A lot of people come and go throughout our lives. We make great friends and great loves, sometimes they stay with us forever or sometimes there is something not right and drift way.

This is a natural way of building healthy relationships. We need to take the time to think, ” Are the people in my life lifting me up or holding me down?” This one question will help you so much evaluating your current relationships.

I challenge you to not spend your time deciding who must go but on who must stay. I go through my cell phone once a month to remind me who I haven’t been in touch with in awhile. I also send birthday wishes and try to contact everyone at least once a month. I want the people in my life who lift me to know I care and make an effort to keep them in my life.

Naturally focusing on building and maintaining the relationships I want in my life, I have less and less time to give to the relationships which hold be down in life so they start to drift away.

You do not need to dwell on what is wrong in your life, simply by looking at what is right causes you to spend all your time and effort on positive changes.

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Last night I had a great conversation with one of my good friends. He started out letting me know life was good but lately he feels stuck. He is feeling like his life is not his own. I asked why he is feeling this way and he mentioned that his views on life seem to be wrong. I asked how does he know they are wrong and mentioned it was based on other’s views.

With that answer I started asking him about his life and who lives his life. Of course he knows who lives his life but it is other’s expectations that cause him to live it in a different way which leaves him conflicted with his own values and goals.

Why do we let other’s expectations change how we live our lives? Ultimately, we each have our own special gift of life. It is our job to create our path and live it the way we want. We all have a limited time to spend and we do not want to waste it on living it by other’s expectations.

Does other people truly know what is best for us? Or do we know exactly what is best for ourselves? We know our goals, our values and our dreams. We learn from our own mistakes and make our own choices to change our lives.

Just like I challenged him, I challenge everyone to take back your life. Stop living by other’s expectations. I know it sounds easier said than done but I will give you the first step in the process. Stop making other’s live their lives by your expectations. When you start freeing other’s from your expectations, you will start freeing yourself as well.

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I love how music can change your mood in a minute. How listening to just the right song can completly give you another view on life or the situation. I always love to share songs when I find myself changing my perceptative when listening to them. Here is one for you now:

Amerie - Gotta Work

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Yes, he was coming to Orlando to do a book signing. I, of course, was not going to miss the opportunity to get a booked signed by the author.

Lance has been on every show promoting his book. Coming out is never an easy thing and this can be seen over and over again in his interviews. Everyone has to ask did he kiss or have sex with a girl. Everyone has to make a joke about him maybe going straight. Everyone has to be surprised that no one knew and he was able to keep this quiet for so long.

Coming out is never an easy process. I am sure it is harder doing it publicly and promoting a book about it as well. Coming out is not a process that ends once it is done, it happens over and over again. Every new person you meet. Every new job you start. You always have to come out and deal with the reactions.

I have not read the book but I wanted to show my support so I got in line at 6:30 at the Borders bookstore to find about 30 people in line. In the N’Sync days there would have thousands of fans but now it was only 30 of us. He arrived around 7, did press interviews and then signed our books.

I was excited and nervous at the same time. My stomach even did jumps and I was not even a N’Sync fan. When it got to my turn, I walked up and he signed my book and took a picture and I was done. It was then I realized it was anti-climatic.

I realized he was just another guy who came out. His story wasn’t even more special than my clients, or friends, or family or my own. Coming out is a process we all share and even though it happens different for all of us, we are all courageous for doing it.

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While I was at Epcot today, I was watching people interact with each other. Kids exhausted from the long day at the park and parents pulling them along to get their money worth. Just married couples enjoying a honeymoon made of dreams to find out it rains in Orlando.

As I was walking around the World Showcase, I was able to be around a particular family a lot. It was a big family consisting of 9 adults, 7 kids ranging in ages from 8 to 14 and a grandma traveling in an electric wheelchair rented from Disney. The family had been here almost a week and were leaving on Saturday.

You could tell by the family actions they had grown tired of waiting for Grandma’s electric chair and they all walked many paces ahead of her. When one adult would remember to look for her, it was only a quick glance and continue walking. Once a child mentioned, “Where is Grandma?” An adult responded,”Don’t worry, she will get it soon. She is slow.”

Grandma was in her late 60’s. She looked tired of the week long vacation and you could tell she had been to Disney quite a few times because of her conversation with the family when they stopped. The family most have wanted to go on another WHOLE family trip and insisted Grandma come. Not really for her company but out of guilt, the same reason grandma agreed to come even though she would have rathered stayed home.

Grandma volunteered many times to just stop and wait in a spot so to not slow the family down. The family always said no and insisted she continue. This would be the only times when an adult would now keep pace with Grandma until they got bored and moved back with the group.

Grandma felt like a burden on this trip. She now was driving her electric wheelchair, which was a hard task for her, by herself and spent most of the time just trying to keep up.

My mom was just talking to me this week about being scared to die and not wanting to ever be in a nursing home. This is a huge fear from her and truly causes her grief and fear. Reassuring her does not help because she doesn’t know what will happen in the future and the fear of losing control of her own life is scary.

Why is it that we do not mind taking care of babies but when our parents get older we feel they are a burden. Babies are needy of time, attention and care. Parents give up so much to make sure the baby is taken care of and nurtured for many years to come. Isn’t it the least we can do in return, is to give back the same love, care and time to them when they need it?

Lets show our gratitude to our parents by remembering what they did for us so, we can do it in return. Give them an extra hug today just to let them know you appreciate it all they do.

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Have you seen this new show? I love it! Christina Applegate is hillirous. The whole show is about a girl who is hit by a car and loses her memory of her past. She has to learn all about her life again and as she doesn’t like who she was. So, she starts working on changing her life for the better.

It is a great show and keeps me laughing but it relates to life so well. How many of us take the time to look at our own lives and work on changing the things we do not like? It is never too late to change something you do not like in your life. This is YOUR life!

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I have committed to blogging once a day for the next 21 days. I want to make sure I dedicate time to my blog so my coach Karen has agreed to be a buddy and we are both going to do it!

So here we go…

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I went with Fred and Becky to see Maroon 5. Our seats were wonderful and the performance was great as it was last time we saw them.

But the opening act The Hives really caught my attention. I had never heard of them until the show and I have a feeling a lot of people in the audience were in the same boat. The band came out with tons of enthusiasm and put on a great show. The lead singer at one point in time said, “We are here for half an hour. That is enough time to make you fans!” With that said, I was interested in the show. They were great and even though their music wasn’t my favorite type, I will look into getting their CD now.

They were so enthused to be there and wanted us to have a good time and I believe they truly meant it. This true passion for life and what they did, made me a fan. Enthusiasm is a power tool that can be used when we are truly happy and passionate about something.

The lead singer towards the end said, “Are there lovelys out here?” and I screamed I AM A LOVELY! I was caught up in his enthusiasm or maybe…mine.

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My friend Nick came to town and brought another friend Joe with him. I spent the whole day with them at the MGM Studios. Yes it was one of the hottest days in Orlando. Yes the humidity was ridiculus. Yes it ended up raining on us for an hour and a half while we waited for Fanastamic to start.

BUT, this was nothing compared to how much I laughed today. It was worth everything to have a day full of laughter until it hurts. I love to laugh. I love to be silly, make jokes and just spend the day laughing.

Laughing is what I remember most from that day. This day reminds me how important it is to laugh at least once a day.

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My mom agreed to get a family picture this month. I am very excited because I do not have a professional picture of my whole family. My mom has never wanted to do because she does not like having her picture taken but she agreed on Saturday night…

Monday morning she starts feeling very anxious about taking the picture and when I call, she has decided not to take it. I quickly go into a speech to convince her to go. I start persuading her the best as I can even though she sounds nervous and really doesn’t want to do it.

I STOP. Why? Because this not who I am. Coaching is all about helping people live their lives NOT force your life on them. If my mom was a client, I would have responded to her and said, then don’t do it if you feel this bad. So that is what I said to her. She completely relaxed and felt better. I then talked to her about how she felt and why. After we talked for awhile my mom felt better and we hung up.

Tuesday morning she work up feeling great and after some self reflection she decided to continue with the picture. By not forcing choices are her, but allowing her to live HER life, she was able to make the personal choice (without pressure or outside influence) to do the picture because she wanted to. This freed her of the anxiety and panic.

What could you do with your life if you didn’t have people trying to persuade or pressure you into this?

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