Tuesday, again. Time to take stock.

I thought I would be writing daily. Or, maybe every other day or so. It seems to be working out in favor of the "or so" schedule. And here it is Tuesday again and I'm writing again.

I have been wrapping up several coaching assignments this past week. This has added to the feeling of reflection that I usually get into this time of year. With the year end approaching and the winter solstice tomorrow, it seems like a very appropriate time to look at results and play with ideas about the future.

Tomorrow will be the "shortest" day of the year and gives those of us in the northern half of the world an opportunity to ponder in the darkness. For me this is a good time to take score. Life, like it or not, is a game where scores are taken. This doesn't have to mean that the scores are monetary, though that can be part of the game.

I like to take score on a variety of levels. Health is important to me and so are relationships. For health I will look at my condition. Any new complaints? Ailments? Am I getting the sort of exercise that I enjoy? Is it helping my fitness and weight? How are my relationships? Strong or only so-so? Any new friends? Am I putting myself out there? (I tend to be a little shy.)

There are other factors to consider: happiness levels, wealth, and life/work balance to name only a few. What ever is important to you is a topic for review. Look back and see how you are doing; meeting goals or not, needing advise or support, time to start anew, whatever you find as your result. Then, look forward. Envision what you want of this topic or factor in your life. Picture it. Fill in the blanks. Flesh it out. Color in the details. Write about the results you want. Listen to it's needs. Touch it. Use all you senses to bring what you desire into your awareness. Use this focus as an anchor for your wishes. Record this in a way that allows you to go back to it on a regular basis. Renew your commitment regularly as you take stock during the coming year.

Not-So Random is now Not-So Often

I've been busy.

And I imagine you have also. So that lets us both off the hook.

I'm not writing and you're not reading.

So, what have we been doing with all this time? In my case I have been looking at what to work on next. I read the Opinion in MIT Sloan Management Review (Fall 2005) by John Humphreys. In Developing the Big Picture he offered that strategic thinking is not being learned or taught in corporations these days. He calls for "Organizational leaders [to] step in and fill the void by recognizing and rewarding big-picture thinking... [and] focusing on transferring their own conceptual thinking skill to their peers and to the next managerial generation." I agree.

I also am not sure there are leaders ready and able to do this. Strategic thinking is not difficult to do, however it needs to be learned and then practiced. My experience is that most corporations segregate this function into a specialty and do not reward strategic efforts that do not come from this department. So unless you are in this department you will not have anyone mentoring you in strategic thinking.

I would like to change this. I will be developing some materials on this. At least a paper/article and a teleclass. More to follow.

'Year of Magical Thinking' Headed for Broadway - New York Times

This book came out as I was thinking about my loss and how to bring some of what I learned to others. Now, to read that this might become a one-person show on Broadway seems to me like a logical extension of the book, of the story of loss and grief and maybe of her process of healing.

My feeling, having read the book by Didion, was that she had started to heal from her loss of her husband. And after the publication, the loss of her daughter. However, there seemed to me much more that was to come for this process. I could see the grief - it was there for all to read. What I could not see was a restarting of her life. Maybe this will be the restarting; the new thing that she needs. And maybe it will help others who see it.

Find out more

In addition to this blog, I have a website that I use as a brochure for my more business oriented coaching. It can be found at www.fmbrunner.com.

I am also writing articles on a variety of subjects. These I have been posting at ezinearticles.com. Please check them out also.

One of my most recent is titled: Healing from Loss (link here). I am doing this as part of a new direction that adds teleclasses to my way of working with people. I've been partnering with Kaveh Nayeri in this venture. Kaveh has been offering teleclasses as part of his Love Your Soul Institute (link here).

We have started one class on Loss and will be offering another starting in January. Please contact me if you or someone you know is interested. We are using Teleclass International (link here) for this offering. The first class is free and the next three are offered for $99.

This has been my first commercial.

About me and my Goals

Here I am back at home after spending the weekend in Reno with my lady friend, writing to the blogsphere and I want to know what focus to take. How do I best use this space and time.

(I'm tempted to take a side trip here and talk about my ideas about time, space and symbols. However, since this usually ends with people all glassy-eyed, and since I can't see you and cut it off if this occurs, I'll save this for another time... And space.)

I think the best thing to do now is talk about me and my goals. (I just changed the title to reflect this.)

I'm a coach. I coach people. I do not coach teams or sports players, unless they want to be more successful in their life or business. It is life issues and business goals that are my focus. I have been doing this for almost six years and have been engaged in the helping/mental health field since 1994. My entry into this field started in 1983 while I was engaged in a series of self-awareness courses offered by Lifespring. At some point while doing this I realized that I wanted to work more directly with people and didn't want to always be focused on budgets and projects. I started back to school and earned my Masters in Counseling Psychology. This degree centered on Transpersonal Psychology. (More about this later.) I then started a Ph.D. program and left the corporate world behind. (My dissertation was on consumerism and the individual.)

My original intent was to become a psychologist and have a private practice. I started my internship with a non-profit organization called Rubicon in the San Francisco east bay city of Richmond. While I was doing the internship a position became available there and I accepted it. Within six months I became the program coordinator. (My past was haunting me - I am a very good manager in addition to being a very good therapist.) While I was on my way to a private practice, managed care changed the ground rules and I lost interest in this goal. Coincidentally, I was recruited to become a coach. This has become my calling.

The difficult part about coaching is the marketing of myself. (In this I am not alone.) Because of this, one of my goals for this blog is to assist in the marketing of me. So you can all consider your self my target market. All of you except those who are perfectly satisfied with every aspect of your life.

So, be warned. You will, if you read my blog, become more aware of what I do and how you could benefit.

In Reno and the Snow Again

My girl friend or lady friend (not sure of proper title), lives in Reno, while I live outside of San Francisco in Walnut Creek. So I drive to Reno more often than I used to.

The drive today was wonderful. A clear sky all the way up into the Sierras, where it clouded up somewhat. Big light grey clouds that carry the promise of more snow. You can now see the snow on the mountain tops and running down the trails that will soon start to have traffic jams of skiers... I'll be one of them.

This is a sometimes fringe benefit of starting a new relationship. You get an opportunity to try new things. In my case it is skiing. I tried it back in the 60s in Ohio where I grew up. There skiing meant taking off down a slope of ice. Praying that I would be able to stop before charging into the parking lot. I didn't last a season with the sport and it soured me on skiing even after I moved to California in the early 70s. (I think this in one more example on my hard-headedness.)

And now I am a skier again. At an age that most of my peers are giving it up because they don't want to kill them selves. I don't see it that way. (Hard-headedness again maybe.) I think it helps me to keep fit. Or, more exactly it gives me a reason to be more fit; so I don't kill myself. And I wear a helmet. So I don't have to prove just how hard my head is.

This post is another benefit of the drive; I have time to think about what is important to me. In this case it is the new relationship that has shown me how to try new things. Things that help me keep my life moving forward into new experiences.

My First Post

They say that you never forget your first time. Who they are has always remined a mystery, and yet there is some truth to the saying. I remember many first times.

I remember my first kiss. I remember my first auto accident. I remember many other events in my life. Yet there are some things I can not recall. Some things have faded beyond remembering. For these things, my mind at times seems to invent memories for me. At least this seems the case when I share them with others who should also have a memory of the event. Or, maybe they are the ones with the inventive minds.

How we remember is a mystery to me. I realize there are researchers who believe they know all about memory; I don't believe them. I think we are far more complex than Science does.

I think I will remeber this first post as one that should have been tossed out. One that had no clear purpose or direction. As more of a random thought than the namesake not-so random thoughts.

And yet maybe there is a thread here that could redeem the post. (If a post needs this.) That thought is about memory, which is about thoughts. My thoughts may seem at times to be random (by me or others), yet they all originate from a vast reservoir of memories and the ideas that are then formed by my experiences or memories of these experiences. I may not always remember all the first times. However my mind contains the remnants and associations that become ideas.

I will present these as they become apparent to me.