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March: A Special Month After All
by Dennis Gaudet
Just because March has no federal holidays does not mean it can't be a time meaningful celebrations. In fact, it may be the most important month of the year. A colleague of mine turned the calendar from February to March and lamented over the month's lack of national holidays. While I am in no position to question her patriotism, I suspect her sigh was actually rooted in the lack of any paid days off from work.
Yet the month of March offers us an opportunity to move beyond the "do I get the day off" syndrome. March offers us a chance to commemorate dates and events that run the spectrum of emotions. Here is an excerpt of important dates in March:
March 2: Texas Independence from Mexico (1836) March 6: Walter Cronkite's last broadcast as anchor of CBS News and Siege of the Alamo (1836) March 8: International Women's Day March 10: Mothering Day in the UK March 15: Andrew Jackson's Birthday (Tennessee) and the Ides of March March 17: St. Patrick's Day March 20: Vernal Equinox March 22: Emancipation Day in Puerto Rico March 30: Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley 1st Tuesday: Town Meeting Day in Vermont
As this brief list bears out, any thirty-day period provides us with a wealth of celebrations and remembrances. Perhaps a month like March exists as an opportunity for us to stop and mark those events that are ordinary yet special in our lives.
A wonderful coach and trainer, Ed McKool, begins each class by asking his participants to list any Wins and Wows they have experienced in the past week. Ed defines a Win as simply waking up and breathing. A Wow is anything else that happened in your life.
I want to challenge you to pick a date on the calendar and for the next thirty days that follow, write down one Win and one Wow you experienced on each day. (As long as you wake up you have your Win to record for that day so you're 50% done!) From the list of March events you can see that all the occurrences in a month are not all joyful events, but they are what happened in your life.
Once you have your Wins and Wows calendar of the past thirty days, you can reflect on what you have experienced.
Is there a pattern to the events you chose to write down and remember? If so, what is the message?
If they are solely events you perceive as negative; this may indicate a need to adjust your view of the world or a need to make actual changes in your life.
If what you write down is people focused or not, you may want to go deeper and ask reflect on what priority do I give the people in my life or how life-giving the people in my life really are.
If the events indicate moving forward with goals and visions or are merely repeats of past performances, you may have to examine if you are stuck in this moment of life.
In any event (pun intended), these are part of your life. Are you willing to celebrate them by marking them on the calendar? Are you willing to look for the message behind these special days?
You may be surprise as to what wonders you celebrate and experience in a month as simple as March!
About the Author
Dennis Gaudet,is a life planning coach whose specialty is helping people develop step by step acttion plans to design the type of life they want. Dennis can be reached for individual coaching sessions at dennis@livesbydesign.com
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