Welcome to the New Year! 

We are often so hopeful about the new year. We dream of how it will be even better than the old one and set goals to help that be so. And then, about this time in January, we begin to fade a bit or a lot, regarding our precision with those goals. Why is that? And what is to be done about that?

I once worked with a client who deeply regretted not accomplishing his goal of skiing with his adult son 30 times a year.  He was genuinely distressed and hoped we could help him be better at keeping his word to himself regarding his goals.  When asked how many times he DID ski with his son, he replied 27.  We were surprised, and curious.  When we delved deeper, he realized he was measuring the success of the goal by accomplishing it fully, not by registering what experience he was after that had him set the goal in the first place.  It turns out he had EXACTLY the experience he wanted to have with his son!

So, why do we set goals at all?  It might be to correct a habit, or to accomplish a project.  One question I have is, why set that goal in the first place?  How would completing that goal impact your life?

I’ve found through the years that what we are almost always after is an EXPERIENCE shift, wanting to feel more abundant, accomplished, peaceful, free…..you name it.  The power of aiming at the Experience we are after is much more impactful than accomplishing the goal.  Why?  Because the accomplishment of the goal does not promise you will have the experience you assume would happen upon achievement of that goal, darn it.

However, if you drill down and ask yourself to list the way you will experience life as you imagine the goal to have already been accomplished, you have a much more powerful stabilizing force for the next 6 – 12 months.

For example, I have several clients who have set goals to be in a new relationship this year.  When we drill down to what accomplishing that goal would feel like, it is usually something like Belonging, Peace of Mind, Connection, etc.  These are all things we feel in our body; it is not an intellectual thing at all.

When we then take the top three experiences on our list, we can aim every decision in our lives at having MORE of those experiences, not less.  For instance, you might choose a movie by asking yourself, will this movie allow me to feel more like I belong, or less?  More at peace or less?  More connected or less?  How about choosing a restaurant?  The same questions might have you choose differently and have a much better experience. (I used to LOVE PF Chang’s food.  However, wanting the experience of wonderful taste sensations, and relaxation, had me decide to go elsewhere as they were always swamped, and very noisy!)

This approach also takes the pressure off the goals you might still set.  If they begin to seem less interesting, it might be that you have not yet figured out how to aim towards them while also having the experience you want to have.  That is a great learning point.  What if you COULD work differently on the goal?  Or what if it was not the right goal at all?

Let me know how it goes.  My clients find this approach to be at first confusing, like learning a new language, then they often notice they are experiencing more and more of what they are aimed at, and life is overall more satisfying.

I have noticed many times when people are telling me how they are doing, they drift into what I refer to as Ghost Stories.

These are hauntings, the way most of them are told.  We tell the stories so easily it is hard to see that we are stuck inside of a ghost story of our own telling.

For instance, I had a ghost story I was telling about one of my dogs that she was suffering under my care.  I was certain that my busy schedule was not allowing her to have the time she needs to learn to be a relaxed companion dog.  (Ghost story, but I did not recognize it!) And I was fretting about it.  When I spoke with an experienced trainer, she told me she was probably born to be a performance dog and does not do relaxed!  What she recommended was 3-minute training sessions teaching her tricks and games each night right before bed.  That has worked like a charm. She is now the same bouncy dog but I am more light-hearted about it and she really looks forward to our nightly game play.  The ghost story is gone, and I am more relaxed. (She gets a 2-plus mile walk 6 days a week with her pack!) Ghost stories are stories about the past or worries about the future.  Mavis Karns in It’s That Simple, wrote:

“Worry is the learned habit of frightening ourselves with our own imagination.”

Who do you know who tells a story about their past or future that does not bring a warm feeling with it?  I spoke with someone yesterday in the throws of a relationship breakup.  She had so many stories about her former partner, and she also thought there was something wrong with her.  When we let the emotion pass through, which it is designed to do, what we began to see was if the story were told neutrally, there was insight available.  Nothing wrong with either of them, other than they temporarily lost their minds with each other.  And it is a relationship that might need to be complete.  Catching the ghost story allows us to recover more quickly, and to see what is the true nature of things.

Kids are masters at imagination. They invent realities all the time, and then live inside of them.  I distinctly remember weaving tales in my bedroom as a child, enjoying my ability to create the feeling I wanted my plastic horses and I to have in the adventure I invented for us.  The problem with imagination is sometimes we forget we made it all up!  The delightful vignette below, from the book, Being Human, by Amy Johnson, is one of my favorites.  

“WILLOW AND BUDDHA”

My girl Willow has the most active imagination of anyone I’ve ever met.  She’s three, by the way.

She will make up scenarios with details that would blow your mind.  I have no clue where she gets this stuff.

She’s not only great at crafting stories, she also has the incredible ability to set aside reality and dive into her tales as if they were absolutely true.

This morning she was on my bed; Buddha, our Zen-like, seven-pound Yorkie was lying on the floor.

I asked Willow to jump off the bed and follow me downstairs for breakfast.  She looked at Buddha and in a very dramatic, damsel-in-distress voice, said,” But I’m scared of Buddha, she’s going to get me! Nooo, Buddha, nooo!”

(Buddha, not amused, looked at me as if to say, “This again?  Am I supposed to growl and nip at her feet or can I go back to sleep?”)

I suggested to Willow that she hop in her hot air balloon and float over Buddha to get downstairs safely.  (She often travels by hot air balloon.)  Then I went downstairs and left her to figure it out.

Five minutes later I was downstairs and Willow wasn’t.  She was crying on the bed.

“Come down!”

“I can’t.  I’m afraid of Buddha!” she cried, sounding honestly afraid.

She wasn’t playing anymore.  Or, more accurately, she forgot she was playing.  She made up a story in her head and was so immersed in it that she forgot she invented it.

I went up to get her.  Her face was soaked with real tears and she looked terrified.  Of a sleepy seven-pound dog named Buddha.

I reminded her that she was only playing a game where she pretended to be afraid of Buddha. That she wasn’t really afraid.  After a few moments, her face lit up and a huge smile appeared.

I said, “You forgot that you were playing a make-believe game, didn’t you?”  She laughed and said, “I’m silly!”

She is silly, but she is also a lot like you and me.  She gets so wrapped up in her own thinking that she forgets that she is the one who invented it.

January 17, 2022

I have been taken over by an idea, one that I find eternally fascinating and clarifying. That idea is that we are in the midst of a great global “coming apart”. The pandemic has shaken us all up, whether we know (and like) it or not. The entire world is attempting to learn how to live well in the midst of a great coming apart. And without realizing that coming apart is affecting everything, we might miss the opportunity to help the cultural shift come together for the good.
As this idea took hold of me, I began to read what I could find about other pandemics humanity has gone through. I stumbled across an article citing Gianna Pomata, a retired professor at the Institute of the History of Medicine, at Johns Hopkins University. She has actually studied pandemics, and points to common attributes of all pandemics which seem to be the shaking up of the way people think, and that there is a new age, or Renaissance, that follows almost all of them. Pomata says that what happens after a pandemic is like a wind, “it’s like fresh air coming in, the fresh air of common sense.”
As I look around and listen these days, I hear people wondering when we will ever get back to ‘normal’. People, myself included, are tired of the Pandemic, tired of all the changes, and frustrated that there appears to be little we can all do about that. And suddenly I am captivated by the question, “What if we could do something about it?”
Thus, my being taken over by an idea began. I could suddenly see that the world was moving much too slowly to accomplish what needs to be done to rebalance humanity and the world. The nature of change that was required for humanity and the world to survive and live well needed to be disrupted quickly so common sense could help us put things back together in a much quicker timeframe.
What else could have caused many large American Auto manufacturers to suddenly announce they would be going to all-electric cars and trucks? What would have had small towns and large cities accommodate the request of restaurants and cafes to set up out-door dining at record pace? Have you noticed how many food sellers are now offering plant-based choices? Even Kentucky Fried Chicken and Chipotle have gotten on board. And the fact that Zoom came into existence the year before the Pandemic is a miracle!
When we look for what is coming together in a way that supports life more fully, we often begin to see the hidden and hopeful new direction. Which helps us relax a bit and come more back into balance, which is what all of life is attempting to do. If you notice other things that have changed so rapidly your head is spinning, let me know. I’ll add it to my collection! And don’t lose hope. Inside of community, humanity can do almost anything.

Ch Wisdom’s Gate Let Freedom Ring, CGC

July 2, 2005 – March 12, 2015

We lost our beloved Yankee yesterday after a valiant battle with advanced heart disease and cancer, almost exactly a year from when we lost his mother, Annie, at 14. True to his terrier nature, he was diagnosed last June with a heart that would only last 2 months at most.  Nine months later, it was the cancer that finally got him, not that huge and faithful heart.

Yankee is the best Norfolk I have ever owned or bred, both in temperament and in structure.  Barbara Miller once said of her boy, Storm, that what she missed the most was gazing out at him in the run, seeing his gorgeous stature.  I now know what she meant.  Both Tim and I would comment weekly on how even at 9 years old, with cancer and a bad heart, he was gorgeous.  He will forever be the image of a male Norfolk for me.

Yankee was weaned while I was in the hospital, so he was first and foremost my husband’s dog.  Tim would visit me, then come home and play with Yankee, who as a singleton, had no other pups to play with.  His mom weaned her pups at 3 weeks, so Tim was it.  Throughout his life, Yankee loved lying on Tim’s chest just under his chin, ‘praying’ and loving it.  Last night, as we sat on the couch with our remaining three girls and our grief, Carmel, our small red 6 year old Norfolk, began that praying motion for the very first time.  We swear it was Yankee saying all was well.

Yankee took me to Westminster, to the National Dog Show, as well as all over the country with Michael Lynch as a special.  He was the consummate show dog, and even on his final day, was excited to go into his crate in the car because he might be going to a show.  I thank Mike Lynch every day for making sure he loved showing.

We miss you, Yankee.

If love could have saved you – you would have lived forever…