“Forget the daffodils, Carolyn! The road is invisible in these clouds and fog, and there is nothing in the world except you and these children that I want
to see badly enough to drive another inch!”

My daughter smiled calmly and said, “We drive in this all the time, Mother.”
“Well, you won’t get me back on the road until it clears, and then I’m heading for home!” I assured her.

“But first we’re going to see the daffodils. It’s just a few blocks,” Carolyn said. “I’ll drive. I’m used to this.” 

“Carolyn,” I said sternly, “Please turn around.”
“It’s all right, Mother, I promise. You will never forgive yourself if you miss this experience.”

After about twenty minutes, we turned onto a small gravel road and I saw a small church. On the far side of the church, I saw a hand lettered sign with
an arrow that read, ” Daffodil Garden.”  We got out of the car, each took a child’s hand, and I followed Carolyn down the path Then, as we turned a corner,
I looked up and gasped. Before me lay the most glorious sight. 
 

 
It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it over the mountain peak and its surrounding slopes. The flowers were planted in
majestic, swirling patterns, great ribbons and swaths of deep orange, creamy white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, and saffron and  butter yellow. Each different
colored variety was planted in large groups so that it swirled and flowed like its own river with its own unique hue. There were five acres of flowers.

 ”Who did this?” I asked Carolyn.  “Just one woman,” Carolyn answered. “She lives on the property. That’s her home.” Carolyn pointed to a well-kept A-frame
house, small and modestly sitting in the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the house.

 On the patio, we saw a poster. “Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking”, was the headline. The first answer was a simple one. “50,000 bulbs,”
it read. The second answer was, “One at a time, by one woman. Two hands, two feet, and one brain.” The third answer was, “Began in 1958.”

 For me, that moment was a life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than forty years before, had begun, one bulb
at a time, to bring her vision of beauty and joy y to an obscure mountaintop. Planting one bulb at a time, year after year, this unknown woman had forever
changed the world in which she lived. One day at a time, she had created something of extraordinary magnificence, beauty, and inspiration. The principle
her daffodil garden taught is one of the greatest principles of celebration.

 That is, learning to move toward our goals and desires one step at a time–often just one baby-step at time–and learning to love the doing, learning
to use the accumulation of time. When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish magnificent
things. We can change the world .

 ”It makes me sad in a way,” I admitted to Carolyn. “What might I have accomplished if I had though t of a wonderful goal thirty-five or forty years ago
and had worked away at it ‘one bulb at a time’ through all those years? Just think what I might have been able to achieve!”

 My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual direct way. “Start tomorrow,” she said.

 She was right. It’s so pointless to think of the lost hours of yesterdays. The way to make learning a lesson of celebration instead of a cause for regret
is to only ask, “How can I put this to use today?”

 Use the Daffodil Principle. Stop waiting….
 Until your car or home is paid off
 Until you get a new car or home
 Until your kids leave the house
 Until you go back to school
 Until you finish school
 Until you clean the house
 Until you organize the garage
 Until you clean off your desk
 Until you lose 10 lbs.
 Until you gain 10 lbs.
 Until you get married
 Until you get a divorce
 Until you have kids
 Until the kids go to school
 Until you retire
 Until summer
 Until spring
 Until winter
 Until fall
 Until you die…

There is no better time than right now to be happy.
Happiness is a journey, not a destination.

look at the goal again and now ask yourself will i know if i have been able to avvomplish this goal and how will i know
okay that sounds simple right but be sure
if your goal is i want to find a new job that is satisfying the answer is i’ll know i have accomplished it when i have the new job
if your goal is to lose weight you’ll know by the scale
be sure your goals are specific enough tht you will be able to tell when you have accomplished them
now i’ll stick in the A and the R here
Attainable
Realistic
are these goals attainnable?
is it realistic for you to have a goal of losing 50 lbs in 1 year?
is it realistic and attainable for you to have a new job this year?
if the answer is yes okay we will move on to next steps in the next posts
if the answer is no
go back reevaluate and make the goals attainavble and realistic
no point in creating a goal that is unreaslitic from the get go – then you are setting yourself up
if your goal is to run a triathalon this year – but you haven’t so much as walked a mile in 10 years that might not be the most realistic goal and you will be setting yourself up for failure
so what if you made your goal a marathon at the end of the year or a half marathon

now go back and make sure your goals are at attainable in the time frame you have set up
perhpas 50 lbs is a more realistic goal for 1 year than 100 lbs

remember smart planning and realistic goal setting and good action plans are the difference between a new years’ resolution and a goal!!
get to work and see you next time

if you can not really come up with benefits or unclear about them they may not really be goals you want to accomplish this year and you may want to put those away for now and revisit them another time
take time and think and write

Now that we are into the new year many of us start the year with great plans – this year I am going to lose weight, excersize more, spend more time with the family, be more organized…..
what often happenns with our new year resolutions? Right – they fly right out the window, and this years resolutins often become next year’s resolutions or we even just give up.

What happens is that we make resolutions and they are just that declarations of what will change what we want to have happen but what we don’t do is make our desires clear, specific, or detailed and we often don’t give them time frames , we don’t make realistic goals and most important our resolutions don’t have action steps attached to them there in lies the difference between a new year’s resolution and a goal

so let’s do it differently this year!
let’s make it happen so at the end of 2007 we can say I did it ! and not make this year’s resolutins the same in 2008

So here is something to remember
goals need to be SMART
not smart like they can add and subtract but here is what SMART stands for
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely

so let us take it one step at a time
what I would like you to do is think about what you desire in your life
in relationships, your family, your bussiness, your finances, your health, your personal growth,what ever it is you desire and think big
journal your desires
be specific and as detailed as possible
what is it you want
and for that matter what is it you don’t want
take your time write often
that is the first step
we will get to the next step in the next post
remember be specific and detailed and don’t limit yourself!

Stress ? that tense feeling often connected to having too much to do, too many bills to pay and not enough time or money ? is a common emotion that knows
few borders.

For the full story click on the following link.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16296893/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15959037/

to find out more about wellness and stress management visit my web site
www.transcendinglimitations.com

amy is a 38 year old mother of 5 boysbetween the ages of 15 and 5 – already your shuddering!!

In asking her a little about herself in school she describes herself as not having been very successful in school, she felt she was just not smart. school was hard and her success in school came not academically but rather socially – she barely got by tho she clearly fell under the radar as noone really ever noticed – she thinks the school and her parents just chalked up her poor grades to the fact that she was more interested in her social life than her schoool work. later in life she started college stopped started again stopped married and began having children and she was fortunate enough that she didn’t have to work so she became a stay at home mom/.

she describes her home life as chaotic. her house was always cluttered, tumultuous, disorganized :up for grabs”. She hated when her husband came home after her long exhausting day home with the kids and household chores and would look at the chaos and the laundry undone and the toys out and say to her “what did you do all day”)
she was always feeling stressed, anxious, angry and diorganized but again she chalked it up to her not being up to the task of 5 kids a home and felt that this is how it is when you have 5 boys….
she was having some significant difficulties with her middle child who was 10 . he was angry defiant prone to fits of anger and acting out. Finally after her family had been suggesting for a while she take him for help she did and the psychiatrist told her he had ADD When he described ADD to her and how it manifested and what it was and looked like she was dunbstruck – she blurted out to him right there “oh my /GOD, I think i have been ADD my whole life”! in fact after talking to the psychiatrist he agreed she was add which explained to her some of her difficulities her whole life as well as some of her anxiety issues and her low level obsessive compulsive tendencies which she sort of joked about as her oobsessive compulsive disorder but never took seriously

okay so the reccommendation for her – I’m actually not sure about her son was meds
she found some success with the drugs and was finding herself more focused when she needed to be , less hyperfocused when she needed not to be and more able to handle her days her tasks and her life. Even her husband noticed the change

Feeling good, feeling capable and in control she decided she was ready to get the puppy she and her boys – not her husband- have wanted for a long time
i of course thought a puppy?! just what she needed but there was no detering her from this puppy – even tho i tried to disuade her from it at least for a while – i felt she needed to get more structures in place continue working on her organizational skills, and she certainly did not need to bring a puppy no less into what was still described as chatoic tho much improved,. I am only a coach not the police so an 8 week old puppy it was

any of you who have had a puppy know the amount of work a puppy is so i wont describe it but suffice it to say it is a lot of work,and a puppy on its own can bring a level of chaol into a house for a little while
and so it did
but it also brought something else a benefit i didn’t think wuld happen

the dog had a lot of energy as puppies will have and her trainer suggested she walk the puppy a lot to tire him out and get rid of some of tht energy _ funny my advice for adders and people with a lot of stress!
i forgot to mention that she is also very heavy probably about 75 lbs over weight tho she has been up and down on that scale in large amounts her whole adult life
but she began walking the dog every morning
first she started out on short walks but because of the dog she had to bring it to a pretty good clip for her as she was so out of shape
so it has been 8 months of walking the dog almost every morning
she has gone from half a mile to 7 miles in the last 8 months and a fast 8 miles not a slow leisurely walk it is definitely a power walk
the dog loves it and here is what happened to my client
first she has lost 50 lbs and because of the excersize her boday has changed dramatically
that is great news
and even better news for her she has found that it has been a fabulous compliment to her medication regiment of aderol
on the days she excersizes which is almost every day she feels far more focused , far more accomplished able to manage her house the kids and yes now going back to college.
at first tho her focus was on how much weight she lost and how good she looked and felt not connecting the benefits from the walking to being focused and on top of her game
when i showed her several articles and pointed out how she feels on days she hasn’t walked she has been able to make the connection and trust me it has to be really something big for her not to walk because she knows the days she doesn’t she is going to be less focused , more apt to get lost and hyper focus on something she has noticved that she no longer has to cont her cookies when she is baking she can just put them in a ziploc bag and freeze them with out counting them, she can get laundry done , not be late for the kids after school for pick up she is more able to say to someone who calls i can’t talk now I have school work or house work

the combination of her meds and the walking have been a tremembdous assisstance in helping her manage her add, feel better about herself and helps her to be able to be more consistent with the other structures we have put in place

if the articles by the expert were not enough for the both of us she is proof enough of the research that says that excersize is very beneficial in managing add

does she have bad days? days that are more chatic than others? sure who amongst us doesn’t
but she doesn’t beat herself up anymore, she doesn’t say chuck the whole darn thing and give up
she now is able to look at what happened
figure out what went wrong and not give up and move on and get back on track
now we are considering the possibility of adding meditation to her daily routine but she is not quite there yet
i’ll keep yo uposted

hope this is a useful and inspring story
have a great thanksgiving
and if you have a story to share , a question , an article or structure or tool that works for you in managing your add please share it with us

The Amazing Effects of Exercise on the Brain

Dr. John Ratey, author of A User’s Guide to the Brain has recently been giving a course on the effect of exercise on the brain for Bluehorn. It has been
a fascinating experience for all who have been taking it! Though we think about exercise as a way of strengthening our body’s muscles, it turns out that
exercise is also a way to literally strengthen the brain.

Research shows that aerobic exercise actually increases brain mass by growing new capillaries, which is associated with an increase in neural activity.
In addition, exercise increases levels of many brain chemicals, including norepinephrine and serotonin (linked to improved mood, self esteem, impulse control,
and greater focus) and dopamine, which is the major driver of the attention center of the brain.

In fact, according to Dr. Ratey, “There is nothing that affects brain neuroplasticity as much as exercise. It causes a rapid and persistent uptick in the
factors and chemicals that enhance learning and mood. Every week, 4-8 papers are released in the neuroscience literature on the positive effects of exercise
on the brain.” Exercise literally “stresses” the brain in a good way, in part by restricting blood flow to the brain (because the blood is flowing to your
muscles instead of your brain). Just as your muscles deal with the stress of exercise by becoming bigger and stronger, so does your brain. In this case,
“bigger and stronger” means “neurogenesis” or the building of additional brain matter and synaptic pathways.

This means that everyone in your family should be incorporating regular aerobic and other kinds of physical exercise into your schedule. It helps keep your
mood positive and also readies your brain for learning. Schools tempted to cut recess time and physical education should reconsider, as lack of exercise
can actually decrease learning even as teachers spend more time on academic subjects.