the top three most awesome things about cats

I have one cat, which is to say that my wife has one cat that she was kind enough to bring into the marriage. I had two kids from a previous marriage, so fair is fair.

I was thinking it would be funny to leave the body of this post blank since I'm not a cat person, but I have come to respect the little bastard over the 19 years he's been here:

1. Cats have attitude. The fiercest of my malamute sled dogs is our female Kali. Kali is a genuine alpha bitch and we keep her away from all other dogs outside of our pack because she seems to have a desire to kill everything. She is very sweet to humans but if you are a fellow critter, not so sweet. One day I heard a scream from the kitchen and I rushed in to find my daughter trying to pull Kali off the cat. The cat was covered in blood and I rushed him upstairs, all the while trying to figure out how I was going to explain this to my wife. Plato the cat, at the time, weighed a scant 6 pounds, as he had kidney failure and has no front claws, so I was expecting catastrophic injuries. There was not a single wound on the cat. I went downstairs to find Kali licking a half dozen spurting wounds. The cat handed her her ass.

2. Cats know how to read people. I hate cat hair on my clothing and Plato has some sort of sonar that tells him when something black has been laid out on a flat surface and is thus available to be laid upon. He is helping me to be less neurotic. Sadly to say, it's be working.

3. Cats are independent. No stress at all for travelling, unlike dogs who will crap all over the house and eat all the food you give them in one sitting.

the three most awesome things about dogs

I have four malamute sled dogs and I have learned much about myself and my other fellow human pack animals.

1. Dogs are not fussy about what they eat. My eldest dog is 11, which means he's eaten the same bowl of kibble over 8000 times, and he's enthusiastic about it every single time. Another of my dogs, in the same day, ate a steaming pile of horseshit and an uncooked ribeye steak I left carelessly on the counter; he had the same look on his face in each case.

2. Regardless of the "mood" a dog is in, she is ready and willing to give you all the affection you could possible want. My female dog is a face licker. You might think you are fast enough to move your face and avoid a sloppy wet french dog kiss, but you would be wrong, as I have been on too many times than I care to remember.

3. Apologies to cat lovers here, but dogs are not cats. No further explanation required.

the top three most awesome book titles that never got published

These book ideas all contain (or bury under a cloak of sarcasm) a kernel of wisdom that is so simple that the book would not sell:

1. on health and fitness: "how to lose weight by eating less and working out more"

2. on relationships: "how you can be different so I can be happy"

3. on selling and business strategy: "hope– how to succeed without doing any of that messy work"

the top three most awesome things about steve jobs

Steve Jobs was my hero, the entrepreneur and person I most admired:

1. He invented the concept of awesome: things were either "insanely great" or "complete crap" and the things that he created were more often the former than the latter.

2. He made design a legitimate business strategy: he led the world to more blockbuster products than any another entrepreneur in history save Leonardo DaVinci (the personal computer, the powerbook, "toy story", the iPod, iTunes , the iPhone, etc.)

3. He understood the intimate and necessary connection between passion and death: http://www.ted.com/talks/steve_jobs_how_to_live_before_you_die.html

I regret never meeting him.

the top three most awesome things my son said as a kid

My son Kyle just turned 20 and moved to Sydney, Australia to become a chef at the Cordon Bleu school. He made the best hollandaise sauce ever at the age of five and along the way said some interesting things:

1. At age 3: "because yeah" or "because no" or "both", in answering why he either other wanted something or didn't want something or wanted both alternatives, because, in the end, he didn't think he had to justify himself to anyone.

2. At age 4: "usually I'm introspective, but today I feel like talking".

3. At age 5: "look dad, surface tension", while holding his spoon up in the air with ice-cream stuck to it, a day after I explained the concept of surface tension to him as a joke.

Kids are way smarter than we think they are.

the top three most awesome things my daughter said as a kid

My daughter just turned 18 and is currently traveling by herself in Australia. She's always seemed ahead of her time and an old soul:

1. At age 4: I'm late to pick her up at day care four days in a row and holding my hand as we toddle to the car she says: "Daddy, you're losing your 'tegrity. Show does not know how to spell or pronounce the word but she knows how to nail her father to the wall with it.

2. At age 5: we are camping out in the Ghost River area, everyone but Maren and I have gone to bed, I'm drifting off in front of the fire and she's says: "I have thoughts that nobody knows about". I wake up immediately recognizing that this is not going to be some standard 4 year old babble. She goes on to explain her theories of the genesis of the universe and the structure of human consciousness. In retrospect, she might be right.

3. At age 7: she has completed her first year of school and tells me the friend making strategy she's learned: "it's better to make friends at the start of the year, because if you wait until the end of the year to try to make friends with someone, it could take up to five minutes."

"They grow up so fast" is a cliché, but it's a cliché for a reason.

the top three most awesome things about Las Vegas

My partner Aly Pain and I just spoke at our first international conference for the International Coach Federation in Las Vegas, on the topic of selling with integrity. This was awesome in itself but there were three additional Las Vegas qualities that made it more so:

1. the Fountains of the Bellagio: because every 15 minutes an elegant dance of water cannons blasts cool shafts of water high into the night sky to the music of Sarah Brightman and other awesome musicians.

2. Cirque de Soleil: because America is in massive financial dire straights and the most entertaining and lucrative part of its primary symbol of decadence–the strip–comes from Canada, and Quebec at that.

3. the standard Las Vegas women's uniform: I'm going old-school manly here, but the combination of cleavage, heels and short dress really works, especially when pulled off awesomely by my 47 year old wife with all the correct equipment to do so. (My business partner looked pretty awesome in her uniform as well and her husband Jeff was pretty pleased.)

the top three most awesome guitar solos

I'm on a bit of a musical theme at the moment:

1. the opening bars of "where the streets have no name" by the Edge. I've heard this in concert live three times and I always surprise myself by getting up and dancing.

2. "Hotel California" by Don Felder and Joe Walsh. I had one of my top three brunches at the real Hotel California in Todos Santos, Mexico which had the all-time best fresh squeezed orange juice.

3. "Comfortably Numb" by David Gilmour. I missed seeing them in concert due to my unfortunate place at the end of the baby book and when I turned to look they were gone.

the top three most awesome versions of Hallelujah

One of the most covered songs, this Leonard Cohen classic is a great Canadian invention:

1. the Canadian Tenors on Oprah. Celine Dion comes out as a surprise half way through. The look on Remy's face is priceless. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah58t5YZr7U

2. I hate to say it but I heard Jon Bon Jovi do an awesome job of this live. He has real soul under his famous coif.

3. Not going with K. D. Lang but with Bono who sang it just before they check out of their last 360 concert in Moncton. His voice was spent by that time in the night and that time in the tour, but it's bono and that's all that's required.

...all to the tribute of the lord of song Mr. cohen.

top three most awesome desserts

I love when a chef figures out the best way to wrestle starch, sugar and animal fat into the final bliss of an already great evening.

The three best ones for me so far are:

1. "blueberry souffle" at the michelin rated Sante at the Fairmont in Sonoma. Souffle, in my opinion rivals the invention of the computer and the orchestral symphony as complex and likely, when you consider how finicky they are to make, particularly the narrow sliver of time the eggs are perfect.

2. "Topfenpalatschinken". I'm sorry I can't even provide a phonetic pronunciation guide for this one despite endless guidance from the waiter at Cafe Europe in St. Andrews-by-the-sea in New Brunswick. It's a custard-filled crepe, with some kind of awesome custardly sauce.

3. Gotta a go with "nutella crepes" from Cafe Crêpe on Queen's street west in the theatre district in Toronto. Bring a bib 'cause I always wnd up with chocolate all over myself.

the top three most awesome song lyrics

This is the first of post of my revised blog focusing on the positive in life, rather than the negative.

Since I was just listening to "one week" by the barenaked ladies, I'll start with this one:

1. "Gonna make a break and take a fake, I'd like a stinkin achin shake, I like vanilla, it's the finest of the flavours"

2. "I see the stars in your eyes, you want the truth but you need the lies" (bono from A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel"

3. "Pour some sugar on me" and "let's get the rock outa here" tied for third, both by Def Leppard, because they are as goofy as a spandex wearing 80s rockstar.

Poetry comes in some many forms but I like the poetry set to music best.

business through the eyes of a child

My children are both grown up adults now, which is weird, but when they were very young they would often accompany me to breakfast meetings and coaching sessions before I dropped them off at daycare or school.

Sitting at a table next to me they listened to me conducting many sales meetings and coaching sessions and we always talked after about what was going on. They learned when business was good by the frequency of bank deposits I made and eventually pieced together what a service business was all about:

1. Find someone you like to spend time with.
2. Pay attention to what they are stressed about.
3. When you find a problem they have, think up a way to solve it using your skills and the things you've learned.
4. Make a "pitch" by offering to solve the problem in exchange for a certain amount of money.
5. Make a promise of what you are going to do and by what day and time.
6. Do the thing you said were you going to do by that date and time.
7. Make sure the person is happy with what you gave them.
8. When they are, send them an invoice.
9. When the check comes in the mail, go to the bank machine and deposit it.
10. Go to the bank machine, take some money out and go have some fun somewhere and something fancy to eat.
11. Repeat steps 1 through 10 as necessary.

In explaining how a service business worked to my young children, it actually helped me simplify my own thinking. It's actually pretty simple.

breaking through barriers

When I was seven a close friend of my parents taught me and my younger brother how to golf. "Uncle Leon" had no children of his own, but he loved kids and kids loved him. He was a master golf technician with a great sense of humour and bottomless patience (as well as a bottomless supply of chocolate bars). We spent hundreds of hours at the driving range learning and practicing the fundamentals of a game that is now the passion, or should I say the obsession, of millions of people in Canada. We did countless drills for grip, stance, backswing, foreswing, head down, left arm straight, rotate the hips to the target. My body remembers it all.

I owe a huge debt to Leon Plotkins and his wife Alice. This was the first major time in my life that I mastered something complex other than learning to walk, speak and read. Golf was different because it was as profound as it was unessential. I of course understand now that mastery is a process not an event, but this early experience taught me that if I stuck with something, eventually I would learn to do it reasonably well.

In my late teens I quit the sport because I started cheating and I did not like who I was becoming. Throughout my early twenties, thirties and early forties, when someone asked me if I played golf I always said: "I did as a kid but I'm not mature enought to play it now."

As a coach I have now come to understand that there is a second dimension to mastering something other than technique and that's attitude. And it may be even more important: attitude and technique, mindset and mechanics; consciousness and competence. Mastery over mindset, attitude and consciousness does indeed take some maturity.

I started golfing again last year after my wife Tania and I were in Maui and decided to play a round on a whim. At the end of the ice climbing season last year, after a big chunk of ice came closer to me than I was comfortable with, we thought it might be a safer choice (even though I've had more injuries golfing in two seasons than I did in twenty-five ice climbing).

We went about it with our usual full-on level of intensity: lessons, properly fitted clubs and a commitment to both practice and play a lot. It's become a great couple's activity.

For most of this year and last, my goal was to first break 100 and then 90. Only 10% of golfers break 100 on a regular basis and fewer still break 90 but most of my clients are very good golfers with low handicaps; so when I broke 100 midway into last season for the first time, it ranked as an achievement.

Last year I nearly broke 90 on six different occasions and oddly, on every single round that I came close, I scored a 9 on the 18th hole. I didn't even know what my score was going into the home stretch but I did know intuitively that I was close. I didn't handle the pressure. I choked.

For most of the first half of this season, I struggled to break 90. I got close several times, but got so anxious about my score I collapsed into a very mechanical process of analyzing every mistake and mishit. Everytime I play 6 or 7 holes at or near par, the pressure would build and I'd have a blowout for 6 or 7 holes with double and triple bogeys. Pars good. Bogeys bad.

About a month or so ago, I hired a new golf coach. Michael Bruchet is very skilled mechanically having been a professional tour player for many years, but it's his time in Asia that has distinguished him among golf teachers.

Michael sees golf as a martial art and spends more time on my mind than he does on my body. I can hit all of the shots but for some reason I don't do it consistently or frequently enough.

When I sat down with Michael for the first time, he felt like more of a coaching colleague than any other pro we had taken lessons from (and we have taken a lot).

The first thing he said was that he takes stressed out mid-aged men golfing in the mid-nineties and helps them break 80 in one year. Eighty. Not ninety as I had been hoping to do.

I have had four lessons with Michael. Today I finally broke 90 for the first time and shot 85–my personal best. And I am clear about where I can shave another six to ten strokes off that. Breaking 80 seems doable. No, inevitable.

The primary benefit of using Michael is confidence, not technique. He genuinely believed that I could break 80 quickly and now I am believing it too. I am fortunate to have access to a second great teacher for this phase of my golf career.

I met a golf yogi in Bandon, Oregon this year and came away having developed a simple formula for golf performance and really performance of any kind: performance = potential minus ego. My score is a function of how much talent I have and how much ego I have. I know I have talent because when I get my ego out of the way I can hit beautiful shots. I know I have an ego. That's more than obvious whenever the ball does not go where I want it to.

I then developed a useful acronym to reverse the negative parts of my ego that were leading to performance anxiety and choking. EGO = ease plus gratitude plus optimism.

Ease means loosening up and trying not to kill the ball. Counterintuitively, shots go further with less effort if one understands how to create power. This is where Michael's golf-as-martial art philosophy kicks in.

Gratitude means appreciating and learning from what goes well not just what does not go well. Most of us pick apart our mistakes and failings looking for inspiration and insight and sadly usually just find escalating frustration instead. I have a very good short game and now I thank my wedges after a good shot and kiss the ball after it goes in the hole. I'm starting to compliment my driver more and more.

Optimism means creating an expectation of a positive result. Each of us has a brilliant shot maker and a duffer inside and I can choose either at every swing. If the last thought before taking a shot is positive, I get more positive results. But if I say: "I hope this doesn't go in the water again..." well, I think you know where the ball goes. The duffer comes out.

A positive attitude of ease, gratitude and optimism removes the destructive part of the ego out of the equation, reduces choking and lets the deeper talent shine through.

Contact Michael Bruchet at 403 880 8180 or mbruchet@mbinternational.ca if you want to break 80 or 70 for that matter.