I love the idea that every day is a new beginning and a chance to start afresh.  It feels good to wake up knowing you can take on the day with renewed enthusiasm. A  chance to do a better job than the day before!

Some  new beginnings are thrust upon us - we don't choose them: Death of a loved one, a break-up or a loss of a job. These are hard times.

As in the painting, we feel, we imagine, we observe and we wonder how things will unfold. We try to accept. We might question what really matters or, if we will be happy again. 

Other new beginnings are summoned from deep within us. We choose to bring about a change in our life for all kinds of reasons.

For example, when we have experienced prolonged dissatisfaction or incompleteness in our lives, guilt or regret that has built up over the years, anger and disappointment that has burned too long inside us or, when we have lived too long without our imagination.

Are you wanting a new beginning but still for example:

• Have a challenge letting go of old and familiar habits?
• Don't know who the new YOU wants to be?
  
• Hate to say goodbye to an old love?
• Are struggling with whether you really want to get a new job?

What new beginnings are you hoping for this year? What are the obstacles in your way?


Keep you posted,

Coach Minda

Working with Coach Minda is a great way to discover new things about yourself and uncover what you really want in life. I help you to discover possibilities you may not have known, set and implement goals and work through any roadblocks along the way.

Growing up, my mother illustrated and explained the right way to draw angles, shadows and reflections. I was easily frustrated and gave up trying to draw 3-dimensional objects on 2-dimensional surfaces. The remains of those lessons: I can draw a teacup on a saucer, a glass with a straw in it and different angled boxes at a grade three skill-level. 

I forgot about this when I was looking for easy summer credits as an undergraduate student and registered for an art course at the University of Toronto. I wanted a chance to experiment, be playful and explore my creative side.  I got a D+.  Drawing perspective was worse than learning math and for me, math is the worst.

While drawing perspective stumps me, having perspective intrigues and motivates me. The value of perspective is that it helps resist some of our judgments, rules and standards that we impose on others and ourselves. It unlocks our habitual views. Pulling back and looking from multiple vantage points captures the broader 3-dimensional experience that we live in. I derive energy from insight into possibilities and explanations.

As a coach, I pay attention to the client’s preference for a particular perspective. Sometimes his/her preferred way of seeing means losing out on the contribution that another perspective might provide. With time, a client discovers new ways of seeing and appreciating alternate perspectives. 

For me, learning to have perspective is easier than learning how to draw perspective!

What are your thoughts on the art of perspective? 

Keep you posted,
Coach Minda

As I walked this weekend on a country bike path that was once a rail bed, I spotted chokecherry bushes full of ripe fruit. I pulled at a few, popped them in my mouth and hoped they weren't poisonous lookalikes. I spit out the pits. I ate a few more until my mouth was a bit dry. I got choked up as I remembered my chokecherry walks with my father, in Vermont, on a similar path.

For ten years running, when our children were youngsters, we rented a cottage on Lake Memphremagog, just north of Newport, in Vermont. My parents would often join us.  At U.S. customs, they loved the way the kids would remain quiet through the questioning of the border guards, then throw up their arms and scream with delight as we pulled away. They knew the cottage was minutes away.

These were happy days: an exceptional sandy beach, shallow water for 50 feet out, and a view of soft mountains across the lake. A bike path ran parallel to the lake so you could walk or ride in either direction; north to North Derby Rd and Canada Customs or south, to North County Hospital and then the town of Newport. And chokecherries lined the path.

The chokecherries this weekend weren't nearly as good as they were when my father and I would walk at a snail's pace, talking with pleasure about nothing much while sampling chokecherries. Whenever the chokecherries would dry our mouths, and make it almost difficult to swallow, we would stop. I can't say I ever loved chokecherries, but my father had sweet childhood memories of chokecherry jelly, and so it was that we ate them together summer after summer, along the old railroad bed.

What fond memories choke you up? And why?

Keep you posted,

Coach Minda

I was happily home alone on a steamy July morning sitting in front of the fan, when the doorbell unexpectedly rang. I answered the door to John Daniels, who was kind enough to deliver my newly framed paintings on my birthday.

A week earlier, I gave John five paintings to be framed. I asked him to use his years of experience and sense of design to pre-select a few frames and matts for each painting. I would make a final choice after we looked at the different options. This was my first experience talking to a master framer about framing paintings.

My late mother painted furiously in her last 20 years. If she agreed with my father that a painting was good (and he thought they were all great), he would measure and cut the matt, glass and ½ inch moulding, paint the moulding and frame her paintings.  Without his frames, her canvases would lie stacked around their home rather than on the walls.

The day my favorite painting fell off my hallway wall and crashed to the floor, I said to myself, “it’s time to reframe a few of her paintings.” 

I brought John two canvases I had rescued from under my mother's bed, before I sold their house, and three others my father had framed.

John took off the wrapping paper from each painting. One at a time he set each on the side table and leaned them against the wall for my approval. I stood a few feet back.

Great emotion bubbled up as I looked upon my mother's work with new eyes. “These are masterpieces, real works of art," I said to John.

“I believe my mother would be secretly delighted to know I had these professionally framed. At least I hope so," I said.  "On the other hand, she might be reprimanding me for spending so much money when they were good enough with my father's frames."

I felt the twins of joy and sorrow beat at my heart:

• for all her paintings that hadn’t had the benefit of such beautiful frames;
• for my father's championing of my mother's paintings and the love and care he put into framing;
• for replacing my father's frames;
• for finally framing these paintings; and
• for having received them on my birthday.

Keep you posted,

Coach Minda