Keen Blog - Day 13.
7:25 P.M. (Eastern)

Sometimes I feel less like a life coach and more like a bellboy...I have to deal with so much baggage!  Though I suppose a bellboy merely moves your baggage from place to place...while I help you to go through it and see what you really need.

What, you ask, there is baggage that we need?   Well sure.  I mean, you don't gain emotional maturity by throwing all of your life experience through the window.  No, you gain maturity by embracing your life experience, analyzing it, and deciding what is necessary for you to be you.  The same experience that brought you heartache in your twenties will be a vantage point in your forties.

So, how do you tell what is important baggage and what is fodder?  If I were a good bellboy, I would emblazon all of your useless baggage with brass initial, B.S.  As a life coach, it is not such an easy process.   For starters, you have to be willing to open your baggage wide and open it often.  Second, you must be willing to part with anything that does not fit, is torn or stained, is broken(!), or is more than a decade old.  And no, I did not start talking about closets again (God no, who would take advice from me on that!)  I'm talking about emotional scars, old boyfriends who are now "friend with benefits", traumas of the heart, and anything anyone did to you prior to finishing high school. 

The first test I have for baggage is the age test.  You know shoulder pads went out of style in the 80's, so why are you carrying around hurt and heart-debris from the same decade?  OK.  He cheated with his secretary who looked like Joan Jett.  So what if the woman you caught him in bed with looked like Melanie Griffith in "Working Girl."  That was two decades ago.  The same rule that applies to fashion applies to emotional baggage...if the next generation has an obsession with it, get rid of it!!  I am in no way implying that emotional baggage become a hand-me-down.   That's a whole different topic.

The next test I have is called the "Does it Motivate You" test.  If knowing he left you for a thinner woman is helping you to lose thirty pounds...I'll let you keep it.  If the knowledge makes you tear into a Sarah Lee cheesecake while it's still frozen... both the treat and the baggage GOTTA GO!  The real thing to consider is whether the baggage is a helper or a hindrance.  Rank it on a scale from negative five to positive five.   A negative five means, "I'm stuck in the muck and cannot move forward" while a positive five means "I'm obsessed with improving my life."  For the record...anything that ranks a "zero" is probably not baggage.  Which end of the scale do YOU think we get rid of?

When looking at baggage one of the biggest things we have to consider is how it is affecting your current relationships.  And not just romantically speaking, either.   If your mother never loved you and now you cannot get along with women...BIG ISSUE.  If your high school boyfriend cheated on you with the head cheerleader and now as a thirty year-old woman you refuse to let your man watch football…BIG ISSUE.  I gained eighty pounds when I saw my boyfriend check out another woman…BIG ISSUE.  Needing to control every aspect of his life…BIG ISSUE.  Medium-sized issues would be things like the occasional hack into his email account, and calling all of the female sounding names in his cell phone…and asking them if they know who you are.  If for a moment something from your past is preventing you from making or keeping friends or establishing long-term relationships…you need me.  No, don’t worry, you don’t have to commit to me.  But you do have to call. 

So bottom line for all men and women who find themselves with extra baggage that gets in the way of achieving success…Check it at the door.  Hand it off to the bellboy and bid them both fair well.  The other thing I have to mention…if you find yourself in a relationship with someone who is not capable of shedding their baggage and you find yourself mucking about in their out-of-style, decades old stuff, well, you tell them…before you come in here, CHECK IT AT THE DOOR.

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