What’s your theme for the year?  For me, having a theme every year helps keep me focused and build momentum when things are going great, and also helps me quickly get back on track when things are not going so great. It’s like a pick me up and puts me back on track no matter where my focus happens to be.  As I make progress on my goals or actually complete them, it’s a great way to celebrate. Some examples of previous year’s themes: “New Year, New You,” “For the Greater Good,” “Live Life In Shape”…you get the idea .

http://www.randomactsofkindness.org 

http://www.helpothers.org

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/17/15972814-inspired-to-act-26acts-of-kindness-to-honor-those-lost-in-newtown-conn?lite

http://www.wikihow.com/Pay-It-Forward 

May your holidays be filled with loving, caring, sharing and giving

~ In gratitude, Brenda

Our family has a history of cancer. My brother survived brain cancer, my mother breast cancer, and now my older sister. She, out of all of them, I thought would have the hardest time dealing with it. Her husband passed a few years ago, so she was going to have to make some very difficult decisions on her own…something I didn’t know if she was completely prepared to do.

There were a couple of things I probably didn’t factor in appropriately. One was Teresa’s determination and stubbornness. Teresa has always been determined and stubborn, and fortunately through this ordeal, she remained stubborn. I can remember as far back as parent teacher meetings Teresa being described as “strong willed”. The second thing was her sense of humor. Teresa not only kept her dry sense of humor, she took it up a notch or two. As I sent text updates to friends and family with some of the goofy things she was saying to others, including the doctors, texts would come back saying things like: “that’s Teresa,” and “it wouldn’t be Teresa if there wasn’t some humor.” And all of this “humor,” while she stared cancer straight in the face. Amazingly, her humor continued even while she was only semi-conscious in the recovery room immediately after her surgery, when she woke up briefly to pat her chest where her breasts had been, saying: “Tata, tata’s!” Her humor never left her. From the time I arrived to the time I left she was cracking jokes. Before the surgery, right after the surgery…with everyone she came in contact with–doctors, nurses, the housekeepers–left her room laughing. Hospital staff would hang out in her room because they knew it was only a matter of time before she’d make them smile.

She also had a quiet, serious side interspersed with the humor. She decided she was no longer angry. No longer angry her husband had died unexpectedly, no longer angry at God for leaving her alone after her husband died…no longer angry period. She said this is her second chance at life; her opportunity to again live with joy. She’ll continue to care for others, and she’s decided she is going to nurture and care for herself first. She’s going to start regularly asking herself a question she rarely if ever asked in the past: “What do I want?” “What brings me joy?” Wow…what a transformation in just a few short weeks.

While many cancer stories don’t have such a quick happy ending, I’m elated to report that this one does. Teresa’s oncologist has declared her cancer free. No radiation, no chemotherapy. Again, Teresa continues to do it her way. She barely had time to acknowledge she had breast cancer, and she is now cancer-free. I can’t help but think her sense of strong will, determination and humor had a big part to play in all of this.

I love my sister so much and am so proud of how her friends and co-workers describe her: “It wouldn’t be Teresa without her humor.” I personally am going to model my sister!

1) What is one thing in your life that you’ve been taking very seriously (and maybe for good reason), and how might that situation shift if you were able to figure out a way to inject a bit of humor into it?

2) Come up with three ways you could add some humor and/or fun into your life, and then try those out over the next week, and notice what happens for you and others around you.

“Erase from your vocabulary the word “someday.” Do not save things for “special occasions.” Take into account the fact that every day is special. Every day is a gift that we must appreciate and be thankful for. Wear your attractive clothes, wear your nice perfume, use your fine silverware and dishes, and drink from your expensive crystal glasses … just because. Live every day to the fullest and savor every minute of it.”— Rodolfo Costa, Advice My Parents Gave Me: and Other Lessons I Learned from My Mistakes

To Your Strong Will, Determination and Fun (in Life)!
Brenda

My biggest transition came to fruition this weekend when we moved back to Missouri to our wonderful, loving home I have always fondly called my Heavenly Sanctuary.

As many of you may remember, I wasn’t keen on moving back to Chicago, but love (my Tad) makes me do crazy things. So we moved, and in an instant five years came and went. It puzzled me to be sad about leaving Chicago when I so wanted to move back to my Heavenly Sanctuary. And then I realized it was not so much about leaving Chicago as it was about transition, change, and another new beginning.

I’ll miss being so close to my family and at the same time I am sure we will make more of an effort to get together and create magic moments. Friends are just a phone call away, a text or a quick one hour flight. I’ve captured the greatness of what we created, accomplished, loved and will miss. I’m remembering the old and most importantly looking forward to, and welcoming, the new.

I love cleaning out and creating new space so this process has also allowed me to work on my vision and purpose. Not just in a physical aspect (home) but a mental aspect as well. Although challenging and sometimes hectic, this is another great moment in my life. And now I begin to capture the future greatness by focusing on moving forward once again with the love of my life.

Here are some tips that may assist you when change and/or transition appear in your life:

• Focus on the positive. Having a positive attitude is most important in times of transition and change. This will help you stay on the right track and be open.

• See your change/transition as an opportunity in your life. The old cliché of “when one door closes, another one opens” is true. Seize your opportunity and embrace the change.

• Live in the NOW. It’s easier now more than ever to focus on what we need next and what our next plan is. Yes we need goals and ambitions, but in transition and change, focus on living in the now. Focus on what you have to do in present time. Avoid spending your energy on what you are leaving behind, or what you need to do 5 years down the road.

• Take care of yourself. This one is very important. Transition can be a time of stress…or perhaps you feel like you are a chicken with your head cut off. Make sure you are eating right, getting sleep, and having some “me time”. This will make your transition go smoother.

• Ask for help. If you are feeling overwhelmed or stressed reach out and ask for help. Even if it’s just to have a sounding board, or maybe an extra pair of hands, remember people like to be needed. Ask a friend, family member, coworker, etc.

• Be patient. Change takes some time. Be patient with your feelings and goals. Take baby steps and go easy on yourself.

Most of all, I recommend that you focus on capturing the greatness! How is this transition changing or improving your life? Focus on moving forward and new beginnings. Be positive and have a sense of anticipation for what is to come!

How do you welcome the new changes in your life?

Home is where your heart is; welcome home !

Brenda

1. Been there, done that: A Mentor Coach is perfect for testing new ideas. If they have the appropriate level of experience, they have been there, and done that. As a successful coach with extensive coaching knowledge, they know what it takes to have a successful coaching practice and consistently exceed their coaching client’s expectations. A Mentor Coach brings years of coaching practice experience and is able to significantly accelerate the coach’s learning curve.  The end result is that they’ll be successful far quicker than doing it on their own. Tried and tested coaching practices, effectively handling challenging clients, and appropriately pricing coaching services are just a few of the potential benefits you’ll get from a good Mentor Coach.

2. Support: Successful, world class performers in any field seldom, if ever, do it alone. Think about winners of the Olympics or Academy Awards. Truly successful people always have others supporting them. A talented Mentor Coach is a critical part of a coach’s support system.

3. Balance: I have known a lot of coaches who are in over the heads (to include me early in my coaching career). Their lives are completely out of balance. They are working late nights, weekends, pretty much all the time. They are stressed out not only with their coaching, but about making ends meet in general. Attempting to coach from this out of balance place is a downhill battle. A great Mentor Coach helps coaches keep their lives in balance.

4. Technique:  While this is part of the “Been There, Done That” piece mentioned above, due to the critical importance of having outstanding coaching skills, I’m highlighting it again separately.  An excellent Mentor Coach will assist a coach in taking their clients to the next level, by sharing coaching best practices which allow the coach to break through their client’s barriers.

5. Accountability: I have saved the best for last. I believe that the key to being a successful coach does not stop at taking care of your clients – it extends to holding yourself accountable as well. Being accountable to someone who has your best interests at heart is crucial to you achieving your goals and moving forward. While you can have anyone be your accountability partner, I truly believe that a Mentor Coach is best suited for this role.

Working with the right Mentor Coach will ultimately lead to success! To read feedback from actual coaches on the massive value they received from working with a Mentor Coach visit: http://www.coachbrenda.com/about-brenda/brenda-schinke-testimonials/#mentoring

In the comments box below, add your top reason for hiring a Mentor Coach and look forward to future blogs where I may address your reason.

Happy Coaching!
Brenda

You may have already checked out Pinterest for personal use. OR maybe you haven’t yet heard anything about it. According to comScore it is the fastest growing social networking site. The idea of Pinterest is very simple. Similar to an online bulletin board you “pin” things that you find on the web and organize them onto different boards. You can follow your friends and get ideas from recipes, to decorating ideas, to books to read.

It’s fun and easy to use, however very few people consider it or would even know how to use it for their business!   That’s how I was too! I thought no way, I can’t do this.   I felt that I had enough to do with Facebook (I am not a technical person at all). But a friend introduced me to a great new training program called the Power of Pinning.  She promised me that I wouldn’t feel this way after going through the training program. She was right!  I have just finished the entire training and I am beginning to implement all I have learned. Melanie’s course is just what you need to set up your Pinterest page for success!

In my life that is my husband. Nearly three decades ago, he professed his love for me and my children and requested the privilege of adopting my sons and taking on his name.

Both their natural father and I agreed to his request. I will admit that back then I didn’t really think about the magnitude of responsibility he was taking on.

The time has gone by so fast, yet as I type this my memories flash back to Tad holding my son up to the mirror to pretend shave, my son on the cover of our local newspaper for pioneer days, the proud look on my son’s face holding his pinewood derby car. And as they got older they guys going fishing; lighting firecrackers and having man-to-man talks.

Though the good memories go on and on, I also remember some very rough times for our family when tough decisions had to be made and through it all he was there. He never waivered, he never said enough. It certainly speaks to his strength and character as not just a man but a human who knows that the sometimes thankless job of parenting is what he was and is called to do.

In fact, during our early years when I questioned whether or not we should be married, he always said he understood and yet he made it clear he would not walk away from our children. Try as I might to get him to understand they were my children, he was steadfast to his commitment to his sons. Our children and I are blessed to have a man who leapt into fatherhood without a safety net.

God doesn’t give you what you want; he gives you what you need. Divorce wasn’t what I wanted but it was what was needed for my sons and me to experience a lifetime of unconditional love.

I honor my husband, Tad. Anyone can father a child, but it takes someone extra special to be a dad! Here’s a special song for those dads that “didn’t have to be”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjO1F6oCab8

Happy Father’s Day to all the amazing dads in the world.

B

Mom turned upside down is WOW!!!  

Over NINE hours later my mother returned to her room. I will never forget the surgeon leaning on the wall totally exhausted and said “I can say with certainty the medication caused this. There are case studies I can show you.” She said I do not know if her femur broke and then she fell or if she fell and then her femur broke. The challenge was inserting the titanium rod but the bigger challenge was finding a way to attach the rod because the bones were so brittle. She recommended we contact our doctor and have my mother taken off the drugs listed in the story below. We did learn there are Class Action Lawsuits pending.

Let’s pass this along to bring awareness to as many moms (WOWs) as we can!  The more people we share; the more people will care.

I received this email from a friend at the end of April…

Subject: My Living Nightmare

4/21/12

Dear Friends,

If you are currently taking or have taken in the past, Fosamax, Actonel, or Boniva (bisphosphonates), or if you have been diagnosed with osteopenia & your doctor has mentioned putting you on one of these drugs in the future, PLEASE take the time to read  this.  I am on a mission to warn as many women as I possibly can of a terrible risk of taking these – small risk – until it happens to you.

In 2004 I had a bone density test and was diagnosed with osteopenia.  My internist put me on Actonel, switched me to Fosamax the next year, and to Boniva in 2006.  In 2008 I began having some swallowing difficulty. The Boniva label said if this happened to immediately call your doctor, which I did. He said I had to stay on the Boniva so I needed to take Prilosec. I questioned him about this 6 months later since you aren’t supposed to take Prilosec continuously, and he said to just stay on it.  I began experiencing pain in my left thigh in August of 2010.  A few months later it started in my right thigh too.  I did some research and found that both statins (which I was also on unnecessarily) and bisphosphonates (which are all 3 of the drugs I mentioned above) could be the cause.  So in May of 2011 I told my doctor that I was stopping both. He wasn’t too happy about it, but I was adamant.  But as the months rolled on the pain didn’t get better but increased, my gait became kind of gimpy, and my back was hurting. Since we had several trips in the fall and then the holidays, I waited until after the first of the year to get an MRI on my back, which my chiropractor said was causing the problem.

The MRI revealed 3 bulging disks and arthritis. So he sent me to an orthopedist.  Dr. Watters did an epidural steroid injection in January that relieved 50-60% of the leg pain and took care of most of my gait problem.  But it also apparently released a muscle that was holding a small stress fracture, causing excruciating pain for a week until they figured it out and put me in a back brace for 6 weeks.  Then Dr. Watters did a second injection which he was sure would take care of the rest of the leg pain. When I went back for my follow-up the end of March he was totally puzzled that I had absolutely no improvement. I told him that I thought there might be a second problem as well – on his clinic’s website I had found a link to an article regarding bisphosphonate use causing femur fractures.  He remarked that I had quit taking them last year, but I reminded him that I quite taking them because I had already had several months of leg pain.  He ordered a bone scan a few days later – 2 hrs. 15 min. not moving!  At my appointment a few days later he said he would have bet anything that the scan would come back negative (I said my bet was on positive), but it did show possible stress fractures in both femurs.  He sent me for a bilateral MRI the next morning – a week ago yesterday – another 2 hrs. not moving. Tuesday he confirmed the stress fractures and handed me off to Dr. Neff, the hip and leg specialist at their clinic.  I saw him on Wednesday and he gave me the bad news that I need a titanium rod implanted in both femurs to prevent them from breaking completely! 

He suggested I do some research on bisphosphonates on the American Assn. of Orthopaedic Surgeons website ( search bisphosphonates). He also sent me a very caring email that night attaching 2 articles from clinical journals.  I have done an awful lot of reading, and I really have no other option.  These stress fractures do not heal spontaneously – they progress to complete fractures. There is a greater than 80% chance that my femurs will completely break in the next few months if I don’t have the surgery!

I have to get clearance from an internist (obviously I’m scrambling to find a new one) and see an endocrinologist (got a good referral and have an appointment May 2) before the surgery.  The good news is that the statistics on total resolution of this problem with the surgery is 100%, & the recovery time is only one month if you have it before a complete break. I have had pain with every step I have taken for 20 months, so I look forward to walking pain-free.

Peripherally, routine blood work in December showed low hemoglobin, suggesting internal bleeding, so my internist urged me to get a colonoscopy. I felt that the problem was more likely to be esophageal (remember the swallowing issue). I found a good gastroenterologist and had both an endoscopy and colonoscopy. The colonoscopy was fine. The bleeding was from taking too much ibuprophen to relieve the leg pain – that’s all resolved now. I do have a hiatal hernia and Barrett’s esophagus (a pre-cancerous condition, but not serious). The Boniva website says not to take Boniva if you have any esophageal problems as it will aggravate the problem. The doctor won’t confirm this, but I suspect Boniva caused the Barrett’s.

If you hear anyone mention leg pain, ask them if they are taking one of these osteoporosis drugs.  If they are, they need to get to an orthopedist immediately. I hope that none of you have or will develop this condition.  But I feel compelled to warn as many women as possible about this.  I think going forward I’ll just rely on exercise, calcium and Vitamin D, and the good Lord, and take my chances. I’m truly blessed to be in good health and not have a life-threatening condition. But it does make me angry that the very drugs that were supposed to protect my bones have caused stress fractures in my legs that quite likely can lead to a complete break if I don’t have surgery.

The current statistics show these fractures happening to 1 in 1,000 women who have been on bisphosphonates over 4-5 yrs. Half of them are bilateral (both femurs). I suspect those stats will go up in the next few years as there are probably a lot of women like me walking around with un- or mis-diagnosed leg pain. In 2010 the FDA required the manufacturers of bisphosphonates to put a warning on their labels of a small but significant risk of femur fractures.  I had 3 doctors that didn’t figure it out – it took my own research to get a diagnosis.

Please forward this to anyone you think might need this information.

Belle

P.S. Yesterday I talked to a friend in Dallas who had both femurs completely break 11 months apart 3-4 years ago.  This came with no warning or prior pain– she just found herself on the ground both times, wondering what she had tripped on.  It wasn’t until several months after the second one that the doctors figured out both were a result of her bisphosphonate usage for 5 years.  Many doctors just aren’t keeping up with the new guidelines, or are being influenced by the drug companies.  Also yesterday a trainer at our club said she had a neighbor, a physician, who had the same thing happen while she was out walking. I suspect some of you will have similar stories.

Have you ever seen a baby porcupine?  Look at these beautiful images and learn the fable.   

Fable of the porcupine

It was the coldest winter ever – many animals died because of the cold.
The porcupines, realizing the situation, decided to group together.

This way they covered and protected themselves; but the quills of each one wounded their closest companions even though they gave off heat to each other.

After awhile they decided to distance themselves one from the other and they began to die, alone and frozen.
So they had to make a choice: either accept the quills of their companions or disappear from the Earth.

Wisely, they decided to go back to being together.

This way they learned to live with the little wounds that were caused by the close relationship with their companion,
but the most important part of it, was the heat that came from the others.

This way they were able to survive.

Moral of the story:
The best relationship is not the one that brings together perfect people, but the best is when each individual learns to live with the imperfections of others and can admire the other person’s good qualities.

Until Next Time,

B

P.S. Be sure to connect with me on my new Facebook page

Last month’s blog was titled “What is Missing from Your Spring Cleaning List?” As I started this month’s blog, I went back to last month’s to see how I ended. What hit me like a ton of bricks is I mentioned ME being my most important client and then a quick one-liner on health. Recently, the universe has been trying to get my attention in the area of health.

It’s been an interesting couple of months.  My elderly mom was hospitalized (and still is) after a fall (and broken femur) mid-February. While I was visiting her in the hospital, I ended up in the ER myself. The ER doctor apologized and said I had the hospital virus…a nasty stomach and intestinal flu.

Two weeks ago, I was part of a team training new coaches. The morning of the training, I took quite a fall and injured my back. I was treated by doctors during the  week and completed the training.  As soon as I landed in Chicago I went to the ER due to the severe pain.  Prognosis: badly torn muscle in my lower back…six to eight weeks, and I will be good to go again.

I love the saying, “God grant me patience…but please hurry.” Patience is not my forte. I should be back home helping with my mother; I should be connecting with my family; I should be reorganizing my office after being gone for so long; I should…as you can see, I can go on and on.

My clarity question to coaches I’m working with asks: “Is this something you feel you should do, or is it something you want to do?”  Goodness, I must heed my own mentoring.  All the “Shoulds” are stressing me, both physically and mentally, and are definitely NOT supporting my outcome of a healthy body.

In mentoring, I’m often reminding coaches who their most important client is (themselves!).  What I realized today is in easy times I can say, “Yes, I am my most important client,” but when things are not going my way, I often push me aside, while expecting the same pace, the same standard of excellence, and the same results as when I am in tip-top health.

To effectively heal and get back on course, I will remain disciplined, intentional, and present. Even more importantly, I will lovingly remind myself to take exceptional care of my most important client…ME!

Here are some questions to ponder:

1)   What could you do differently knowing you really are your most important client?

2)   How would you schedule yourself first, to emphasize your most important client status?

3)   In what area(s) of your life could you ask for help, say “no”, or share what is going on when you are not at your best?

4)   How can you be more present and take better care of you?

To Your Health,

Brenda