Lake 961 Blog

Happy Friday-It is a quiet day around here today–office wise. It is refreshing to have one of those days.
I have all this energy awaiting my first niece! My sister’s due date was today, so I barely slept last night. I watched the Jenny McCarthy episode on Warrior Mom’s on Oprah this week right before I went to bed–I DONT RECOMMEND THIS– at first I couldn’t sleep b/c I was so excited. Then, I started thinking about the bad stuff…what if questions can kill ya. I was worried about my sisters health, I was getting a weird feeling in my stomach and thinking I was going to loose my sister after child birth. The reason I was thinking this is because the Oprah episode I just watched had a “Mommy Warrior” on who had a baby, got an infection and lost her arms and legs. I cried…alot.
To top it all off, one of her girls was named Maddie! You guessed it, the same name of my niece.

So my sister called today–she went into the doc. and the doc. said Maddie is not ready to take on this world quite yet so they will induce her on Thursday. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am sooo excited but now I still have this strange bad feeling. Why? Any advice on how to make it go away? My-sister is already paranoid as it is, so will never tell her I am feeling this way…but I believe that THOUGHTS BECOME THINGS…so you can only guess what is going on in my head-energy to anxiety. I think I need to coach myself big time right now.
I dont like negative energy period, let alone with something like this…a human life!
My sister and her husband are going to be great parents and they will have a healthy baby girl and move forward. I know i truly believe that —but its like the angel and devil and the devil likes to chat it up on my right side.

‘this too, shall pass’

In the meantime I am going to distract my thoughts by going to see Nights In Rodanthe—a movie based on my favorite author-Nick Sparks! I have been awaiting this release so of course I am going opening night…Be sure to stop back for a full review. I have my hopes REAL high for this movie…so it should be interesting.
Check out more on the movie or watch the trailer here

Create a great weekend!
Katie

This weekend I took some time to clean out my DVR. I had ALOT of Oprah to watch! I came upon the child predators show and I was alone watching the episode and cried…and cried. SO I am asking you to  help save our children and send a letter to your Senator to pass this bill mentioned below. WE ONLY HAVE UNTIL SEPTEMBER 26th! You can copy the letter below to use. Call your Senator, email, send a fax, a letter, whatever you can do…please help!

Katie

Help Pass Senate Bill 1738—The PROTECT Our Children Act

Hundreds of thousands of children are victims of sexual abuse each year. Due to the sheer lack of resources, law enforcement is unable to follow up on the majority of leads they have.

The PROTECT Our Children Act will:

* Authorize over $320 million over the next five years in desperately needed funding for law enforcement to investigate child exploitation.
* Mandate that child rescue be a top priority for law enforcement receiving federal funding.
* Allocate funds for high-tech computer software that can track down Internet predators.

Act Now!
Your U.S. senators will be voting on the bill soon, so it is crucial you contact them immediately.
Go to www. senate. gov to find contact information for the senators in your state. Search for your senator by name or state by clicking on the arrow from either dropdown menu. Contact information is provided here. To send an e-mail, click on “Web Form” below his or her name, and e-mail your letter to make a difference!

Call Your Senators
If you choose to contact your senators by phone, be sure to tell them, “Vote yes on Senate Bill 1738—The PROTECT Our Children Act.”

Write to Your Senators
If you choose to write a letter, fax, telegram or e-mail, you may use the following sample letter—and modify it how you see fit.

Dear Senator:

I know that you believe, like I do, that we must do everything possible to protect children from sexual predators. That is why I am asking for your help.

Last year alone, U.S. law enforcement identified over 300,000 criminals who were trafficking in movies and pictures of young children being raped and tortured. Experts say that one in every three of these criminals has local child victims. Child pornography trafficking over the Internet has given us a trail of evidence that leads straight to their doorsteps, but the vast majority of these children will never be rescued because investigators are overwhelmed, outnumbered and underfunded.

As your constituent, I urge you to do everything in your power to pass the PROTECT Our Children Act (S. 1738, Biden-Hatch). This bipartisan legislation passed the House 415-2, but it is now the victim of petty partisan politics.

Now that we know where these children are and how to protect them, there is no excuse for the Senate to fail to take action this session.

(Your name here)

Instructions for How to Copy and Paste the Letter
To copy and paste the letter into your senator’s web form at www. senate. gov
, point your mouse arrow at the beginning of the text that you want to copy. Click your left mouse button and hold it down. While holding the left mouse button, drag your arrow to the end of the text that you want to copy. Release the button. The text should be highlighted. Place your mouse arrow over the highlighted text, click your right mouse button once and let go. A new menu should appear. Select Copy from the drop down menu. When you get to the message form field for your senator at www. senate. gov, point your arrow at the beginning of the message field that you want to copy your text to and right click with your mouse. Click Paste from this menu. Submit your form and help our children!

WOW, i just got back from the Alzheimer’s Memory Walk in downtown Lake Geneva and I am so charged up to continue making my mark and contribution to this great country.
I am so humbled and excited that I am a professional coach–I am in a very grateful mood after talking to all the amazing walkers today at Library Park. People inspire me, encourage me to keep making my difference.
If you couldn’t make it to the event today and you want to participant in the Memory Walk please log on to www.alz.org/sewiand find out what you can do to assist Walworth County’s volunteers to continue to make their mark!

After a few personal experiences this weekend so far, I have attached an article from a fellow coach Scott Simpson-his words just inspired me to take action this weekend!

What’s holding us back?

We wish to have more out of life, a better job, more money, purposeful meaning, and more friends. There always seems to be something missing from life, what are we searching for?  What is it that slows us down or stops us in our tracks as opportunity knocks at our door over and over again? Think about the last time you were going to do something and you didn’t. Was your inner voice saying, you may look stupid, they may not like you, you may be wrong, you’re not smart enough or you just can’t do that? We come up against it every day, in most everything we do, FEAR. 

Most of us have said, “I would love to do that”, yet we never do. Fear, for what ever reason, holds us back and we never even make an effort to achieve this new goal.  When these fears come up, we have lost living in the moment. We are caught up in the past, the future, ideas, images, assumptions and all that we make up in our world. The mind becomes so cluttered with fear-based information that it’s amazing we can respond at all.  Often, many fall apart or panic with such worry and fear. 

Imagine hearing about something you would love to do. You choose to be in the moment, relaxed, calm, focusing on the growth, fun, learning and the experience you will have as you do this new endeavor.  Setting your intention and working through the details later.  Realizing that you may be challenged yet how fun and experiential it will be to do new things, develop new skills and experience life to its fullest.  Fears seem to disappear when we face them with little resistance.  Inviting stories about the fear and laughing about them seems to diminish the feelings and consequence altogether.  This simple statement transforms  your meaning of life when every circumstance in life becomes an exciting challenge to learn, grow and have fun.

Our trials and tribulations exhaust us instead of using them as enlightenment and awareness of what’s possible in all aspects of the world.  We fail to realize that everyone’s heart is in pain and lonely, we all desire and need each others love and support.  Once we realize we are no different from anyone else, we lose this loneliness and become present to the world. We find a part of ourselves that touches everyone we come in contact with. We believe we live in ordinary day to day moments, yet there are no ordinary moments. The smallest moments of love, focus and listening can create the most extraordinary results. This release from fear becomes the excitement of living and experiencing a whole new world. The answer to over coming all our fears, is taking action on them! Remember, “Life is all about the Journey”. 

 -Scott Simpson

This is not a dress rehearsal, this is your life,
Coach Katie

Its a bird, its a plane…its…Coach Katie!

www.coachkatie.com

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Greetings friends,
Thanks for visiting my blog today. I post things that (I believe) are worth a few minutes of your time. Life is about learning and growing. This article I found basically compares women and men and their communcation styles, a conversation that has been around for years but this article puts a fun, entertaining ‘up date date’ spin on it all. This could be the evidence you need to keep you from getting into that confrontation…;)

Katie

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Women like to hear, and tell stories.  It’s because of biological and behavioral aspects.  Biologically, women have a greater capacity for verbal output than men.  A woman has verbal centers located in both hemispheres of her brain, while a man has verbal centers only in one
hemisphere . . . the left one, responsible for logic.

________________________________________________
Fran Lytle is a consumer behaviorist, brand strategist, award-winning author and international speaker.  Fran & her partner, Bill, have just published 2 books to assist you in growing your business:  “10 Things you Need to Know to Get More Women Customers,” and “12 Brand Strategy Tools you Need to Grow your Business.”  Contact fran@brandchamps.com for more information about purchasing either book.

Oh happy day!

Katie Kruz here and I have a quick question….

WHEN ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO STOP WEARING YOUR flip flop-sandals?

I am not one who knows the fashion “do’s” and “donts”
….It’s like that NO WHITE AFTER LABOR rule.

Is there a rule for summer sandals?!

HELP!
My best,

Katie

Last night I was on a coaching call that was so powerful I wanted to share it with you. (I apologize in advance for grammar errors and misplaced words, I am just so excited!!!) This is the first of a series of living your best life-articles posted here.
So check back often.

When I say LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE NOW.
What does that mean to you?

How do you determine if you are living your best life? By people, places or things? Perhaps it’s a spiritual thing for you, maybe it’s a special number (being #1) or does it take a trophy or a medal to declare your BEST-NESS?

Being at your best does not mean that all your dreams have come true and you have a ‘perfect life.’ If you attach being perfect to living your best life…you will be waiting a long time.
Life is about all the moments in a day bunched up and then quickly paraphrased. (We don’t have enough time in the day to rehash every moment, so we pick and choose) That being said, what moments build up your day? Do you even know?
What moments are making life hard, easy, mad, sad, glad and all the below, above and beyond?

Just some questions to assist you in your clarity of what your best life really means. If you can’t articulate what being at your best means, feels like, or looks like, then it will be difficult to feel complete. Even if you think you have your best life now, ask yourself all these questions….you will be surprised what happens next.
How will you know when your living your best life? Believe it or not it IS a tangible thing! Yes yes! It can be felt or seen! We all like to play in fantasy land so let’s get our hands dirty, start fantasizing what this could look like.

The ‘A-ha’ part of this whole article is that you get to choose your moments in your day. Maybe you can’t choose your circumstances but you choose what is put into your every day ‘day’s end paragraph’ that you tell yourself.
So choose the good one’s and get started now!

My challenge to you this week:

Get out of your head this week! Start by writing down your ‘day’s end paragraph’ EVERY day.
If you have time to rehash it up in your head, you have an extra 65 seconds to put it down on paper. If you do it consistently this week I can promise you will have gained more clarity on the questions above.
By week’s end, come back to this blog and ask yourself the same questions. See what changes for you.

Soooo– get out of your head this week and take action on the baby steps of living your best life today!

Create your best week!
Katie

Coming soon coachkatie.com

Want more on living your best life? Sign up for my newsletter by clicking here

Once in a great while I like to post some messages from my favorite people/authors etc…more of this can be found at the COACHING CORNER on my page. But I feel very passionately around this subject and how people pleasing can be detrimental to your own happiness in the long run. I couldn’t have put it better than Debbie Ford did in this article about power.

___________________

Are You Standing In Your Power?

It doesn’t matter who we are — how rich, famous, talented, or educated. At some point each of us will face the choice of claiming our power or giving it away by trying to please someone else.

Pleasing others is a habit that some of us developed when we were young. We learned that if we did something special — if we were cute, danced, used good manners, or received good grades in school — we would gain the affection and the approval we desired. Some of us learned that we had to forsake our own needs to fit in with our families. We kept our opinions to ourselves. We stayed silent, even when we longed to share our views. We followed along with the crowd rather than making waves. For most of us, this pattern of behavior began in our interactions with our parents. Now this habit is embedded deep in our psyches. We’ve learned to give away our power for the approval of others. We deny ourselves the gift of our voice, our opinions, and our authentic expression. Obligations, “shoulds”, and guilt become the dictators of our actions.

When we’re stuck in the pattern of people-pleasing, we do not have access to making clear choices. We are driven to fulfill others’ needs in order to be loved. In order to stand in our power, we must have the option of saying no. We have to be willing to give up the need for others’ approval and give up our need to make others happy. The truth is that not everyone will like us and it’s not our job to make others happy — just as it isn’t the job of others to make us happy.

It’s so easy to give our power away to oblige our partners or console our families. But if the choices we make rob us of too much of our private time, if they deprive us of our joy or our inner peace or prevent us from expressing our creative gifts, then ultimately they are violations we are perpetrating against our own souls. These violations do not affect just us in negative ways, they affect all those around us. When we don’t take care of ourselves because we are trying to make others happy, we build up resentment toward the very people we are trying to please.

The Right Question “Am I standing in my power or am I trying to please another?” allows us to stand in our power and to be clear about our priorities. If I choose to ignore myself when I am in desperate need of my own attention, I will resent those I have deemed more important than me. Even though I might spend the day trying to be happy and pleasant, underneath I will feel angry because I have made a choice that depleted me. This underlying resentment will inevitably come out no matter how hard I try to deny what I feel.

We set ourselves up to lose every time we give away our power and minimize the importance of our own needs. Many people I work with truly believe that they don’t matter. They think it’s okay to abandon themselves as long as they are making someone else happy. They tell themselves that they are strong enough to withstand the neglect as long as it’s in the name of making someone else happy. Or they tell themselves that it’s their job to be the sacrificial lamb. This is often what we were taught when we were young, and it sets us up to violate ourselves and play the part of the martyr. Each time we ignore our own needs to please another, we disconnect from our own ability to love and nurture ourselves.

Please remember that pleasing another is not the same as caring for another. The important thing to realize is that we can’t really care for another if we do not first care for ourselves.
By consulting ourselves to see whether the choices we make come from a place of standing in our power or one of needing to please another, we are forced to confront the subtle and not so subtle ways in which we violate ourselves.

This Right Question will support you in reclaiming your power in every aspect of your life. You may feel that you have your power in some areas of your life, but certain people and situations are bound to come along that will temporarily blindside you.
It is precisely at those moments that I invite you to remember to breathe deeply, check in with yourself, and ask yourself this important question: Am I standing in my power or am I trying to please another?

With love and blessings,

COMING SOON
www.coachkatie.com

until then click here

Welcome to the last day of July and the last month of Summer!
I promised some pictures from the Swedish people and I finally got them last night! We went to dinner to feed the guests with baby back ribs and lime flavored quesadillas for their last American meal Then, it was off to DQ-Something different -for dessert. What we noticed is that they didn’t like to get their hands dirty…they ate everything with a fork! (Poor Roland was eating baby back ribs with a fork…that’s tuff)
Let me introduce you to them…

Roland has a gun to his head (not literally) because he was soooo full and had this big ice cream dish to eat…it was so funny.

 Best wishes and safe travels back home for the Swedish People!

I got an email from Liz in New Berlin regarding my first Culture blog. As always your comments and emails are always welcome!
________________________________________
I just read your culture blog and can relate! Lately I have been feeling like I am so sheltered and I grew up with limited knowledge about the world around us. When I went to a wedding last weekend-I was a little overwhelming for my friend Stan because I was asking him all these questions about his Russian culture.

The next generation is already learning Spanish as early as kindergarden and will hopefully have a well-rounded education more than I have. I personally did not begin learning about another culture until I took Spanish starting in 8^thgrade. From then on I felt that I wanted to soak up as much information as I could about the Spanish culture and since I havent explored this topic since Freshman year in college, I am feeling a little deprived.

Stan didn’t know it but he made me realize how hungry I was to keep learning. Some day, I want to learn how to speak Italian and refresh my knowledge for Spanish. Then…it’s off to learn cuisines of each culture and TRY new things. This is my goal for 2009; to become more cultured. Just wanted to share that I really liked your blog !

I never knew had a context for when people told me I needed more culture in my life…Until now.
Sure I have met foreign people …but for brief moments. I never really sat down to listen to them and give myslef  the opportunity to learn from them.
Last night I had the opportunity to meet Swedish people! They are my boyfriend’s grandparents relatives.
In the short time that I was with them, I learned so much about culture and what we take advantage of in the USA like …COLD food and good MEAT.
Matt’s (my bf) Aunt made fabulous beef tenderloin because in Sweden they don’t really have beef. I never knew any of this stuff. So it was a great learning experience for me.
My favorite moment when the Swedish people saw lightening bugs for the first time ever! It was unique to share that moment with them. I asked if they thought it was ‘weird’ to see something of that kind in the sky…they didn’t understand the word ‘weird’, it was cute.
I am humbled to have had that experience and learned that I need more culture in my life to grow as a human being. Researching diversity, culture and the land ‘over there’. It is no accident that the Coaching magazine I just got yesterday  is all about Diversity.
I will be seeing them again on Tuesday, I will be sure to take pictures. They took a few ‘goofy’ pictures of me. Dave Michaels says “great, now when they show their friends ‘american people’, they will think of you!” LOL. That’s right! I love it.

Have a great weekend. I am going to the great city of Madison. Then I will treat myself to some ‘Katie time’. When was the last time you treated yourself to “you time”?
Cheers to the Swedish people!

Katie

I treated myself to a great vacation in Sedona AZ a few weeks ago…and it was AMAZING. If you want to treat yourself to something special, visit Sedona. Just make sure you have sunscreen and alot of money in your wallet.
Here are a few pictures from Sedona.
I know, I am such a POSER

I went ATVing in the dessert in 115 degree temps…it was not bad actually.
Im down there somewhere
There were RANDOM Horses in the middle of the dessert, you can tell I was confused….
IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES
AT SLIDE ROCK,Natural water park

I went OFF ROADING in this Pink JEEP
Oh I forgot about this one…Don’t I look happy, moments before ATV training and hearing about SNAKES!
Me and my great BF Matt on a Sunset tour in the red rocks