Colleen Bain O'Donnell - Coaching for Positive Impact

09/23/2026

I know I need to do something differently. But what?

❓ Have you ever found yourself going around in circles in your own mind?

I certainly have.

There have been times when I've known something in my life needed to change.

I've thought about it, talked myself in and out of it, and sometimes tried a few things.

🙄 But somehow, I kept coming back to the same place.

And sometimes, what I really needed was another voice.

Someone who could listen.

Ask a question I hadn't thought to ask myself.

Help me see something I was too close to recognize.

Not someone to make my decisions for me, but someone who could help me discover my own answers.

Last week, I wrote about knowing something needs to change, even when we don't know what that change might look like.

Someone responded:

"Yes, I agree, but there's too much wrong and don't quite know what to do."

That stayed with me.

Because sometimes the problem isn't that we don't want to change.

It's that we don't know where to begin.

And when we're caught up in our own thoughts, it can be difficult to see another way forward.

Over the years, I've learned that understanding what's wrong and knowing what to do about it are two different things.

Sometimes we need to look beneath the obvious problem.

🤨 Recognize patterns. Question old beliefs. Discover what matters to us now.

And then ask ourselves:

"What am I going to DO with what I've discovered?"

Because insight alone doesn't change our lives.

It's what we choose to do with that insight that begins to make a difference.

And sometimes, another perspective can help us see possibilities we couldn't see for ourselves.

So perhaps the question isn't simply:

❔ "What should I do differently?"

Perhaps it's:

❔ "Who could help me look at this differently and discover my way forward?"

You don't have to have everything figured out before you begin. ❤️

🌿

Spiritual wisdom translated into practical human living.

Colleen

09/16/2026

You know something needs to change. But what?

Have you ever had that feeling?

Nothing is necessarily terribly wrong.

But something doesn't feel quite right anymore.

Perhaps your circumstances have changed.

Perhaps you've changed.

Something that once worked for you doesn't anymore.

You may not even know what you want instead. You just know:

I don't want to keep doing this.
There must be something more.
Something needs to change.

We often think we need to know exactly where we're going before we can take a step.

We don't.

Sometimes we simply need to get honest about where we are.

So here are three questions I've been thinking about:

What isn't working for me anymore?
What would I like to experience instead?
What is one small thing I could do differently?

Don't try to redesign your whole life today. 😊

Because eventually thinking about change isn't enough.

Neither is reading about it. Or understanding why we do what we do.

At some point, we have to decide whether we're willing to do something with what we know.

Perhaps that's where change really begins.

Not when we have everything figured out.

But when we decide we're willing to take the first step.

❤️🌿

Spiritual wisdom translated into practical human living.

09/09/2026

Apparently, I needed a reminder too.

Last week, I was out of sorts.

Not falling apart. Not sobbing.

Just...down.

I felt lethargic. The tears seemed to sit just below the surface, occasionally spilling over.

And I felt very alone.

That's an interesting thing to admit when I'm surrounded by the love and support of wonderful family and friends.

But apparently we can feel deeply loved and terribly alone at the same time.

Some of my old should haves started circling again too.

And for a while, I let myself be there.

Perhaps I even wallowed a little. 😊

Then came a rather inconvenient reminder:

Colleen, you have to walk your talk.

I've written about gratitude. About our thoughts. About happiness existing alongside sadness. About continuing to live while difficult things are happening.

I knew all of it.

I just wasn't doing much with it.

And that made me realize:

Knowing something doesn't mean we're going to live it perfectly.

We can understand our patterns and still fall into them.

We can know what supports us and forget to use it.

We can have a deep spiritual understanding of life and still have days when being human simply hurts.

What mattered wasn't that I had found myself there again.

It was what I did when I realized I was there.

I allowed myself to feel what I was feeling.

I looked at what was happening inside me.

I did some deeper inner work.

And slowly, something shifted.

Nothing had magically disappeared.

But I felt more like myself again.

And perhaps a little stronger for having gone through it.

It reminded me:

Our inner work doesn't prevent life from being messy. It changes how we meet the mess.

So here's the question I've been asking myself:

What do I already know that I need to remember right now?

Maybe you know you need to get outside.

Call somebody. Stop isolating. Deal with something you've been avoiding.

Rest. Laugh. Ask for help.

Or stop expecting yourself to have everything figured out.

Sometimes we don't need another book, another podcast or another piece of advice.

Sometimes we simply need to remember—and practise—what we already know.

Life will continue to have its warts and all.

Growth doesn't mean never losing our way.

Perhaps it means becoming better at finding our way back. ❤️

🌿
Spiritual wisdom translated into practical human living.

09/03/2026

😧 Life doesn't wait until you're ready.


I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

We often tell ourselves:

I'll deal with that when things settle down.

I'll look after myself when I get through this.

I'll make the decision when I feel stronger.

I'll think about what I want when life feels more normal.

But life doesn't politely wait in the wings while we deal with the difficult parts.

It keeps happening.

There can be sadness and something beautiful in the same day.

We can be uncertain and still make one good decision.

We can be hurting and take care of our health.

We can feel lost and begin asking what we want.

We can grieve and still laugh.

One doesn't cancel out the other.

I've become very aware recently that there are things in my own life I am still processing and will be for some time.

But alongside all of that, there is still a life asking to be lived.

And I don't need to have that whole life figured out today.

Perhaps none of us do.

So here's a question I've been asking myself that you might find useful too:

What in my life needs some of my attention now?

Not How do I fix everything?

Just look around.

Your health.

Your relationships.

Your finances or work.

Your emotional or spiritual wellbeing.

Your enjoyment of life.

Is there one area you've quietly put on hold while dealing with everything else?

And if there is:

What's one small thing you could do for that part of your life this week?

Make the appointment.

Call someone.

Take the walk.

Deal with something you've been avoiding.

Plan something to look forward to.

Spend an hour on something that matters to you.

Or simply give yourself enough quiet to ask:

What do I need now?

Nothing dramatic.

Just one small act that says:

My life is still happening, and I am still part of it.

We don't always get to choose what interrupts our plans.

But while we're tending to what hurts, perhaps we can also make a little space for what is still here.

Life doesn't wait until we're ready.

And perhaps we don't have to either. ❤️

🌿
Spiritual wisdom translated into practical human living.

08/26/2026

You can't change what happened. But you can change what you carry forward.

The should haves.

I should have said...I should have done...If only I had...Why didn't I...?

Most of us have them.

After the loss of someone we love.

After a divorce, replaying what we might have done differently.

After redundancy, wondering whether we missed the signs.

After retirement, thinking about opportunities we didn't take.

After a family blow-up, going over the conversation we wish we could have again.

Different circumstances. Same very human tendency to keep returning to something we can no longer change.

I've found myself doing some of that recently.

And I realized that my mind was taking me back, again and again, to places that caused me pain.

My first thought was:

I have some control over this. I can choose where I place my attention.

So instead of dwelling on the regrets, I consciously began focusing on the happier moments. The love. The laughter. The things that were good.

It helped.

But then I discovered something else.

I couldn't simply think my way around the painful parts. I needed to face them.

So I sat down with my own should haves.

Really sat with them.

The regrets. The missed opportunities. The things left unsaid. The things I wished I had done differently.

And I was astonished by what came out.

Tears. Sobbing. Pain I hadn't realized I was still carrying.

I allowed it. I said what I needed to say. I asked forgiveness where I felt I needed to.
I made the amends I could make — even where those amends could now only happen privately, within me.

And afterwards?

No miraculous transformation.

No neat ending.

But something had shifted.

I felt lighter.

And when my mind started heading back toward those painful places again, it became easier to notice what was happening and choose differently.

I could acknowledge what hurt without allowing it to become the only part of the story I remembered.

That distinction has been important for me.

Choosing our thoughts doesn't mean pretending painful things didn't happen.

It doesn't mean covering hurt with positive thinking.

Sometimes we need to face what hurts first.

Feel it.

Acknowledge it.

Say what needs to be said.

And then perhaps ask:

Do I want to keep carrying this in the same way?

Maybe there's something in your own life that cannot be changed.

A relationship.

A loss.

A decision.

A disappointment.

Something you did.

Something you didn't do.

Perhaps the question isn't, "How do I stop thinking about it?"

Perhaps it's:

What am I still carrying from something I cannot change?

And once I've acknowledged it...

What do I want to carry forward instead?

We cannot always choose what happens to us.

But we may have far more choice than we realize about what we carry with us into the life still waiting to be lived.

Spiritual wisdom translated into practical human living.

Colleen

08/19/2026

Two months later... ❤️

It has been almost two months since Tony passed away suddenly.

I miss him.

There are moments when the loss is still so very sore — moments when a memory catches me unexpectedly and I am reminded all over again that he is no longer physically here.

In those first weeks, I struggled with something else too.

The should haves.

I should have said this.

I could have done that.

Why didn't I tell him more often what he meant to me?

Tony was my greatest fan. For twenty years he chose me, encouraged me and uplifted me. Every day: "I love you, Babes." He called me his soulmate and told me I was the best.

And I wished I had said more of those things back to him.

But slowly, I have begun to look at those thoughts differently.

When the should haves begin going round and round in my mind, I choose instead to remember what we did have.

The laughter. The companionship. The adventures. The ordinary days.

The life we shared.

And most of all, the extraordinary gift of knowing what it feels like to be deeply loved by another human being.

Tony was happy with me. He told me so many times.

And I know that.

So alongside the sadness now lives something else:

Gratitude.

How fortunate was I to have twenty years with someone who chose me and loved me so completely?

How blessed was I to experience that kind of love in the latter part of my life.

I still grieve my beloved. I still miss him terribly.

But those moments are mine. And when they come, I allow myself to miss him — and then, whenever I can, I remember the beautiful moments and celebrate him.

This is simply my experience of grief. It won't be everyone's. There is no formula for something so personal.

My family, my friends and my spiritual understanding of life have carried me through these past two months in ways for which I will always be grateful.

And I am learning something very simple:

I can grieve the man I loved while continuing to live the life I have been given.

Life is so very fleeting.

So I will grieve.

I will remember.

I will be grateful.

And I will live.

Tony, my darling, I celebrate you. ❤️

Colleen

06/26/2026

With a Sad Heart

Dear Friends,

It is with a very heavy heart that I share that my beloved husband, Tony, passed away suddenly on Friday morning.

Like so many who experience an unexpected loss, I am still in shock and trying to come to terms with the reality of life without him.

Tony was deeply loved by the family and by so many whose lives he touched over the years. We shared many wonderful years together, and his passing leaves an emptiness that words cannot adequately express.

Rather than trying to contact everyone individually, I felt it would be easier to let friends know in this way.

To those who have already reached out with messages, prayers, and love, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your kindness is carrying me and my family through these very difficult days.

I know many of you loved Tony too, and I hope you will remember him with affection, perhaps with a smile as you think of the good times we shared.

As I take time to grieve and be with the family, I ask simply for your continued prayers and kind thoughts.

With love and gratitude.

05/16/2026

😉 One Practical Exercise for Overwhelm

Simple:

❓ What is real?

❓ What needs attention today?

❓ What can wait?

Explore ore of this inside my free guide...

HERE:

Find a quiet moment. Place your hand on your chest or somewhere that feels comforting. Take a slow breath in and a longer breath out.

05/15/2026

🙄 Why doing more is making people feel worse

People are exhausted from:

✅️ pushing
✅️ performing
✅️ coping
✅️ overthinking

Maybe the answer isn't more pressure.

Maybe it's a different way of navigating life.

Get a Free Guide on Overcoming Adversity - A Soul Centered Guide in Spiritual Psychology
HERE:

Find a quiet moment. Place your hand on your chest or somewhere that feels comforting. Take a slow breath in and a longer breath out.

05/07/2026

When everything feels too much… do this.

Most people, when they feel overwhelmed, try to think their way out of it.

They go over everything in their minds.
They try to figure it all out.
They try to control what’s happening.

And they end up more overwhelmed.

So here’s something simple that actually helps.

Take a pen and paper.

Write down:

• What is actually happening right now
(not what might happen — what is real)

• What needs your attention today
(not everything — just today)

• What can wait

That last one matters more than you think.

Because not everything is urgent — even if it feels like it is.

This doesn’t solve everything.

But it gives you clarity.

And sometimes, clarity is the difference between feeling stuck…

and taking your next step.

Colleen Bain O’Donnell
Spiritual Psychology Life Coach

www.coachingforpositiveimpact.com