Growing up, your man may have never witnessed an adult who could regulate their emotions. I hear this more often than not from the men I’ve coached. Maybe they saw yelling, maybe the silent treatment, and maybe even complete avoidance.

What happens is we learn the way to deal with uncomfortable emotions is to well, not deal with them. 

Often, if this is the childhood experience the man in your life has had, he will view small situations as a crisis and complete chaos. He may have saw shame stop him from speaking up about the realities going on around him, and never feeling like he could trust that his emotions were safe.

He might have learned that what people thought and that the intellect was more important than how he felt.

If so, then He learned codependency, enabling, and overachieving, and overprotecting was love. 

There comes a time when he will want to try a different way of living for himself and the family he’s creating. But he won’t know how. 

He’ll feel helpless, an...

Have you ever hit a season in life where you just feel… flat? Like your bucket is empty. Your inspiration is non-existent. No matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to summon that flow of energy and passion like you used to? I’ve been there. And I want you to know — you’re not broken, used up, or “past your prime.” 

Your creative spark is simply suffocating beneath the weight of all your responsibilities.

 Because — let’s face it. Especially if you're multi-passionate like me, life can get overwhelming, fast. Between work, family, friends, health and just getting the basics done, it’s A LOT. We wake up. Survive. Sleep. Repeat. It never stops. Especially when you’re in the trenches with young children.  But deep in my heart, I know I’m a creator.  And I’ve had to learn how to honor this instead of dismissing it. I now know how to create. I’ve honed a process I use to create, to write songs, to do this podcast, to build my coaching practice, and to get it done, to finish and follow...

Today, we’re going to talk about when a child, and by that, I mean an older child - a young adult - is taking advantage of your kind nature. If you have young children, this will still be relevant to you, because I love to think about parenting with the end in mind - which is to raise happy, resilient kids who thrive out in the world and who we have a fulfilling, balanced relationship of give and take together as they get older and as we get older. 

This topic is something that I’ve experienced as a sibling, as a sister, but not as a parent, and I want to be upfront about that because I’m speaking as a sister who’s seen this happen in the family, and I’m speaking as a coach who coaches parents on this dynamic, when a child is taking advantage of your good heart, your big loving heart, your kind nature. 

My story began when I was adopted by my aunt and uncle when I was a toddler, I don’t know if many of you know that? And I grew up with an adopted  brother my same age, he is Navajo...

I’m so excited to share this topic on future focus, why I love it and why I think you will too. It came up for me this last weekend, I was able to spend a beautiful getaway with my husband at the very same place we spent our honeymoon thirty one years ago, the same spot on the beach on the Oregon Coast. We had time to talk and laugh, and reminisce, we enjoyed lots of  fresh seafood at our favorite restaurants, we saw whales just off the coast and that was exciting, we stopped at our favorite candy shoppe and picked out our favorite salt water taffy flavors, he loves peppermint, and I love orange cream and cinnamon, and we took time to reflect on the ups and downs we’ve been through. My husband asked me, he said, “what kind of thoughts do you have today when you think about us and our future versus how you thought about our future on our honeymoon?” And I was like, woah!! That’s such a great question.

So when we talk about Future Focus, this can be a challenging idea to wrap our hea...

I know for creative folks, sometimes our lives can feel a little flat, we have so many great ideas and big dreams, but it can be so difficult to actually make our dreams come true for ourselves. 

I don’t think it’s supposed to be easy to be creative. I think we are working with a lot of resistance and with this thing called ‘entropy’ in the world - have you heard of that word before? Entropy?

It’s important to understand what Entropy is and how to work with it.

What Is Entropy? Generally, entropy is defined as randomness or disorder of a system. This concept was introduced by a German physicist named Rudolf Clausius back in the year 1850.  

When we engage in creative work, we enter into a different, altered state from life as we know it. For me, I have to go through a little bit of a withdrawal. 

Julia Cameron in her book, ‘The Artist’s Way,’ describes this withdrawal state as a detachment or nonattachment state, which is similar to almost a meditative state or a meditati...

I want to teach to this idea that your life is a work of art. You already are an artist, and you might not even know it yet. Did you know that? And my intention right now in the series is to teach what Julia Cameron teaches in her book, The Artist’s Way - which is a book that changed my life. I highly recommend this book to my clients who are musicians, to my young-adults clients who are in music programs in college. 

And Julia Cameron is very open about sharing her ideas to whoever will listen, she ascribes to the principle, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” And that’s what I’m hoping to facilitate, helping you give yourself permission to allow your inner artist to come alive again. 

I say again, because Children are natural at allowing their inner artist to lead the way. The reason we label childhood so magical is because we know it is a time when we are allowed to be free with our imaginations, and to explore new things. 

As we get older, those opportuni...

I don’t think life is supposed to be easy. 

I know the only way to grow is to face our challenges, but to be able to do so with some courage instead of doubting we have what it takes. And I don’t think we have to suffer through our challenges - we can doubt if we have what it takes to thrive, or we can choose to believe Yes, I have everything I need to face my challenges and even grow in my identity and confidence. And I think the way to do that is to embrace mental and emotional tools and strategies that you can take with you into your day-to-day. 

I want to talk about Givers and Takers. And this is a concept my dad taught me growing up. And the way he explained it, there are two kinds of people, Givers and Takers. And he’d give me this talk when he noticed I was in Taker mode, probably being selfish as a teenager, but the talk was very effective to me, and I’m so glad he’d take the time to teach me this concept. 

To summarize, he’d say to me: Now Danielle, there are two kind...

 I want to speak to all my friends in the messy middle of raising children, or in the messy middle of mid-life, and speak to this idea, what if we are only just beginning?

It might feel like a stretch.

It did for me at first. I mean, I have five decades under my belt now! And I feel it in my body. And it shows on my face. There are battle wounds.

But what if. . . .I am only just beginning my friend? And what if YOU are only just beginning, even though you’ve already done so much and have made it this far?

I want to talk about this idea that we can always choose to decide how to think about our lives as they stretch onward ahead of us, we can think of them as a fresh, clean slate full of possibility. We can have a fresh, clean start when we’re fifty years old on a Tuesday afternoon. Or we can have a fresh, clean start when we’re 38 on a Thursday evening.

Do you allow yourself to think of your life as only just beginning? 

My daughter, she’s 22 and she’s graduating college, she’...

My son has a rare disease called Usher Syndrome - he is gradually going deaf and blind - it’s been hard to see his hearing and his eyesight decline in his adolescence, and he’s been struggling socially, since friendships with his friends from younger years have shifted as he’s entered high school, he doesn’t feel like he can keep up in normal conversations, how fast paced they are, he often has to ask people to repeat themselves.

And I’m giving some context here because he’s found online gaming as a fun way to use his headphones and talk and laugh and hear everything people say. Plus he’s good at it.

I spend a lot of time actively praying for my children and asking and listening for guidance. I’ve talked about prayer on the podcast before, but with Joseph, I knew I needed to let Joseph keep his love of video games, but guide him, but not be too controlling about it. And it went against everything I had previously thought about video games. I have a lot of negative bias toward them...

Making room for grace, the concept I’m teaching applies to anything you are going after, whether it’s a goal, a dream, or something you want to turn around and make improvements on in your life, something you might be worried about. Making room for grace is a beautiful way to approach the possibility of change for the future. 

So, on to what I want to talk about today, which is about making room for grace. When I make room for grace in my parenting, it’s easier to help my kids own their own results versus trying to control my kids because I’m worried about their choices. And this is something I have been thinking about for a LONG time, especially because I think I’ve told you before, I have some head-strong kids. So I had to learn early on how to enjoy parenting more. It all felt so out of my control. I didn’t like how that felt when my kids were little. I felt at the mercy of their choices. If they made good choices, then life was peaceful and wonderful. If they made bad choices l...