Nothing makes me feel as good as I feel when I participate in a random act of kindness, or any act of kindness for that matter.  Last night I was preparing for a clothing exchange with about 15 girls. There was this black sweat pant outfit with a jacket with beautiful embroidery on both that a friend had given to me, that I was contemplating taking it to exchange.  The sweat suit was a little to small for me, but I was crazy about it. This wasn’t your typical sweatsuit by the way, the embroidery was fantastic.  I kept trying it on, thinking that I would wear it someday.  So, as I was looking through my closet, picking the clothes to take, there the sweatsuit is staring at me, and I have to make a decision.  After long deliberation, I put it in my pile to take.

Hey Teens, summer is just around the corner and for those of you that are going to enter the wonderful world of working for a living (or maybe just working for next years school clothes and having fun). Here are some job ideas.  I did a blog last year regarding summer jobs for teens.  I am big advocate of entrepreneurialship, working for yourself.  There are so many ways to create jobs for yourself, and make more money, I’m not quite sure why you would work for someone else.

It is also going to be tougher this year to get a job, because of the current economic situation we are in. Those jobs that teens usually go for during the summer might well be taken by someone else that has lost his job.  So that’s what makes creating your own job even more appealing.

When I look at the typical job for teens today like fast food restaurant, I think there must be a better way.

Besides working with Teen’s and being an author, I have owned a few businesses. I love being my own boss, because I get to do things my way, it’s a great learning experience and best of all my hard work pay off, goes to me.  Of course you may have some small start up costs, and costs of doing business, but then the rest is yours.

So here are some great business ideas for teens:

•    Web Consultant- most teens I know have a way with computers and most adults I know struggle with it. Help them set up and manage Social Networking Sites (My Space, etc.
•    Nanny- if you like kids and your good with them, kids are out of school during the    summer, but parents still have to work.
•    Dog Walker or Pet sitting- I’m always looking for someone to help me with my animals. I pay $35.00 to $50.00 a night.

•    Dog Washer- if someone had a service on a Saturday or anytime where I could just drop in and have my dos washed I would love it.  All you need is water towels, dog shampoo and a location. I think if you charged $12.00 for a small dog, $16.00 for a medium, and $20.00 for a large dog, people would do it all day long.

• Car Detailing- with a few supplies and a knowledge of what is clean and what is not, you could wash, wax, clean vents, and vacuuming right at their homes
• Errand running- there are a lot of elderly people and people that are very business that need help, just running errands or helping around the house with odd jobs.
• Cleaning Service- if you have a sense of what is clean and what is not, this is a great business.
Most of the time the people buy the cleaning products and you just go clean.
• Tutoring- tutor a younger teen or child while going through summer school or with subjects they are having difficulty with. Parents love this one.
• Small business assistant- I used to always get teens to help me with different jobs for my business. They would come for 2 hours a day and I would have things like shredding, bookwork, cleaning, organizing inventory, so many things.

So, get a  plan together, and start preparing now because summer is almost here. Get the  supplies you need, how many hours it will take, how much you are going to charge, who are you going to call, make a flyer, post it, tell all of your parents friends, and ask if they know anyone that needs your help.  I think working is a lot more fun, when you are your own boss, so go have some fun and make some money and let me know how it goes.

Sexting, sending nude photos of yourself to someone through your cell phone.  What are teens thinking…or are they?

It seems with all of this great new technology comes and big responsibility to the parents to educate their teens on what the dangers might be.  It’s not all fun and games.

These are photos that you can’t take back, once they leave your phone and go to another persons phone, they can do what they want with them. Here is another video from the Today Show regarding this topic.

It seems so harmless and fun for teens, until something like this happens.  It’s easy to find information on this subject parents.  Ask your teen what he or she thinks about sex-ting, and then get on the Internet and start doing some research.  Teens might not even think about the consequences.  Ask them what if you or someone you know sends a nude picture to your boyfriend, and you break up and he is not happy about the break-up.  What is the risk there?

It always comes down to it being our responsibility to educate our kids, so we have to be a step ahead them, which is really hard.  My suggestion is always keep an open line of communication with your teen, so that they will keep you informed about what is going on.  Get on the Internet and do the research first when your kids are younger, twelve and below, so that you will know what is going on. Even though new issues pop up everyday.

Why is your teen pulling away? It is a question many parents ask me.  I can totally understand their concerns because there are many reasons why your teen could be pulling away, one being the normal process of separation, the rest being possible drug use, depression or just working through their own stuff.

If it is drugs, usually other things are going on in their lives as well.  Signs to look for are declining interest in activities your teen use to enjoyed, declining school grades, and radical mood swings that seem to be about more than just teen hormones.

Teenagers are faced with a lot of different pressures, from developing into adults, to the very question of who they are and how they can fit in.  It isn’t easy to decipher between depression and your teenager starting to assert their independence.  Here is a list of symptoms of a depressed teen:

• Sleeping a lot more than usual
• Edginess, anger, or hostility
• Sadness, frequent crying, or hopelessness
• Thoughts of death or suicide, talking about it
• Difficulty concentrating,
• Lack of energy
• Withdrawing from friends
• Loss of interest in activities
• Lack of motivation and enthusiasm
• Feeling worthless and guilty

Depression and drug use come with assortment of symptoms that would be noticeably different than a teen pulling away to begin his or her own path toward independence.  If you believe it to be drug use or depression, talk to your teen about how they are feeling and seek professional help. Hopefully it’s just the normal independence pull most all teens go through.

I remember when my oldest daughter starting pulling away, my heart felt broken. We went from being very close, to her spending a lot of time in her bedroom or with friends.  I used to open the door to her bedroom and say “have you seen my daughter Amber around” and she would say exaggerated “Mom, I’m right here” and we would both giggle.  I didn’t take it personally although it felt personal.

It is a normal progression to growing up, they start to pull away to begin to see where their own boundaries are, not yours. If we try to control them with our decisions and not let them participate in making their own decisions, they are just going to shut down.  What we don’t want is for them to start figuring out how to make decisions and setting their own boundaries with no practice.

So give them a little more rope each day and keep communicating with them about the decisions they have to make, and give them some space to start figuring things out on their own.  The more you try to make decisions for them, and keep them from hanging out with their friends, the more they will shut down from you and that’s where the harmony in the household starts to dissipate.

Try not to take this personally, this isn’t about you. This about you helping your teen learn how to make good decisions and finding their own boundaries to become responsibly adults.

Good luck in raising healthy, confident and growing teens  and let me know how it is going.

I have lived in Sedona for 10 years, and one of things I love most about it, is the changing seasons, without extremes.  I was in Ashland Oregon 3 weeks ago where my daughters and grandson live and it looked unbelievable with the fall colors.

The trees dance with color, and their movement with the wind was magical.  Sedona is magical in a completely different way. Sedona doesn’t have the extreme changing colors, but it also doesn’t have the extreme cold or hot.  If you drive down the Oak Creek Canyon in the fall, you get this feeling that everything in the world is okay.  The trees showing off their colors, the smell of camp fires, and the crisp, clean air.  The days are warm and the nights are perfect, maybe a lite sweater. It’s even beautiful when all the leaves have fallen.

I lived in Ashland for 11 months before I moved to Sedona, and as beautiful as Ashland is, Sedona has become more than a home to me.  Besides being totally breath taking, it holds me in a blanket of safety.   I have never felt like I was home until Sedona.  I lived in Phoenix for 33 years, and I never felt connected to the place or the community.

I was talking with Anne a gal at a party on Saturday night and we were talking about how Sedona either embraces you or unfortunately spits you out. I have seen many people spit out, it’s not pretty. I myself feel very lucky that it allowed me to stay.  What really seems to be the ongoing thread is that, Sedona brings up the issues you need to work on, if you work on them, you’re in, if you don’t  “toowee”.

It really allows me to live in a place that has 4 seasons without being brutalized by any of them, all of them are mild. No 20 below, yet, no 110 degrees.  So, I guess I’m going to stay for awhile, as long as Sedona will let me or I keep working on my stuff.

Where do you live and what do you love about it most, and how does it make you feel?

Stand up for yourself, set boundaries, don’t let your friends take advantage of you.  Wow, that’s a lot to ask of a teen!

It seems like it’s a lot to ask of an adult. Look around you, how many adults tell their friends, their bosses or anyone that is acting inappropriately, “that’s not acceptable”!  I am in a circle of pretty conscious people and most of them have difficulties setting boundaries. When most adults have to make a decision to confront someone who has done something to them that they don’t appreciate, it takes a lot for them to talk to the person. Some people actually get sick to their stomach, and have extreme anxiety about it.

So why do we act like our teen should be able to handle this easier.  It is most often harder for a teen to confront another teen or worse yet an adult about something they have done that he or she is not good with.  It is tougher for a teen to make sense of what has happened and why it feels off.  This happens to adults also, but with teens they can’t usually figure out how to confront without being ousted by their peers or not respected by an adult.

So how can we help or teens and our self to confront with ease?  For me it is easier just knowing that if I confront I am taking care of myself, and usually if it’s good for me it’s always a gift for the other person in learning more about themselves, if they are willing. Also if I look at what it is they are doing and why it is triggering me, that helps me learn about myself. It helps me take the blame off of them and realize it’s just another lesson to learn.

For teens it’s important for the parent to have compassion for what they are feeling around it, understand their feelings, and their hurt, step into their reality.

Help your teenager get in touch with their feelings around the situation, ask them questions like “how did you feel when she did that to you” or “why do you think she is acting like that”, also ask her if she feels the hurt anywhere in her body. Sometimes there will be physical symptoms. Asking questions helps them get in touch with how they are feeling, and why and make sense of the situation.

Help your teen put together a plan of what they might say to the person acting inappropriate.  Also help them understand why the other person might be acting this way; so that your teen can have compassion for them, this really helps with easing the anger.

These are also good tips for adults to use when they are having difficulties with confronting.  I have become really good at confronting people in a loving way because what I noticed was, when I didn’t confront I got sick to my stomach and would lose sleep over it. I bet if you thought about it, you would realize that it is more painful not to confront than to confront. So stand up for yourself, start setting healthy boundaries, and confront in a loving way.  Let me how you feel when you do or don’t confront.

Well, Sorry I haven’t Blogged in a week, but I was in the hospital…Yuk!

Friday night I got a big oh pain in my right side and Saturday morning went to the emergency room, thinking I had appendicitis. They ran a bunch of test and found a very inflamed colon.

How could this be, I eat all the right foods, and even take supplements for inflammation, and stomach care. None of it made any sense at all.

Then I did a bit of reading and found out that it could possibly be STRESS. Well, looking at the life I have created and what I have put on my plate, it didn’t surprise me. I decided to get my book out and read the chapter on Stress Reduction. It’s right there in my own words:

“Stress can do quite a bit of harm to your body and you emotional health”.

No kidding! I was shocked, even though I have read about stress and at some level participated in its unruly actions, nothing like what I experienced with my poor inflamed colon.

I knew it could be destructive to our bodies and emotional health, because of what I have read; now I know it first hand.

I am slowly removing things off my plate, getting things done on my time. I’m kicking off the things that have caused me grief and aren’t worth having on my plate in the first place.

I have started meditating again; this slows me down and starts my morning out with the intentions I want to set for the day. Check out Sarah Mcleans website on meditation Sedona Meditation Training

Check in with yourself and make sure your plate isn’t so full you can’t carry it anymore. Do you have feelings of anxiety? How is your sleeping? Are you having any aches or pains that are unusual? Just check in before the stress does any damage.

It feels as though I have been pushing up against everything lately, and feeling not very supported. This gives me the opportunity to look at why? Why not relax into it and go with the flow?

To look at the movement of water, how it just moves with ease, over rocks, and under logs. How can I emulate this free flowing water? For me, I need to realize that life is a journey, that I get to go on to learn how to love myself and show up in the world for me and others. That everything else is an illusion. My house, my car, my cloths, even how I look!

The only thing that is real is my relationship with myself, others and a higher power if you believe in one. And then this leads me back to how to have a relationship with myself? This is something I have to be conscious of every minute of the day. When I am feeling contracted or trigger with something or someone, to explore my feelings around it, not to blame the person who might have triggered me but to connect to those feelings and grow from them.

It’s just like realizing that I am pushing up against everything and life seems harder. To realize that these are feelings that I had when I was a child. To have a little conversation with my child within, listen to the feelings wrapped around those feelings and then step up and be a good mother and father to that child within. This might look like, just shifting how I am doing something…Stop pushing and relax and go with the flow.

Throughout the day, pay attention to your body, and how you feel. Are you contracted or upset? If so, don’t ignore those feelings. It’s like if you had a child of your own, and he or she was feeling badly, maybe really sad, would you ignore her feelings? I don’t think so! So show up for that little child inside of you, and be a good mother and father. Every time I feel unsupported in this world, it’s because I am not being supportive to myself. Experiment with really paying attention to your feelings for one day and attending to those feelings and see how you feel. Let me know how the day lays out for you.