Finding my heart’s desire in a Gualala coffee shop

On my last adventure, I came across a simple, yet refreshing find, called Trinks. Past Bodega Bay, past Jenner, past Sea Ranch on the coast of Mendocino County is a beach town named Gualala.

Perfectly located at the mouth of the Gualala River and the Pacific Ocean, Gualala got its beginnings as a logging town after the 1906 earthquake. Highway 1 runs through the middle of the unincorporated town with a population of about 1,900 people. Now, instead of lumber, tourism is the main industry.

The main strip includes two grocery stores, three quaint hotels (no Hiltons or Marriott’s here), a couple gas stations, realtors (too many to count), a couple little art galleries and Trinks.

I came by Trinks on my trek to find a hot spot. I know it’s lame. But, I was on vacation and had just a few things I needed to do over the weekend in preparation for my work week. The rental didn’t have internet services, nor did the grocery store, or the art galleries, or … the hotels did, but they wanted to charge $125 for me to use it.

Discouraged, driving up and down the Gualala strip with Justin searching for a wireless network. The only one popping up was “Trinks”. To truly realize my frustration, imagine your laptop open on the console while your 9-year-old holds in the air an iPad in one hand and an iPhone in the other. I finally stopped at the gas station and asked them what Trinks was and where I could find it.

Of all the things Trinks could have been, I was relieved it was a coffee shop. But Justin and I soon found out it wasn’t an ordinary coffee shop.

As we swung open the car doors, we could smell Trinks. My nose zeroed in on the coffee, Justin’s nose found peanut butter cookies. As I opened the front door, Justin’s jaw hit the floor. Huge peanut butter cookies were being brought out of an oven and placed next to homemade scones with fresh berries popping out of them.

Even better than the smell was the enthusiastic woman who greeted us at the register. “What brings you in this morning?” she said. My response? “ WiFi”. She laughed.

I ordered my husband a coffee and was informed that the beans were roasted locally in Healdsburg and the two scones contained “raspberries and blackberries picked straight from the bush.” Justin ordered a hot chocolate and not one, but two peanut butter cookies. She ended our conversation by giving me the WiFi password and hopes that the coffee and scones would bring us back in someday.

As Justin ate and I worked, she wandered the tables with a pot of coffee and a big smile. She had such a presence and made everyone—locals and tourists alike—feel warm and welcomed. I was awestruck by her sense of pride in her creation.

I wanted to bottle up her passion. Stash it away when I needed a motivational boost. Sell it on eBay and become a millionaire.

It certainly created a moment for self reflection. Questions filled my head on passion, value, significance. As I answered each, I thought back to a time when I had passion, value and significance. I wanted to know where it went, when it left and what I could do to bring it back. It wasn’t until I cleared my head that I realized that right now, it wasn’t about the journey, as so much as being in the present and answering the question “what is my heart’s desire?”

Not going to share with you the results of the conversation with myself, but I will share that I walked out of Trinks renewed and inspired. While a tad cliché, I guess you could say I found my heart’s desire in a Gualala coffee shop.

Be the Difference

Tom Ziglar recounts a story that his father, Zig Ziglar, would tell about a young boy and his grandfather walking down the beach.  A big storm had come in the day before and there were hundreds and hundreds of sand-dollars washed up and starting to die in the sun.  As they walked, the grandfather would stop from time to time, reach down, pick up a sand dollar and throw it into the ocean.  Finally, the little boy asked, “Grandfather, why are you throwing them back in?” and his grandfather replied, “So that they will live.” The little boy thought for a minute and said, “But grandfather, there are so many of them! What possible difference can it make?”  And the grandfather, reaching down and tossing another one back into the ocean, said, “To that one, it will make all of the difference in the world.”

No matter how many times I have heard the tale, each time it touches my heart and reminds me that each day we wake on this planet and are given a new slate.  We can choose to be the difference.

Ghandhi said, “We must be the change we wish to see.”   But, how do we be the change we wish to see in the world, when the world seems so messed up right now?  By not trying to boil the ocean, but in starting small and remembering along the way the most simple gesture of good will can have an amazing ripple effect.

For as long as I can remember each day, as I see my boys off for the day, I say “do something today that changes the world.” What a reward later in the day to hear them recount the great things they did. My favorite? My then 8-year-old who told his teacher she looked beautiful in her purple dress. In return for “making her day” she allowed him to be first in both the recess and lunch line. Talk about learning a life lesson about the ripple effect first hand!

Recently, my 15-year-old caught me off guard. When I dropped him off and before I was able to say the words he turned to me and said, “Off to change the world, Mom.” Yes, this is the same son who brought a tear to my eye months ago when he turned to me at drop off and said, "Make good decisions today Mom."  Absolutely, no doubt that he will change the world, but instead of sand-dollars it will be one person at a time. 

The Art of Refocusing

"If you are going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill


“Today every inch of my character was tested…just hoping it wasn’t a dress rehearsal for tomorrow.” – Facebook Post 8/18/11 3:13am


"I try to take just one day at a time, but lately several days have attacked me at once.” – Anonymous

The last two weeks have been tough.  Real tough.

I have found myself, throughout the days, needing to simply stop and reset. Now, I can clearly see the goodness in the stop and reset approach and I do my very best to refrain from participating in the defeating behavior of “spinning” which I recognize equates to paralysis. In essence, I’m calling "five for fighting" and taking the adult version of a time out (unfortunately without the accompanying nap). The other goodness that comes from this approach is, it gets me out of feelings of disappointment, discouragement, being questioned and challenged and in to those feelings of hope and progression towards a noble goal.

In the midst of a particularly rough issue, I started to sketch out this concept of stop, reset and progress:

Now, this concept is new to me and I haven’t fully mastered it. Sometimes I linger a little too long in “reset” mode before I can move fully, authentically, into progress. And, if I am being 100% honest, there is at least one time that I slipped back to full blown stop.

In both examples, something simple snapped me out of it (a Teddy Roosevelt quote above my desk or an unexpected note from a former team member) and motivated me towards progression.

During two tumultuous weeks, this self-reflection exercise felt like I had found the Holy Grail when in fact, it was actually some reinventing of the wheel.

I suppose that at the end of the day, it isn't about how many times the message is given, it’s not even about how many times the message is received, it’s about the message actually being applied. Me? I apparently needed to hear the message at least three times before it applied itself.

Curious though, as we all have our ways of resetting our focus to progressing…..what do you do to go from stop to reset to progress? What works for you? Comments welcome below.