A few days ago, I had a very odd computer occurrence. No matter how hard I pressed the space bar, Ihadnospace. Allmywordsrantogether. I noticed how very hard it is to get work done if you have no space. And how frustrating it is to have to very consciously insert a tiny space where it was …
Ahhh…spring! The longer days, the warm sun, the returning birds, and…the mud. Yep, mud. Just at the time we are “raring to go” to break free and dance into the new possibilities that spring promises here in 
Vermont, Nature again shows her balanced wisdom — providing us with ample opportunity to stop, to notice, to experiment, to wait. I agree with Vermont essayist Will Baker who suggests “Perhaps Mud Season in Vermont is all about constructive tension, when we find ourselves poised between where we were and where we are headed.”
I love a good story. Don’t you? Stories work on us, they take us places, and they let us plumb the depths of our wisdom for new ways to look at familiar challenges. Metaphors challenge, confound, entertain, and change us.
At any moment, we can choose to invoke the power of story to create a new result. As a coach, I frequently use stories and metaphor to help people move from being stuck, into practical action; from defining a situation as a problem, to seeing how it is a steppingstone. And stories and metaphor are everywhere. You can’t take a half a step in any direction without bumping into a whole bunch of them — in a book, a poem, a quote, a conversation, inspirational writings, a song, graffiti, a personal belief, a folk tale, a prayer, an email, a wish, a joke, a movie, a commercial, on a bumper sticker…heck, everything has a story just waiting to inspire you.