Lynne Snead, life coach and gratitude enthusiast

While I’m currently enjoying semi-retirement in the paradise of gulf coast Florida, I daily enjoy tracing the steps that brought me here. They are evidence, starting early in my life, that miracles exist on a fairly regular basis, even when they are unrecognizable at the time.

My college years were cut short by a divorce, and, as a newly single mom, I needed to get out and go to work. One of my early jobs was for a tyrannical boss in an engineering company, who for two years made my life hell. He also, however, provided huge lessons for my remaining career years.

First, that boss taught me how NOT to be a leader. Treating people like S___ just didn't inspire the best work contributions that might otherwise have been possible.

Second, he gifted me with sets of cassette tapes (this was the 80's) to listen to in my car while I was doing my twice daily commute from SLC to Provo, UT. I listened repeatedly to The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and Principle Centered Leadership, both by Stephen R. Covey, before the books were even published! He also gave me access to a seminar on time management and how to use a Day Planner. 

This engineering company couldn't manage to get a project out the door on time and within budget so I worked with a couple of the other managers to create project planning and tracking forms, a process that utilized the project tabs in our Day Planners ... and it worked!

This work led to a major miracle when I was hired to work for the Franklin Institute, the developers of the Day Planner and was asked if I thought there was potential for a project management addition to the time management program. Of course my answer was “Yes!” During those early months, I also got a surprise phone call from an author by the name of Joyce Wycoff who was finishing a book on mindmapping while I was in the middle of incorporating mindmapping into a project management seminar. Talk about FATE!

During the next few years as a project management trainer and consultant, I decided to put my project training process into a book and, with Joyce’s help, To Do … Doing … Done! became a published book. Soon, I also became a Vice President of Franklin Covey, two accomplishments I had never dreamed possible for the gal who hadn’t finished college and had gotten off to a rough start in life and career. 

I found I had a gift for helping people new to leadership positions, often as unprepared and untrained in leadership and project management skills as I had been. I went back to school, got a graduate degree in corporate coaching, and started my own business in 2003. 

My side passions in life included anything outdoors: camping, biking, kayaking, and road tripping, first with my son, and later as he went off on his own path, with a couple of dogs and cats. In 2008, however, I hit a detour. My health took a sudden nose dive for no understandable reason. I felt like I had a case of the flu that wouldn’t end. Within 6 months I was unable to work and it took 4 1/2 years of medical and financial nightmare to diagnose Lyme disease. This illness strikes more that 300,000 people in the United States a year and most doctors are still completely uneducated, and frankly clueless, about diagnosis and treatment.

The next several years were a long and difficult story, but not without miracles. I found rare specialists, moved from Colorado to California seeking relief from snow and cold, and spent a few amazing years redefining my life and career. Slowly I started feeling better and took advantage of this second chance to follow a long-held dream of living on the road in a 24-foot motor home (yes, with the two dogs and two cats). The next few years I traveled across country while managing my coaching via phone a few days a week.

I finally found a place warm enough on the west coast of Florida and discovered the joys of working from home via Zoom years before the rest of the Covid generation. My small part-time coaching practice has thrived working just few hours a week, all while enjoying life with my amazing life-mate who was just waiting for me to get to Florida. Together, we laugh daily at 3 dogs, enjoy our lake-view living, and tend to a pack of about 13 turtles from the lake that like to join us for breakfast every morning. 

I'm still treating Lyme disease, and the now slightly more understood co-infections that complicate its treatment. What I have learned, by way of a gratitude journal, is that whatever our focus, it is energy. Energy attracts like energy. Focusing on gratitude and miracles creates more to be grateful for, hence more miracles.

I’ve learned the paradox of experiencing pain and illness as well as joy and miracles, all at the same time. I've learned it's never too late for more joy and miracles, and the route is through gratitude.