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Coach Minda's
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These blogs are a way to share my thoughts and insights with you. Feel free to comment and share.
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 I was a teenager the first time I met Anna in her St. Famille apartment in Montreal, just a bit south of what is now the trendy Plateau area. She accepted my offer to babysit her three young children so she could teach a night class at McGill. With a background in English and Philosophy, she cobbled together teaching contracts to support her family as a single-mother. She was tall, slim, blond-haired and beautiful with a laugh that sometimes verged on cackle. Our decades of friendship began on this night. Before meeting Anna, I didn’t know mothers who:
Over the years she had other homes in Montreal and I was given a key and a bed anytime I wanted to overnight. I spent most of my time at her Prince Albert street, Westmount home. Anna passed away this week in PEI, surrounded by her adult children and Jacob, her long time partner and more recently husband, who came to Canada from Holland. He took exceptional care of her these last years and months. She had COPD - chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – a progressive lung disease that makes it difficult to breathe and which gets worse over time. She had been tethered to an oxygen pump for over a year and continued smoking right till the end. Last summer, believing it might be the last time we would see her, my husband and I drove out to her farmhouse that overlooks St. Peters Bay. Over twenty years earlier she bought a broken down old building and turned it into an exceptional home with beautiful grounds: gorgeous garden and vegetable beds, surrounded by trees she planted from seeds.  On a train in Morocco At the dinner table, Jacob asked us both – “how come the two of you have remained friends for all these years?” We looked at one another, not sure who had the answer. I said, “It’s a good question. We appear on the surface to have nothing in common don’t we Anna? We are so different in temperament. I think the glue that binds us has been deep acceptance for one another. And love. We have never tried to change or adjust the other." Anna added, “We are both curious about people. And, I think we both believe it is sinful if you are not true to yourself." Anna befriended almost anyone. She believed in personal freedom and choice. It didn’t matter if she agreed or not with your beliefs or ideas. She might even find you more interesting if you held a different point of view. Anna was generous particularly in that she accepted you just as is. And, generosity is one quality I love. With love and admiration, Minda Coach Minda - provides confidential coaching services in Montreal, and internationally by telephone or by SKYPE. Coaching focuses on life-work issues.
I love to help procrastinators, perfectionists, self-doubters and decision-dodgers experience quick wins, work through roadblocks and stay motivated. All this can apply to your work life, home life or a specific project.
Visit www.coachminda.com for more on my approach and background, or to review client testimonials. To know more about my services, simply call or write.
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 Our dance studio teachers and students have a few more weeks to prepare for the summer PERFORMANCE (Aka -SPOTLIGHT) - choreographed routines in the Latin or Smooth ballroom dances. Some of us are social dancers, while others dance competitively. Our dance experience ranges from three months to ten years or more! In my heart of hearts, I always considered myself a dancer. I was a freestyle, free-spirited, do-your-own thing dancer. That is until I took my first ballroom dance lesson a year ago and discovered I didn’t know the first thing about dancing. At least about partner dancing, properly known as social dancing. It was a big blow to my ego, a personal humiliation to discover how hard it was for this dancer to coordinate arms with complex foot and leg movements to the correct rhythm and timing of a specific dance while attempting to look good at the same time. Working for weeks (actually, months) on the same step, turn or spiral, I could not understand how it could be that no matter how hard I practiced, there was so little improvement. I left many a lesson demoralized asking myself, “What am I doing this for? What is the point?.“ A year later of private and group lessons, supervised practices, organized social dances, endless reviewing of steps in my kitchen, on metro platforms and open country roads, I’m hungrier than ever to learn more. I'm finally a serious student. And, willing to repeat the same steps over and over. Repetition builds confidence and competence. I welcome corrections. But what I want most is to bypass my conscious mind. I want my thinking, analytical brain to relax and my muscle memory to kick-in. I want to be in sync with any partner so that leading and following feel effortless (and look it too!). This year, I am working on being able to feel more and be less distracted by what step to do next or to predict what my partner is going to do. Or, even to think, "hey, I'm doing pretty good." As I gear up for the Spotlight, I visualize in my mind’s eye the three routines I'm going to do; the slow waltz, the rumba and the samba. Rehearsing each day is one of my greatest pleasures. And when showtime comes, I hope to dance with great feeling and style -- fully -- for a few minutes. Terrifying minutes. Wish me luck. Dance away, Coach Minda Coach Minda - provides confidential coaching services in Montreal, and internationally by telephone or by SKYPE. Coaching focuses on life-work issues.
Visit www.coachminda.com for more on my approach and background, or to review client testimonials. To know more about my services, simply call or write. |
My family, relationships, movement, nature, flexibility of mind, exploration of alternative perspectives & openness are central to my life.Archives
August 2024
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