Archive for the ‘Life’ Category
I like people but I also need my alone time which according to recent findings is going to lead to my early demise. Studies are becoming increasingly insistent that the more you interact with family, friends and co-workers the happier and healthy you are mentally and physically. One even went on to say that perhaps the medical profession may want to make some recommendations if a patient seems to be solitary. Prescription to read ‘meet two friends and call me in the morning’.
Some of us enjoy being by ourselves and don’t feel lonely nor are we in a state of inertia. We are of a personality type that need quiet time to de-stress and decompress. Which logically means being healthier.
Humans need peace and quiet so that creativity, problem solving and even healing can take place. I recently spoke with a client who had suffered a great loss; she admitted that what was wearing her out at this point was not the bereavement but the lack of time to herself. As well meaning friends and family kept calling and dropping by, she was trapped in a place of their need to comfort her.
Today’s society is over stimulated; requiring constant connection with something or someone. We are also passing this onto the next generation. In truth when we do embark on a friendship or relationship its growth and richness is nurtured by the fact that the individuals involved are self-sufficient, self-reliant and capable of autonomous thought.
I was thinking this morning while alone in the shower that we are fortunate Mozart didn’t spend all his time in coffee houses with his BFFs or Virginia Woolf wasn’t busy dazzling her followers on Twitter or she may never have written A Room of One’s Own which ironically is based on the premise that ‘A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’ .
My inspiration to write this post came from: I’m denying your friend request by Marni Soupcoff, National Post
A New Risk Factor: Your Social Life by Tara Parker-Pope, The New York Times
With Your Biscotti & Coffee
1) Two Summer Movies for grown-ups
Hidden among Despicable Me and The Twilight Sage:Eclipse are two cinema gems that you may have overlooked. Both are worthy of a stolen afternoon in a cool movie theatre and some buttered popcorn.
2) Warriors in Pink
India’s gang of vigilante women are striking fear in the hearts of wrongdoers and earning the grudging respect of officials.
3) High Line Park, NY
From historic railway yards founded in 1930 to a functioning public park, it is a fascinating journey.
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Migraines are an ailment onto themselves. You get your full blown, you want to die ones. There is the mid-sized ‘I may make you take to a dark room, close to a toilet and not let you sleep or I might go away’ level and last is the mini migraine that I have had for awhile; the head pain is nagging and constant and your stomach is queasy but you can function.
Unfortunately though I choose this weekend to watch Shutter Island with Leonardo DiCaprio; not knowing that it has a very vivid scene that triggers a migraine for his character. That managed to kick my symptoms up a notch. I wonder too if anyone else finds that some of the commercials for migraine medication leaves them feeling slightly unwell?
Needless to say all this has left me quite ineloquent so let’s get to our …………..
With Your Biscotti & Coffee
1) A good nights sleep can be so illusive; two very busy women HuffPost’s Arianna Huffington and Glamour’s Cindi Leive decided to embark on a month long Sleep Challenge 2010 and they blogged about its successes and failures.
2) An Interesting Woman: Gayla Trail
Gayla Trail is a writer, photographer, and graphic designer. She is the creator of the popular gardening project, You Grow Girl and the author of You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening as well as an in-demand gardening personality and spokesperson with a focus on urban gardening, growing food, sustainable living, and community. Her own line of pithy gardening products
O magazine recently featured Gayla in How to grow your own herbs
3) Afganistan remains a paradox as these three reports illustrate
Afghan women swap burqas for police uniforms By Daphne Benoit
Lyse Doucet reports on the Afghan women jailed for bad character
A garden can be much more that than it seems Growing gardens, independence and esteem by Terry Glavin
The following post should be read with the theme from the show Two and a Half Men in your head because this seems like the right time to celebrate …………..”Men men men men, manly men men men”
Let me share with you the qualities that I like in a man and the men who have them.
I love a quick sense of humor and Nathan Lane has that hands down. How a man speaks tells me a lot, which has to bring us to Sam Elliot, with that voice I’m surprised that my garage isn’t full of Dodge Ram trucks. Bill Clinton would be my choice for an evening of intellectual conversation; discussing everything from books to politics with a good bottle of Merlot. The element of danger and adventure is attractive. Lunch in Prague with Daniel Craig followed by a drive through the countryside in the Jaguar.
I am fascinated with people who are not only a great success but also are visionaries in their field. Male choices for a stimulating board meeting are Steven Jobs, Richard Branson and if he was still alive Henry Luce. Warren Buffet will have to come in his place.
Then there was my father a smart and ruggedly handsome man in that John Wayne kind of way, he had so many of the characteristics that I noted above. Through him I gained an appreciation for fine wine, good food and reading books of all genres. He passed on many things like the importance of a firm handshake, especially for a woman in the business world. Perhaps though it was through inheriting his foresight to take the road least travelled that I gained the most. This made me a traveller in life not a tourist.
I don’t like it when people complain about how busy they are; perhaps because it is often accompanied by a degree of smugness. Therefore I cannot really use that excuse as to why I don’t have a post this week. Truly though and written without smugness; in between clients, the magazine, other businesses and life in general I have been really busy.
Perhaps I will go with ‘Due to circumstance beyond my control’ but that doesn’t work either because as a coach I work with people to gain control over their lives. Which means writing that will tempt me to follow with the insipid ‘physician heal thyself’ quote.
I have therefore decided to provide you with the thesaurus page for the word busy and you can fill in the one that you like best.
As I have been really ……………… I am just going to post some interesting bits and pieces that I have come across
With Your Biscotti & Coffee
1) Where is the Easter Bunny?
Easter is coming up and like so many special occasions I have been noticing how far from its roots it is getting. Take for instance this sign in my grocery store “Traditional Hot Cross Buns with chocolate chips” . Apparently I am not the only one who feels this way, from the National Post read Kim Bosch’s The Year the Bunnies Went Extinct.
2) Saffron
For all you foodies and aren’t we all. Shortage spurs sordid saffron smuggling from the Daily Telegraph.
3) The power of mom bloggers
This article re-enforces the power of social media marketing. Don’t mess with mom bloggers Hollie Shaw/Financial Post
This past Sunday morning I enjoyed what I like to call the running of the Australian Shepherds. Periodically Mia’s breeder Theresa invites the dog owners out to her farm. It really is quite a sight to see all them bounding around the fields; different coat colors, ages, generations and personalities. While the dogs are chasing one another, we the doggy moms (and occasional dads) get to catch up and compare notes on all things, Aussie! Mia will be two in May; she has gone from puppy to adult and Duke is now a senior dog, how quickly that time went.
Winter is slowly starting to wane in Alberta but the landscape has a dull, muddy look to it. Is it a midlife thing when we start to measure our life by the seasons? I know that I need to break the brown monotony, with some flowers. This is actually my favorite time of year for flowers. In my dating prime I always thought that the man who really got me would have come to the door with spring flowers instead of those expensive roses. A bouquet of daffodils, some vivid iris and tulips, the scent of jasmine or a beautiful bowl of hyacinths would have delighted me. Add to this offering a leather bound copy of one of my favorite books and I would have ……… (insert own words).
Another measurable part of my time is the chunks of it that I spend R&Ring or doing Reading & Research. Finding information & resources for clients and my writing has me uncovering all sorts of interesting material. I therefore thought that I would start to share with you some of the websites and articles that I come across in that process. Some engaging bits and pieces from around the world that will go well With Your Biscotti & Coffee
This week we have; ladies only trains, why acquiring water is still such a challenge in may parts of the world and an article on what may be happening between you and your best friend. Enjoy
1) Ladies Special
In countries where women are breaking with tradition and becoming the bread winners we are seeing some unexpected outcomes. India is now running women only trains. This came about because the women are tired of being verbally and physically abused on the regular trains. Another offshoot is women vendors who sell everything from earrings to hairpins to frozen yogurt to the female passengers.
BBC News: Joy of India’s women only trains
2) Water.org: Women Can’t Do Everything Campaign
Searching for water takes hours out of the day for women around the world.
3) The Myth of the BFF by Kate Fillion
Irene S Levine has a PDF version of this really interesting article that was published in Chatelaine Magazine, January 2010.
Those of us who appreciate quality coffee develop a sixth sense when we go into a restaurant.
Places with the word café in the name are usually good but to be sure check out the ambiance. Tables of students, people reading books or newspapers and snippets of conversations about politics and the theater indicate it is safe to relax and enjoy a latte.
Unless you have been been on the road since before the sun was up, restaurants on the side of a highway are not the best of places to order coffee. What is served up in those thick white mugs is a blackish beverage that comes in an industrial size can and run through a never been cleaned coffee machine and as the day wears on it becomes a combination of the 6am, 9am, 10:30 ………… leftovers.
Never assume that expensive restaurants will serve good coffee because they don’t. Chains defiantly don’t, I rarely get a good coffee at The Keg; perhaps their thinking is that by the time one has consumed all those keg sized drinks and a large slab of cow the customer wouldn’t even notice the quality. I notice. The last time I was there I ordered a Spanish coffee after dinner; it had the bitter taste of sitting for hours with liquor and cream added.
I may be one of only a handful of people in North America who DOES NOT LIKE TIM HORTONS COFFEE. It gives me both a stomach and head ache. We have not one but two Tim’s where I live, yea.
Needless to say my kitchen is a shrine to good coffee. I buy only whole beans that I would hand pick myself if I could. I grind them, add bottled water to my clean coffee maker, get out one of my favorite coffee mugs, add some fresh cream and experience something that is close to a caffeine orgasm.
One day I will buy an Italian espresso machine, the kind that costs a few thousand dollars. I will serve it’s hot fresh nectar in little white cups while friends gather to discuss avant-garde topics and how hard it is to find a good cup of coffee
Recently the New York Times asked “How do you decide to get rid of a book.” The answers from six authors and one book store owner are worth reading if you too are the ‘ I would rather read than have sex, what bestsellers are on sale this week, I want to die in my favorite book store’ kind of person.
Which books we get rid of goes to the root of what type of readers we are. I read fiction and biographies to relax and for the escapism into a different life and someone else’s reality. If I don’t like it I pass it on or take it to the second hand book store. I am not snobbish about my library; hardback, trade paperback or written in the margins from a garage sale if I enjoyed reading it….it stays.
As a business coach business books get rotated quickly as they have to be current. There are of course the classics that all entrepreneurs should read such as: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson, The E-Myth by Michael Gerber or the timeless Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich
The majority of life self-help books are overly clichéd and devoid of any genuine long term life solutions, unless it is exceptionally thorough I don’t buy much of the self-improvement genre. This criterion makes it easy to maintain a manageable selection.
While I have a minimalist attitude when to clutter in general, obviously this doesn’t seen to apply when it comes to books.There are piles in the living room and dining room, my office shelves are full and what does the top of my beautiful antique bedside table look like any way? I’ll just put a basket underneath to catch the spill off and stop it from groaning.
I can definitely relate to Joshua Ferris sentiments in his last line of the NY Times piece “………..I leave and come back, and the books I find there tell me I’m home.”
I must also confess that while I will not read about what famous people are wearing, eating or where they vacation; I am curious about what books they are reading. So Lesley Jane Seymour , Al Gore, Rahm Emanuel, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Michaëlle Jean, Angela Merkel what are you taking to bed?
It was a cold Christmas and New Years’ here in Alberta with temperatures often in the -20’s. We however were comfortably ensconced at home having made a decision to have a quiet holiday season; wanting to relax, regroup and restore.
Needless to say this was not ideal dog walking weather so I stretched my imagination to keep them amused with indoor activities. Duke who is known to many of you as the neurotic chocolate lab recently turned nine and his long legs are showing the early onset of arthritis. His vet has just started him on a course of Cartrophen Vet which is of plant origin and not a steroidal anti-inflammatory. There are four shots so we will see if it helps. Mia, his 18 month old Australian Shepherd sister has no sympathy and continues to bug the hell out of him until he plays with her so he needs something!
The weather is particularly hard on the two feral cats who have adopted me or vice versa. I have my quota of indoor cats; anymore and I will be close to ‘cat lady’ status. So we built them a shelter and ensure that they receive dry bedding, regular fresh water and food. No matter how cold and hungry it is my voice that they wait for first when I go outside. When I speak to them their bodies relax and ears perk up, next they want the fresh water and then finally they eat.
Whether soothing a frightened animal, talking to a friend or writing an article it is our voice and the words that we choose that carries the message.
Blogs are all about our voice, the words that we type convey the nature and style of the blog. One of the first things I ask my clients. What do you want to achieve with your blog? Do you want to post about business, life, lifestyle, travels, writing? The range is vast so in order to stand out you have to have a clear vision and goals for your blog.
So with that in mind we have changed the look of this blog to reflect more of what we are about. Imagine that you are sitting in a café with friends discussing movies, politics, books, food and life in general. Life Deco is a blog where we aim to capture that same atmosphere. Drop by anytime all you need to bring is your favorite beverage. We hope that you will leave a comment for that will keep the conversations stimulating.
Thank you to Alanna Morley of Alanna Inc for designing the Life Deco blog.
