A fresh and different coaching experience.

August 10th, 2010 | Uncategorized | Ruth Bresson | No Comments

Along with 1000’s of students and teachers, my oldest daughter returns to lead her 4th grade classroom tomorrow.  Making the significant transition from summer days to schools days requires massive focus, faith, and fortitude.

It is also an important time to pause…to take a breath…to acknowledge the season passing in anticipation of the one just ahead.  It always seems most important to choose to take these pauses when we feel we can least afford the time to do so but do so we must.

Within this pause, we  can first acknowledge gratitude – all that we have been given, all that we have experienced and celebrated during that season – weddings, travel adventures,  new homes, new friends, and most especially,  the gift to see another fall.  And once gratitude has replenished our buckets – our souls and our hearts – then we can be brave to also acknowledge any losses, any unexpected hurts, setbacks, or discouragments.

Both the gifts and the griefs shore up our souls for the season ahead for we never know what might lie just around the next bend.

It is within this holy pause, that we are free to identify and connect to our power source…the core of our lives. For me, the power source is my Abba’s – my Father God’s love for me. Mind you…my power source is not my love for my Abba…nope..because on any given day, my choice to love or my ability to love may be quite pitiful, rebellious, unbelieving, and flat out zero. No, my power source is my Abba’s immutable, mysterious, incomprehensible love for me. It is the river of grace that carries me with absolutely no effort or performance on my part. It is the most welcomed relief to my overly examined life.

And it is out of this power source…this love….that I am made brave to honestly see the gifts and the griefs and cherish them both.

So, pause…take a breath…take a seat….

Practice gratitude…embrace both the gift and the grief…

We need to cherish and honor both.

August 8th, 2010 | Uncategorized | Ruth Bresson | 1 Comment

Everyone has a power source. Everyone.  Everyone has a core, a hub, a center out of which all else revolves.  Though we have long envisioned life as linear – it isn’t. It’s circular.  Picture it. Beautiful. Fluid. Flowing. All of life is in constant motion –  flowing, revolving, replenishing, restoring each treasure on the circle;  nurtured or neglected by our circle’s core – our power source.

But, because we are such compulsive list makers and list checkers, we refuse to live our lives as the circle. We love our lists. We love checking things off of our list. But, the list never empowers us. Never.  And then, one day…we discover that the stuff on our list – well, it was just stuff – and we look inside ourselves and discover a scary hole – an emptiness – where our power source should have been.

We were never intended to live linear so we aren’t very good at it. Lists are great for shopping excursions but they fall woefully short in empowering lives and strengthening hearts.   So, maybe we could stop investing our best energy and gifts on our lists and instead invest our best energy and gifts on strengthening our cores – our source of true power.

But, first, my friends…ya gotta figure out what your power source is.

What replenishes true hope for you?

What defines authentic love for your heart and mind?

What gets you up in the morning and what brings you sweet rest in the night?

If you don’t know. Get to work discovering your power source.

You can’t live without it. If you focus your entire life on your list, you will run the risk of doing a bunch of stuff and being pretty much – well, nothing but a list checker.

You have so much more to be.  And if you run into brick walls…well, lists are simply no help in removing them. Power is. If you find yourself in the dark…well, lists can’t help you there…lists provide no light. Power does.

So my favorite song for summer running has been “Unstoppable” by Rascal Flatts.

I’d like to run unstoppable. I’d like to live unstoppable. Running unstoppable feels circular to me…not at all linear.

The heart of coaching is the belief  that the very act of  running unstoppable leads to light….to our power source.

Rascal Flatts says it this way:

“You find your faith that’s been lost and shaken;

You take back what’s been taken;

Get on your knees and dig down deep;

You can do what you think is impossible.

Keep on believing; don’t give in,

It’ll come and make you whole again;

It always will; it always does.

Love is unstoppable.

What is the “unstoppable” for you?

That’s your power source!

Find it. Name it. Live out of it….