Opportunities

Codependence Camp - October, 2015

Virginia Counselors' Associations Annual Conterence - 2015

This fall has been rich in Opportunities for me, opportunities of various sorts.

Our October Codependence Camp was full of wonderful opportunities to work together on our self-growth. Studying the work of Rick Hanson, we used material in Buddha's Brain to learn more about how to cultivate our healthy self through calming and centering.

In November, I presented at the Virginia Counselors' Associations Annual  Conference. Full of opportunities for learning and networking, I also used it as an opportunity to create a new presentation working with the material in My Life as a Border Collie: "The Use of Story-Telling and Metaphor to Work with Codependent Behaviors." Metaphor and story-telling can teach us quickly and memorably, and I was delighted to share tales and lessons from that book with an informed and engaged audience. Soon my notes from that presentation will be available to you at this website under Downloads.

These have been professional and creative opportunities which I have enjoyed and been inspired by. And it is important to also note all of the Opportunities I am given daily to work my program. Just living in this world and with our self, we are moment-by-moment given opportunities to act/react in the same old ways or to do something different. We can worry and fret or we can be in the present moment. We can complain about someone taking advantage of us or we can set boundaries with them. We can keep hoping things will be different or we can choose to see what is.

As we move into the holidays with more pressures on us to get things done and more contact with family and friends, these Opportunities will surely be there for us to respond to. If I can enter this season with healthy self awareness, moment-by-moment, and with my intentions to respond not react, I believe that when the Opportunities present themselves, I will have a good chance of acting and living out of my healthy self.

And if I do not like how I handled a particular Opportunity, I know that the next one is not far behind and will once again give me the chance to work my program toward increase health and peace.