Celebrating Lessons Learned

This morning I was looking through old teaching materials to find a program I wanted to send to a friend who is a new teacher.  I found it!  My Acclimatization Lesson Plans. This is a binder of specific Nature walks that I had at my side constantly as a new nature interpreter 35 years ago.

What came to my mind was “I don’t need these any more. This way of teaching is so ingrained in my fabric that it comes naturally. I can make up my own walks and sensory awareness activities at the drop of a hat with people of any age! After my walks, I get comments like, “I’ll never look at Nature the same.  You changed my life!”
I realized that I  have mastered this method of using sensory experiences as gateways to conceptual learning and that I don’t even remember that I once had to learn that myself! read more

Yesterday, I joined in

Isabel Parlett’s

class about successful writing.

What I got was
1. Start with Free Writing
2. Moooove to get started
3.Ask a big question then get started

So, I got started!

This morning, I wrote Free Hand on paper!

I was surprised at what came up. First was my resistance to starting out in a NEW notebook. I had already chosen to write free hand with a blue pencil.  How bold of me!  No digital work today. Freehand felt much, well, FREER!

I wrote about feelings and ideas, then launched a whole section on cost estimates for house improvements and pros and cons of whether to spend my time doing house projects or creating business products. read more

A call from three friends who are climbing Mt. Katahdin, Maine evokes some emotion! Wow! I wish I were doing something easy like that today! Instead, I’m struggling with autoresponders, sign-up forms, and digital design which is hard for me.

Then, the light bulb goes on!

When I climbed Mt. Katahdin at the beginning of my walk of the Appalachian Trail, I struggled. I balked at the immense boulders that faced me on the ascent. I feared for my safety as I shivered in the cold. I reached outside my comfort zone to ask another hiker to walk together down the mountain. read more

Test Post

How to Forgive

Even if we know that forgiveness is a good thing to do and has many benefits, how to do it isn’t so straightforward.  I’ve searched for answers about this and found the following articles.  The authors have lots of tips on how to forgive.

http://stress.about.com/od/relationships/a/how_to_forgive.htm

Elizabeth Scott, M.S

Express Yourself

Look For the Positive

Cultivate Empathy

Protect Yourself and Move On

Get Help If You Need It

http://www.wikihow.com/Forgive

Edited byRosemary Thornton and 91 others read more

Benefits of Forgiveness

You would probably not argue that forgiving someone has benefits.  What I’ve experienced has been more energy, better relationships, and freedom from my past.  Here are some great articles on what other forgiveness experts say about the benefits of forgiveness. 

Enjoy!

And please add your list of benefits to the comments section!

http://stress.about.com/od/relationships/a/forgiveness.htm

To sum it up, forgiveness is good for your body, your relationships, and your place in the world. That’s reason enough to convince virtually anyone to do the work of letting go of anger and working on forgiveness. read more

False.Evidence.Appearing.Real dances onto my stage

I’m waking up for the second day in a row with a headache and stomach ache and “work on audio product” on my calendar. My first inclination is to stay in bed. I can do that because I’m the boss, right?

Wrong. I AM the boss, and the crew too, so there’s no one else to get the work done. And then the arguments start. “No one wants your stuff anyway. It’s not good enough. Just stay in bed and take care of yourself.  It’s probably really a physical problem and you’re ignoring that.” read more

There sure is a lot going on in my life now! That seems true for several of my loved ones as well. How about for you? Is the summer winding down with paradigm shifting? It occurs to me to pay attention to my friends who look to the heavens for signs of cosmic patterns and shifts that weave the fabric upon which we’re painting our lives.

Deb Unterman brought one such insight in her invitation to play Clarity, her board game that playfully nudges inquisitive adventurers to consider the subtle influences of the invisible energies in our lives. read more

Today, I’m walking with my client, Mary, who has completed her training for her dream walk – 57 miles in Scotland!  She has taken this journey one step at a time.  Today, she’s walking 11 miles. Tomorrow, 16.

What does it take to walk into a dream?  Small steps. Consistent steps.  That’s the walk of creation.

It starts with a fantasy.  That’s what a dream is. There’s nothing real about it! Absolutely nothing!  It’s pure fantasy.  Do you have fun fantasizing, or do you resist it because there’s nothing real about it?  I invite you to take a different look at fantasizing and consider that all the great inventions started out that way.  Dreams became plans. Plans become actions.  Actions become reality. read more

I’m standing atop Springer Mountain, GA on a Sunday afternoon. It’s cloudy but not raining. I’m alone but for one other hiker, Mary. She is perched on the rock that marks the southern terminus of the iconic Appalachian Trail. What a perfect spot to celebrate a completion. Mary is rounding out her year-long training for a walk of 57miles in 5 days that begins in two weeks in Scotland. It’s the walk of her dream. Her adult son invited her two years ago to walk in Scotland, in the ancestral land of both his mother and his father. Today, Mary is walking 16 miles over rough terrain,  including hundreds of feet of elevation gain and loss that mimics a similar day on the walk in Scotland. It’s a big day, even for seasoned hikers, including myself! read more