by dmackinnon | Oct 23, 2013 | Healing Choices, Process
This morning, I brushed my teeth with hand cream. Not cool, Diane. Nor is it helpful, as the hand cream has the opposite effect I was going for—clean, sparkly teeth? No, just dull and pasty. Yuck. Anyway, when I do things like this I take it as a sign: A sign that I’m...
by dmackinnon | Oct 2, 2013 | Coaching Tools, Healing Choices
One of my favorite life coaching tools is the metaphor tool. Martha Beck taught it to me many years ago and I use it all the time—with my clients and also I use it myself. If you’d like to use the metaphor tool, think of some big area of your life that you are having...
by dmackinnon | Sep 25, 2013 | Healing Choices, Limiting Beliefs
Recently, a client I’ve been working with for a while asked me the following question: “How do I find my passion?” He’s been struggling for a while with this question. Other questions he’s asked recently are: How do I figure out my skills? How do I know what I’m...
by dmackinnon | Sep 20, 2013 | Coaching Tools, Healing Choices
Today when my husband came home with our son, he told me that he’d taken him to Wendy’s and then they’d gone to the park and had a picnic. When I asked my husband if the kid had eaten well, he replied that the hamburger had onions on it so my son refused to eat it....
by dmackinnon | Sep 11, 2013 | Coaching Tools, Healing Choices
A new client recently asked me why she wanted to eat all the time, even when she wasn’t hungry. “It’s a coping mechanism,” I answered. “It’s a way to not feel your emotions. You eat and feel comforted or satisfied rather than sad, bored, or lonely.” My client argued...
by dmackinnon | Sep 9, 2013 | Communication, Healing Choices
Ever since I’ve lived in my own home, I’ve always hated cleaning the floors. I would look at the wall-to-wall carpet in my apartment and think, Someone should really vacuum this carpet. Did I mention that I lived alone? When I moved to a house with hardwood floors, I...
by dmackinnon | Aug 30, 2013 | Communication, Healing Choices
My email inbox got to overwhelming proportions this summer. As I worked on clearing it out last week, I realized that I’d missed a number of not-earth-shattering-but-not-trivial emails from a good friend of mine. I sent her an email apologizing for missing the emails...
by dmackinnon | Aug 15, 2013 | Healing Choices, Process
I once read a story where someone was in a “Pay It Forward” kind of mood and left notes on six different windshields in a parking lot. The person who left the messages had no connection to anyone who owned the cars. It was a completely random act of kindness, or so...
by dmackinnon | Aug 7, 2013 | Healing Choices, Process
A recent conversation with a good friend reminded of the amazing book, You Can Heal Your Life, by Louise L. Hay. I read the book years ago, and had forgotten all the great information about the mind-body connection in the second half of the book (or maybe I never got...
by dmackinnon | Jul 31, 2013 | Healing Choices, Process
I recently spoke to a group about decision-making. At the beginning of the talk, I asked people to get into groups of two and discuss a time when they had made a good decision and why they thought they had been able to make such a good decision. I partnered with one...
