Coach Elliott

I am not sure when we will understand the numerous issues around the physical image of women.  Everyone is in on it including men and I am not void of an opinion but most of all concerns.  I for one  have become weary of the depiction of what magazines and ads promote as beautiful and the many ways that models are paraded in front of us with the myth that this is what pretty looks like, feels like and is like.  To say that I am tired of the lies is truly just a light hearted description of how I feel as a human being, as a father of two women and as a man who has struggled with my own physical image due to the hard sell that depicts handsome men as muscular and big chested.  Still I believe that women have a lot more pressure to be a size 0-6 and all the messages around us justify that rather cruel criteria.  In a word: Ridiculous Today I got up early unlike some of my Sundays when I get up at about 9:30 and at other times whenever I happen to get up. ...

Some time back one of the people I love dearly made the statement: "sex is not all it's cranked up to be".  For some crazy reason that phrase, those words and the thought of what that meant rose up this evening like an Oprah "aha" moment.  Suddenly what came out of my mouth was: sex is what we want it to be".  I am by no means an expert in this area but have coached couples on relationship issues including intimacy and learned more than I thought I would in the process.  Sex is what we want it to be.  That's what I think.  Sex is what you make of it and we are free to open ourselves up to the kind of thinking that empowers us in intimacy rather than shelf sex and believe that it is not ever going to be what we would like it to be.  If we truly believe that there is only one way to have intimacy or even ten ways to approach sex then we are likely missing a whole lot of options and definitions of sex.  For some having intimacy is a spiritua...

Today in route to the stores with a friend a dialog began around how there are times when people show up in our lives negatively because they simply refuse to do their own work.  This BLOG is about those kind of people and about the importance of doing our own work.  In a men's support group that I attend a man made a comment to another man about how he would have benefited from the session the week before.  Suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere the other man responded with "speak for yourself" and "you don't care about me" in a tone that looked and felt like oppressed anger.  The response did not seem to fit the comment and it was obvious to me that the person who responded with the angry tone started out angry, having nothing to do with the comment that was made.  The following week the facilitator of the group asked if there was anything additional that needed to be talked out.  In a snap the angry recipient from the week before began name calling the ...

Yesterday my husband and I hosted Mother's Day at our home.  As is usual for me I take great measures to create a beautiful table for my guests while my husband shakes his head in dismay and waits for me to have a  melt down but this time it went seamlessly and with ease and grace.  In the middle of the table a Goddess face and at the sides two pink  floral arrangements to represent the feminine energy.  I made a chicken curry dish and Cary made a pork dish.  We ended the meal with ice cream, almond cookies, dark chocolate pretzels, white chocolate sticks and some Asian popcorn with cinnamon.  The moms were not permitted to life a finger and when they tried or looked like they were we forbid it. My own personal struggle with my relationship with my mom has seemingly come to a new place, one that is of compassion and the understanding that she did the very best she could.  I have finally come to that point where I feel like the healing is taking ...

Sometimes I am prompted by something someone says and use it for my BLOG.  This is one of those times.  Today I saw a post on Facebook with a picture of princess Di and a post that asked about how others felt about her, hence the subject for my BLOG today. I remember falling asleep in my kids room one night after watching some television on their TV.  I woke up in the middle of the night frightened and not sure why.  I look at the screen of the television that I left on and there was an announcement about Princess Di having been in an accident. Moments later it was announced that she had died.  At first I thought I was dreaming and that what I was hearing could not be real.  It was as though I had been shaken up in the middle of the night and had to gain my balance and mental state.  My heart immediately wanted to be in denial and for a few minutes I thought that maybe there had been a mistake or that I was hearing it wrong.  Princess ...

Tonight I decided to go to my partner's volleyball game.  It's fun just to watch him transform into a kind of alpah male.  He loves the game and I like watching him transform into the hulk persona.  I enjoyed the game, he played very well and his team triumphed.   Obviously it takes believing he can do it and having the confidence that he is skilled at the game.  I don't think he is thinking: "I can win but the other team is better than us" or that in his mind he is saying, "I want to win but the other team has taller players". The part of my story tonight that I want to focus in on is the but word and how this word has become a common addition to what we say, think and feel.  It is this word that takes away from the power of our thoughts and the power of our actions and we have become so accustomed to it that it glides out of our mouth and into our mind like water.  It is almost as if it is natural for us to put it into our thoughts right after we a...

"Make your mess your message" is a phrase I heard on television the other day.  It was something I had not heard before and it got me thinking.  What does this mean?  What it means to me is to make your difficult experience into a productive, helpful message for yourself and to benefit others We will always have times in our life when there are messy situations and experience "messes".  What we do with our mess is what matters.  We can take our mess and make more of a mess or we can pick up our mess.  When we decide to pick up our messes in life we are taking responsibility for the messes.  We are saying to God that we honor our lives and that we feel worthy of living a tidy life.  We don't just leave our mess on the floor, we pick it up.  This may take a long while and for some it is a life journey, but we have to be willing to look at our mess and consider the reasons that the mess happened and the way that we will address it. Everyon...

It seems like common sense that a good relationship with others in our life requires that we be a team player, yet there are many people who hold relationship the atttidude of an aposing team player.  It is sometimes not until we lose someone we love because we don't know how to play the game of life that we realize that the reason we lost the game was simple, we did not play it accurately.  We lost because we did not see the importance of being a team player and step up to the base.  We were in the relationship with the expectation that if we needed to do something we would be asked. How do we behave like a team player in relationship? We behave with fairness and we do our part to win.  We give more than we take if needed and we show up even if we are not told to show up for the game.  We take the bat and we swing and hit the ball, we run and jump and get the basketball into the net even when times are tough.  We play the game of life and relationship l...