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Vacations are so good for inspiration and I am staying in a cottage on a lake which has been a place of soul-searching and new perspectives often during the course of my life.   Those of you who have been a reader for a while know that I see many things in life as a metaphor and this morning I’m offering another one. 

Over the harsh winters here, the painted wooden steps up to the porch take a beating and this year we just couldn’t ignore them anymore.  So earlier this week the son of a friend came over to help me refresh them.  There were several layers of paint and they had bubbled up and chipped and peeled away in places.  Josh scraped away all the lose pieces and then sanded the planks down as smooth as he could.  After 30 years, they are not perfect, but now that I have put a fresh coat of paint on this morning, they look pretty presentable again. 

While I was doing this, I realized that this is kind of what I encourage my clients to do in redesigning their lives and work.  Most are at least 30 and have lives that have been layered up over the years by family, friends and experience.  The choices we make along the way lead to other choices and sometimes we end up with a not so acceptable “weathered” life that needs repair and re-painting.  

Parts of the steps were still very acceptable, some were just slightly chipped, and a couple of places had to be sanded down to the bare wood again.   Isn’t this true of our lives?   We all have some parts that are truly us and always will be just fine.  Then we might have some areas that are beginning to wear a little thin and crack - maybe a job you’ve stuck with for too long. 

And most of my clients call me because there is one part of their lives that has become unacceptable and they are ready to scrape it away and start over.   If I can carry the analogy a little further, the process I’m suggesting is to sand down to your own “bare wood”, discover the “grain” of your person, and begin the process of making it shine again. 

It takes careful preparation(scraping away the loose bits), attention to detail (sanding carefully) and patience (painting carefully and then letting it dry) to create a successful project. 

If you need a 30 minute free consultation to figure out what your process needs to be, please send me an e-mail and we’ll arrange a time to chat.  This is a working vacation….. just not as much as at home.