Fearless Fabulous Females Ezine
Ideas, resources, and tools to help you can gain greater clarity and commitment to create a life filled with fun and fulfillment.
- Issue: Vol. 1, No. 15
- Date: August 15, 2007
In this Issue
> Feature Article:
Turning Loss Into Meaningful Shifts For Good
> Teleconferences and Programs:
Complimentary 30-Min Coaching Sessions
> Fearless Recommendation:
NEADS Deserves Our Help
Andrea Williams, Publisher Andrea@FearlessFabulousLife.com
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ISSN 1937-5026
A Note from Andrea
Losing A Good Friend
Deep sorrow has a way of creating seismic shifts. Last week, Roger and I said “goodbye” to one of our Goldens, Ollie. Over a very quick three weeks, we realized he wasn’t well, discovered a couple of bleeding tumors, researched options for optimizing his health, and risked a surgery to make him more comfortable for his remaining 3-6 months (with fingers crossed that the tumors would actually be benign). Horribly, our vet found yet more budding tumors when he began Ollie’s spleenectomy. We opted to let him “sleep,” rather than recover and maybe not heal at all given his short time left.
It was shocking, heart breaking, and has caused a rattle in the whole system of house/family interactions; our patterns and expectations of what will happen during different situations and times of day are all shaken up. Ollie was a personality among us, helping to shape our actions and color our days with spirit and laughter.
This week, I discuss how a serious blow or setback can help to focus you back to the things that matter most. When things are achingly wrong, you can sometimes more easily identify and begin to define what it would take to make life truly grand.
Teleconferences, Workshops, and Programs
Complimentary 30-Min Coaching Sessions
The best way to understand if coaching is for you is to try it!
I am happy to offer anyone a complimentary session to see if we are a fit. In a half hour conversation, together:
- We’ll get clearer on your goals and vision
- We’ll create a 3-stage plan for achieving your goals
- We’ll uncover any challenges that could be slowing you down or sabotaging you
and
- You’ll end up with more energy and motivation to really make things happen
to find a good time for us to chat to gain clarity about your goals and life vision.
Feature
Turning Loss Into Meaningful Shifts For Good
There you are in your life, doing what you think is important—or at least what you think you must—from day to day, and then BLAMMO, something dreadful happens. You didn’t see it coming, maybe you couldn’t. In any case, things come to a screeching halt as you feel the full impact. You may recover quickly or it may take days, months or years, but there are good things to absorb and learn from even bad experiences.
Crisis Creates Animated Suspension
The unexpected end of a relationship (death or adultery), loss of a job (firing or not getting the desired promotion) or some other deep shift in identity (learning of serious illness or an altered interpretation of a childhood event), or even the impossible replacement of personal and deeply meaningful possessions (due to fire or flood) can be traumatizing.
To be blindsided by someone or smacked upside the head by life’s tribulations is painful and a genuine shock that diminishes our mental and physical capabilities. We need real rest and time to process the event of loss and the resulting knowledge and disappointment that life will not be exactly as we had planned.
Extreme emotion followed by profound exhaustion is the body’s and mind’s adaptive model. The purge of strong feelings creates a kind of tabula rasa, a space or place for meditation on what the “event” means in and for one’s life. This “animated suspension,” when life actually seems to slow down or stop, is a perfect snapshot for taking a good long look at one’s life to see what will still work and what must change… now.
Mourning For What is Missing Provides Clues
When we lose something of great value, we mourn for or even scream, “I want it / them / me back!” The loss is visceral, searing, almost not bearable. But then it is. We transfer the pain to productive activity or a set of plans to fill the void.
I react deeply to matters concerning my pets. The day after my first husband and I stayed home to assist the birth of nine puppies to the Golden we were fostering, I tendered my resignation from a boring, stifling, dead-ending job. We kept the mother and two of the puppies, and I set out on the adventure to learn about myself and what really made me tick.
Watching the force of nature of the birth of those pups catapulted me into full throttle recognition of the lack of spontaneity and connection in my work days. I wanted more activity, challenge, and variety, so I set out to do something about it. I stepped up and claimed my talents and experience, got coached to keep myself on track, and reinvented aspects of both my work and personal lives.
Look to Your Values & Needs for Direction
With the recent death of my dog, Ollie, friends helped me to remember the charming and silly things that made for a good day when he was around: Dancing with me in the living room (he had moves!) or for his dinner, napping on the couch, “telling” us stories with his insistent “one note” barking, and watching things happen in our neighborhood through the dining room windows. Ollie had a fully engaged life; he barked, licked, and ate his values with abandon.
My values include creativity, risk-taking, honesty, and providing service. In building—and constantly renovating—my life with these qualities in mind, I create learning experiences for myself and others, synthesize information and present it in entertaining and engaging ways, and help my clients to discover the truth or essence of their experience to help move them from stagnation to excitement and confidence. These activities support and enhance my sense of self.
To be even more fully expressed and to refuel means to surround myself with nature, be with my dogs, and enjoy good food. When things are difficult or I am over-tired, these important aspects of my environment must be prominent to make me feel that I am part of a meaningful whole, to quiet my attraction to complexity and taking on too much, and to connect me to my deepest and truest feelings. To know and act on what I genuinely need greatly simplifies decision-making.
Obvious Simplicity Results from Life’s Pain
With Ollie’s death—eight years after the birth of that large, life-altering litter—I am reminded that there is no point in waiting for much of anything. The things I want to accomplish, the activities that amuse me, and the people I want to spend time with are right in front of me. I simply need to come out of hiding, grab hold of what I need, declare what it is that I’m about, and claim my place at the table of my choosing.
The loss cannot and is not something to be replaced, yet somehow the void makes it easier to pare down and focus on the basics. Within a day or two of losing Ollie, I cut off my hair, enjoyed utter clarity about my ideal clients and how I wish to work with them, understood immediately what my business focus should be, and saw most of my relationships in a new light.
The next steps were clear and my confidence returned; the emotional bruise was hurrying me to better choices and my personal truth. I miss Ollie and so many things that are now gone, and it is also the case that there are many more good things ahead.
© 2007 Andrea R. Williams
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Andrea Williams, personal and small business success coach, is the creator of the Fearless, Fabulous Life Launch, a 90-day, step-by-step discovery and rejuvenation process to help you gain clarity and commitment about what is most important to you. If you're ready to pump your life with more fun & fulfillment, check out Andrea's coaching programs and resources now at www.FearlessFabulousLife.com, and sign up for “Fearless, Fabulous Female,” her free ezine on personal reinvention at midlife.
Fearless Quote
“It’s only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on Earth—and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up—that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.”
—Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Fearless Recommendations
NEADS Deserves Our Help
NEADS (Dogs For Deaf and Disabled Americans), of Princeton, MA, is a non-profit organization established in 1976 to train and provide rescued dogs and donated puppies to assist people who are deaf or physically disabled in leading more independent lives at work, at home and at school. These assistance dogs become an extension of their owners and bring security, freedom, independence and relief from social isolation to their human partners.
Recently, NEADS has been profiled in The New York Times for placing trained pups with vets returning from Iraq with serious injuries. Some of their dogs are trained by prison inmates. In a time when the world seems impossible to fix, the staff and volunteers associated with NEADS prove that everyone can help and be helped.
I encourage you to give this wonderful organization your support through payroll deduction, secure online giving, or check mailed via snail mail. They also have “Fabulous Flunkies” for adoption; those pups that do not successfully complete the training program (and you were wondering why I love this program!).
The 5.75 Questions You’ve Been Avoiding
Michael Bungay Stanier has a new movie (previously I’ve shared his other movie, The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun), The 5.75 Questions, to prompt serious noodling about your life and how to infuse it with more juice.
After you’ve enjoyed the movie, you can sign up for a free 5-part e-course: The Five Questions for a Life of Fun, Inspiration and Action.
About Andrea
Andrea Williams, Personal & Business Development Coach, works with boomers, career changers, and others in transition to reach core issues quickly, to promote their inspirations and aspirations, and to provide unswerving support for ongoing life improvement.
Andrea also offers teleclasses, workshops, and other resources to help individuals and groups achieve greater self-awareness, success, and satisfaction. Learn more now at www.FearlessFabulousLife.com.
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