Weekly Update

Hi everyone! The behind the scenes work on the new blog focus and look is coming along….slowly. As I am finishing up the book in preparation for it’s release later this month, my presence on the blogesphere will be somewhat scarce. I have to finish things up around here, as well as major edits that demand my attention and a quick trip out of town before Spring Break ends.

So yes, It’s busy as always around here!

Before I disappear for a while, I wanted to leave you with a couple of things:

1) I just signed the contract for my SIXTH nonfiction book, SUCCESS HABITS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, due out in 2016.

2) For those of you sick of the winter and wondering when summer will ever arrive – check out this pic shot yesterday as I took a little detour from my Dr.’s appointment:

3) I finally formalized my life and parent coaching business and am beginning to take new clients. I’ll be posting information on my website and here soon.

See you all in a few days/weeks…

 

Finally! Focus!

I am so excited for the future of the blog. After stewing on it for months, I have finally decided what I want to do. So, in May I will be relaunching the blog and bringing NEW content, and more. I will do as I mentioned previous, and repost some of my favorite posts. And the relaunch won’t be 100% ready in may, but it’ll be enough to start.

Basically, I want to bring consistent and regular content to you, my readers, that covers the things I care so much about:

• Giftedness – in children and adults
• Parent coaching
• Living authentically
• Living healthy
• Inspiration
• Awesome books
• and more…

So, as I strive get this going be prepared for a little oddness, and yea…a MESS.

 

Thanks for sticking with me and see you in the near future!

Replay: Stress and the gifted adult by Jen Merrill

Hi all – As you’ve no-doubt noticed, my unplugged week was extended. My reasons are simple: A complete directional change for the blog. I “think” I’ve finally figured out exactly what I want to write about, etc. So, it’ll take me a while to get the blog redesigned, repurposed etc. I am hoping to roll-out the new whatevers within the next couple of months. I’m excited for everything, but it IS going to take a little while to get it all together. More on that in the upcoming weeks.

In the meantime, as things are getting worked out etc, I am reposting some of the all-time BEST posts this little blog has had over its four year lifetime. Starting with today and a post by one of my favorite authors: Jen Merrill

STRESS AND THE GIFTED ADULTS - originally posted on 4/13/2012

I did an entirely unscientific survey the other day on my Facebook page, asking my friends to describe me in one word. In minutes, I got back: intense, exhausting, hilarious, passionate, determined, embracer, funny (3), intelligent, beautiful (kinda shocked by that one), inspirational, witty, human, gifted, busy, quirky, ardent, helpful, struggling, self-deprecating, frazzled, overwhelmed, high-strung, and sexy (thank you, dear husband!).

Huh. That’s funny. The first word I think of to describe myself is stressed.

Gifted adults and stress::peanut butter and jelly::peas and carrots::me and Jen-nay (name that movie). For as long as I can remember, I have been one huge mind-knot. It’s like mental Chinese handcuffs; you know, those woven things you stick your fingers into, and the harder you try to escape, the tighter they get. I once had a flute teacher recommend that I get hammered and then hit the practice room, the thought being that maybe being a little looser I’d be able to play better. She may have been on to something there, but I didn’t drink back then and rarely play my flute now. The world will never know…

But I know I’m not alone in this. I know there are other gifted adults who get into mind knots, who have an extremely difficult time controlling their stress, who have been teased about being addicted to stomach acid. It’s a horrible feeling. For someone who is just a tiny bit of a control freak, being controlled by stress is dreadful. Having that scream lodged in the back of the throat, crouched and ready to pounce without warning…sigh… I’ve tried yoga, acupuncture, therapy, lifted weights, dabbled in meditation, had “me” time, journaled, and generally expressed my feelings. The more I worked to manage my stress, the worse it got.

So I’ve made an executive decision. This is my wiring. This is the result of my biggest overexcitabilities, emotional and imaginational, hooking up; they popped out a little bundle of stress. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it just is. Then it hit me…if I worked with this wiring instead of against it, maybe the mind knot would loosen. Like homeschooling my 2e son; working with his intensities rather than against them gets us a lot further a lot faster. All those books I own on intensities and overexcitabilities and the like will now be read with me in mind as well. If I can harness these intensities for good rather than evil, I suspect I’ll feel a lot better. At the very least I’d like that scream to vamoose.

In the meantime, I really need to investigate some of those descriptive words. I don’t see myself in most of those words; only two. Wanna guess which ones? And if you were to ask your friends this question, what words would you see?
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You can find Jen at Laughing at Chaos and on her Facebook page by the same name.

Unplugged Week

Time for another week of unplugging. And yes, I know it seems as though all I’ve done is unplug. But I promise great things are in store this Spring, including:

• A little remodel for Spring!
• Webinars and podcasts. Yep, that’s right – I am fulfilling a goal and bringing you MORE content. But not just any content, we are going to talk about so many GREAT things we can do to live our BEST life and bring more joy to our parenting and our lives
• Parenting advice and tips
• Exciting new blogs, books, and other things to read and follow
• Book news
• Consultation and event news
• Coaching news

See, lots of cool things going on! Make sure you don’t miss any of it – sign up for my newsletter and follow this blog

I’ll be back on 3/10 with all sorts of new things! See you then

Got Inspiration?

Hi all -

It has been a crazy week. Short work weeks always are! I wanted to stop by to give a quick shout out to my new favorite YouTube channels, Mindvalley  and Awesomenessfest. If you are in need of inspiration, motivation, or just some awesomeness, check out there many videos - especially those from awesomenessfest. To show you what I mean, check out this great one from Lisa Nichols:

See – amazing! Subscribe to their channel to get even more great vids.

Throw Back Tuesday: Passion – The Core of the Gifted

Hi everyone! I am just getting back from a long weekend and well, I am behind. No big shock though, right?!? To deal with blogging I decided to do a throw-back-Tuesday post from last year. The topic – PASSION and Intensities. I hope you enjoy it:

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You’ve heard me say before that gifted individuals are, at their core, intense. This intensity extends into every aspect of their being – the way their brain functions, the way their sensory system interacts with the world, and the way they feel about the world. It is, in my opinion, a core aspect of the gifted individual.

The world often looks at the cognitive aspects of their intensity favorably, complimenting them on their academic prowess, or giving accolades for the unique problem-solving skills or creative approaches gifted individuals often demonstrate.

This is not typically true with the emotional aspects of being. These are looked at with a less favorable eye. When they are young, gifted individuals are often thought to be overly dramatic, engaging in tantrumming behavior over seemingly little events.

As they age, a gifted person may find it hard to find relationships because of their intensities – they give so much to every friendship, every love interest, that  it often scares the other individual.

As a gifted adult, I can tell you that learning to deal with the intense aspects of giftedness has been a unique challenge. I feel things at such a deep level, am easily wounded, and can often appear somewhat unbalanced because of my intensities.

Nothing is farther from the truth, however.

My intensities make me strong.

Let me say that again – my intensities, or my passion, for whatever it is I am doing makes me strong. It gives me the focus I need to push past the things that are difficult in order to reach my goals. And it enables me to connect to others in a way that has helped my art, my job….everything.

I say this to encourage you to view the intense aspects of your giftedness, or the giftedness within your children for what it truly is – PASSION.

It is passion that enables humans to create and invent. Passion that raises art to the sublime. Passion that gives us a reason to continue.

Passion.

Confessions of a Teenage Beauty Queen

I was hanging out on FB yesterday and stumbled across a great article from a father to his young daughter. In it, he redefines our cultural ideas of beauty. If you haven’t read it – CLICK HERE and read it. That post was so touching to me. Sure, it had a great message – one sorely needed at a time when so many girls are at risk, partially due to what our culture teaches them.

But that isn’t the only reason. This topic is highly personal to me.

I grew up without a father figure until I was in my early teens. By then, I had already developed body dsymorphia – I saw myself as an obese girl even though I was a normal weight for my size. There are a ton of reasons why the body image problems developed (and that’s for another post), but suffice it to say it was a huge issue for me. For years I facilitated between periods of anorexia and bouts of bulimia. I was a mess.

And no one knew.

I kept all of that hidden away from the rest of the world. My weight stayed somewhat constant. I was in beauty pageants, even won a few. I modeled and even went to NYC. My weird quirks were normal with models and beauty queens. We were all suffering body image problems. I never told anyone about my secret rituals around food. Never admitted how ill I was.

In college, my first time away, my gifted introverted self hit crisis mode. I saw a counselor for the first time. It was terrifying. And like any bright, scared, soon-to-be-adult, I ended counseling as soon as I felt “ok”.

For the next several years, I hit the depth of my body image issues until finally I couldn’t ignore the pain any longer, and I again sought help. I had a great therapist. I stopped  and purging. Stopped the anorexia.

At least for a while.

But, although I stopped behaving like an anorexic, I hadn’t fully healed the core of my body issues. And so I became an emotional eater, and a new issue with food (or maybe the same issue reborn) blossomed.

It has taken more years than I care to admit to become more comfortable with my body. I have only just started to allow pictures of me, only now refused to inhibit my speaking career related to my body issues. I am finally in a place of healing, acceptance. I’ve done the work on the core issues, replaced emotional eating with healthy eating and no longer engage in the rituals.

In short, I am finally happy with “who” I am now. I’ve learned that diminishing myself serves no one, least of all me. I’m not willing to hate myself in order to be liked by others, something I thought I had to do in my youth. I’m better. Stronger.

It has been a long and difficult road. I wish someone had noticed the turmoil I was in, wish a trusted adult had said the words the father in the above article said to his daughter. But I am grateful that I DID figure things out. I consider myself one of the lucky ones, more resilient than I ever gave myself credit for being.

I am proud to say I have two amazingly strong daughters. They are healthy, fit, and not focused on cultural norms for beauty. They are self-confident and feel quite comfortable forging their own path. I would like to think I had something to do with it – who knows. Most of the time I am fairly certain they just came onto the planet with an amazing amount of resiliency and emotional intelligence. There are my example, my ideal.

Strong. Resilient. Intelligent.

I stand here now humbled and grateful – for the strength I’ve found, the life I have, and ability to give to our children the strength I once needed.

Whew – okay. There you go. Confessions of this victim of our cultural definition of beauty…

What confessions do you have to share?