request.  Sending snail mail thank you notes!?!? Think about it, what do you receive in your mail these days besides bill and ads? Wouldn’t you love to open up a personal hand written note or card?

3.) Create a file in your brain, on your pc, in your cabinets with some reminders about who you meet and what they do.  If you follow the two tips above, you’ll probably remember who you meet because you’ve learned through the limbic system through conversing, asking questions or thinking about them when you write a note.  All of this can be stored to be used someday.  With Facebook, LinkedIn and other network sites you will also have the opportunity to interact with your fellows and leave a digital trail to refer back to when your memory fails you.

4.) People are just people.  In most cases, we all put our pants on one leg at a time (though I discovered rather later in life that I step into both pant legs and then pull them up…).  Go for the heart is what I say.  In coaching school they encouraged us to be curious and have a sense of wonder.  Sometimes I end up feeling like Mr. Spock (Star Trek)  because then humans become fascinating to me but basically, most people have something interesting to learn or say if you give them the opportunity.

These are just a few tips that I hope will be useful for you to think about and/or use in networking and connecting.  Remember, if we humans didn’t have so much fear about each other our natural state would probably be to jump into a big huge puppy pile (and I’m not talking orgy here) with each other most of the time.  It’s in our basic DNA to make friends now all you have to do is remember….

You can also read this article in a great new website I’m writing for: http://www.divinecaroline.com/22056/122046-peopleology-101

A few days ago a good friend , who happens to be one of the nation’s top digital publicists, sent me a query from HARO (Help Out A Reporter) which was for a PBS show focused around great baby boomer online communities.  They specifically wanted to hear about those online communities that aren’t being shouted about off of the rooftops like some of the bigger and well-known SNS.

Of course I broke the rule immediately by giving a shout out about LinkedIn even though it is one of “those” bigger sites that is well-known. But I did it because although most people in the business world at least know about it and I hear a lot of people talking about signing up or saying they’re signing up because they know it’s a good site to hooked up with not many (in my opinion) are really taking advantage of diving into the community of LinkedIn.

I began using LinkedIn in 2006 upon the suggestion of said good friend when I left a steady paying job of ten years as an associate partner at a technical recruiting agency to provide my services as a Life Coach full time. I knew just enough about technology and communities to be dangerous (which means not enough to understand how to really engage myself and others in the virtual world). I must admit that for a good year or so I pretty much was a ghost presence on LinkedIn. In other words, I could tell people that “oh I’m on Linkedin” but that was pretty much it until another good friend asked me if I had ever explored their Question and Answers feature? He encouraged me to dive in and read some of the topics til I found one (or some) that interested me and then jump into the conversation.

I was coming from a background of seeing how prima donna developers would flame someone out on a board or in a chat room so I was very hesitant to just jump in to LI. Overtime though I couldn’t help myself. What started developing was a give and take, a back and forth between me and many people from all over the world. I’ve always considered myself “highly sensitive” but it wasn’t until I “felt” my first energy exchange using LinkedIn that I realized really getting involved in a community so that you got to know people and they got to know you could be very special indeed. In fact, I’m writing a book about this called “energy surfing” which I hope will make you curious about instead of wary. I’ve made many friends over the years in LI and have over 500 contacts though I have tried to be very careful about who I “accept” as my friend. Just as we can experience friendships at different levels in the “real” world, you can experience that in LI as well with the added bonus that without the interference of our physical bodies and the distractions that all that entails it is almost as if we’ve been giving a safe harbor (as LI is monitored) for our souls to play and work.

Sounds a little wacky I know, but I’ve saved some of the dialogues between me and others on LI to give examples in my book (once I’ve obtained their permission of course) of what I’m talking about. I think that I “felt” will be evidenced in the discourse but only time will tell upon others reading it. Anyway, LI isn’t just for businesses and there happens to be a lot of baby boomers out there in the world working harder then ever. What I love about this community is that it offers an intergenerational plus multi-cultural exchange so it’s not just one age group or one race or one religion or one type of people, it’s a diverse smorgasboard.

So if you’ve been sitting on the sidelines just touching your toes to the water there’s no time like the presence to jump in.  Go sign up for a free account first to check it out and then when you’re ready, check out the Questions and Answers section and explore what groups you’d like to join.    January is just beginning, what are you going to do differently this year?

One of my intentions this year is to explore and learn as much as I can about various Native American and indigenous cultures ways of living in harmony with Mother Nature.  When I say Mother Nature, I mean all the animals, plants, waters, trees, weather etc. including we humans.  Pretty much everything that is outside of the realm of artificial structures including time.

Take how we have decided to divide up our “year” and have designated January 1 as the start of a New Year.  Well, in the business world we use that point to wrap up projects when we can and roll out new strategies.  Have you ever felt out of sync with the whole “ring out the old and ring in the new”? Have you ever felt disappointed in yourself after making your resolutions for the New Year only to find that you have abandoned them after just a few month’s time (or weeks or days in some cases!)?

I don’t know about you, but I believe that being in sync with the rhythm of the Earth means that you/we/I have an understanding of what is going on around me in terms of temperature, weather, the ground, the sky, the collective of beings that I share this planet with and that I have respect for everything and everyone’s place in the world.  Only then will we “know” what our best action needs to be.

This summer many of us in Texas suffered from the effects of a severe drought from depleting waters, ruined crops, ravaged farms and fires.  I don’t know if there is anything we could have done to have prevented everything that happened as a result of the lack of rain and extreme temperatures but perhaps we could have garnered a clue or two by watching the animals and paying attention to the terrain.  I spent many a morning sitting in the porch swing watching the glinting rays of a new dawn coming forth listening to the many conversations of the animals and insects that live around my property wondering about the information they were trading back and forth.  I’m sure the hot topic of their conversation had to be about survival even with the occasional joyous burst of song from the Red Headed Woodpecker as he circled the trunk of the Cottonwood tree.

There are many teachers of the Earth out there for us to learn from when we are willing to stop and pay attention.  Three of my best teachers are laying on the floor surrounding my chair right now, all three dogs are as close to my husband and I as they can be without leaping into our laps because of the intermittent big booms of the fireworks ringing in the New Year.  I know how they feel!  I’m pretty sure that if we had a King sized bed instead of a Queen that all three would be joining us in sleep tonight too….

Find your own inner rhythm then get in sync with Mother Earth.  May your walk ways be clear and your breath be in harmony.

It’s so weird some of the “persona” that my inner-voices take on when my writing style is basically of the expository kind.  I thought “characters” talking to you in your head and dictating what you wrote were left to either schizophrenics or fiction writers or perhaps schizophrenic fiction writers. But once again I’m wrong because the minute I began typing the title for this post, the comedian Lewis Black entered my head.  I don’t necessarily agree with him a lot of the time and he’s so rabid about most everything….but I could see the intelligence of my brain for picking Mr. Black to talk to me about dysfunctional holidays and how to recognize the “dys” (so you can take it out….)!

One really does have to almost go to the other side of extreme to reverberate back to the middle when pondering how to take the dys out of functional holidays.  Like any good scientist would do, we first have to set-up our controls for what would represent a “functional” holiday in our own minds and what we would interpret as a dysfunctional holiday. Turns out, we all have varying degrees of tolerance, wants and needs for this one, so the first thing we have to do is know ourselves.  This may take some time. In fact, you may even find yourself cycling through several years of holidays before you figure out what you consider sane and insane or even what you want to tolerate (albeit “if” you want to tolerate anything!).  By the way,  this is where getting older can have its advantages (another thing “we” never talk about) because when you’ve done the inner work what other people think about you becomes less and less important. Some people have even arrived at the pinnacle of sane thinking with the ability to think that “other people’s opinions of me are none of my business”.

So on that note, here are some tips that I’ve learned along the way:

1.) Either don’t drink, smoke or imbibe at all or go all the way into black out. Now that may seem a bit extreme for someone who has been sober for as many years as me to say but there’s really no half-way point here.  Even a moderate drinker is going to find the alcohol’s magnifying effect in crazy situations.  Keep your wits about you or sleep through it all.

2.) Repeat after me, “there is no they”.  Take a moment or two everyday to really listen to the thoughts circling through your brain. You might be surprised to hear many sentences containing the word “they” in it in regards to “what will they think” or “what would they want”.  In some cases, this can be good—even altruistic, but in many cases you’re carrying the weight of a judge and jury around in your head.  Your brain is not a bus,  unload the freeloading passengers of judgment and misconception.

3.) Eat your veggies.  Seriously, eat probably the healthiest you would ever eat at this time of the year.   Make sure you get plenty of fruits, veggies, whole grains and protein.  If you must have flour and sugar, do it in moderation.  I’m one of those people who lost (or never had) the moderation button when it comes to flour and sugar so I don’t partake of either.  The big secret is that my body feels so much better without them gumming up the passages.  But then again I was the kind of flour and sugar eater that turned every bowl of cereal into a pool of sugar cement at the bottom. Pretty much, if I could have mainlined sugar….I would have.

4.) Go for a walk, get exercise.  Whatever form of exercise is best for you, do it.  Did you know if you looked at the clock before you walked out the door and walked 15 minutes and then returned home you would put in a 30 minute walk?  Endorphins are your friend this time of year.

5.) Drink plenty of water.  This has been told to me all of my life from my health conscious mother to my fighter pilot Dad.  I always “knew” it was true, but very rarely followed through on making sure I got 8 glasses of water every day. Then in my young adult hood when I did a lot of spiritual and psychic exploring I learned that we exerted a lot of energy from that kind of work and how important it was to help your body, mind and soul assimilate what you had learned by drinking plenty of water.  That got me into the habit of drinking water.  Eh….whatever it takes, right?

6.) Get plenty of sleep.  Maybe it’s because of how much energy I exert each day just living or maybe the sheer amount of activity I do is exhausting but whatever it is, I know that I need 7-9 hours of good sleep everyday for me to be at my optimum.  If at all possible, and you’ve got some time off for the holidays, naps are so underrated.  My father likes to say that the best nap lengths are either 20 minutes or an hour and 45 minutes.  I’ve tried both and prefer the hour and 45 minute ones but I have been refreshed with just a 20 minute nap when that was all I could squeeze in.  Throwing a lack of sleep into a holiday is like emptying a whole bottle of fire starter on to a grill. Get your sleep!

7.) Acceptance is the key to all our problems.  It is.  And I have battled and battled with what acceptance means to me for years and years.  What helped me with the concept is that just because we are accepting life on life terms doesn’t mean we have to like it.  You see I always confused the idea that if I accepted something or someone as they were then it meant that I liked or agreed with it or them.  Not true.  It really is about getting it that “what is, is”.

8.) Bring in some humor.  Just this morning my  mom and I were remembering a dysfunctional holiday that we shared several years ago and laughing in amazement about it.  At the time,  pretty much all of us who shared that weekend were in pain and it felt yucky but today after lot’s of growth it seems like the more absurdity that we can recognize about ourselves the more humorous it gets.  You truly can’t make this stuff up.  I always think of it as great material for my one-woman stand up comedy show that I may never have, but love to think about it anyway!

9.) Do something for someone else. Okay, okay, you better know me well enough to know that I certainly ain’t no Pollyanna!!! But, it has been my experience that when I get out of myself long enough to do something for someone else it ends up making me feel better.  A good friend of ours lost one of her sister’s in a freak blood clot episode over Thanksgiving.  We invited our friend and her husband over for dinner and games last night just to hang.  We talked about the incident with her sister and how her family was doing and then proceeded to get really silly playing game after game of Dominoes making each other laugh.  Helping someone else feel solid in today and creating a safe place for them to “be” however they feel is a nice thing to offer when we’re able.

10.) Bust out the walls.  Not literally, well, unless of course busting out the walls was on your list of things to do over the holidays.  The walls I’m talking about are the walls of marketing genius and media spin.  I have to remember that one of my favorite movies starring Natalie Wood as a child actor about Santa Claus was made by marketers to bring awareness and customers to Macy’s Department Store.  All the angles are covered to pull at our heart strings and sympathies.  I love the movie, but there were more than a few years there when I had to distance myself from watching it because my expectations of myself and others during the holidays seemed to blow up into exponential disproportions!

Just a few ideas from your friend Lynn about how to be functional during the holidays.  How about you?  What have your holidays of yore been like and how do you take care of yourself?