We are this close to official Spring in the northern hemisphere and I am ready for it! I do appreciate winter for what it brings: reflection, the holidays and the slower pace. At least, it’s supposed to be a slower pace. I do less travelling in the winter but that didn’t stop my schedule this year from being pretty jam-packed. I am ready to be energized by Spring and I’m looking forward to what this season has to offer. Spring is also bringing Marianne Williamson to Portland, Maine and I am freaking out. She is the author of the quote at the end of each and every episode of this podcast. I first heard this quote from her book Return to Love: Reflections on A Course in Miracles exactly 20 years ago. It was 1998 and I was in a leadership development program at the time and one of the other participants read the quote and passed out printed copies of it. Hearing the quote the first time gave me goosebumps and I remember starting to cry the words resonated so strongly with me. To say Marianne Williamson has had an impact on my life would be an understatement. Her words changed the way I related to myself and this concept is at the core of the coaching I do today. I feel like this is another of the many blessings that have come into my life when I started putting out to the Universe what I wanted. Here is the link to buy tickets to this event:  http://www.leapinlizards.biz/event/marianne-williamson-love-america-tour/2018-05-06/ This week I wanted to chat about something that has been on my mind because of the work I’ve done for my website and it comes up in conversations on the regular for me. The whole concept of being or not being Type A I promote myself as a coach for Type A women, and naturally that’s my answer to the questions, “What is it you do?” or, “Tell me about your business.” I can see how my answer immediately has the person I’m talking to assessing whether or not they would put themselves in that category. I often hear as a first response, “I don’t know if I’m Type A” or, “I wouldn’t categorize myself as Type A.” When I ask a few questions to help them figure it out it commonly turns out that they do in fact have Type A tendencies. Because this is a common occurrence I debated on changing the language to describe the work that I do. However, rather than being coy about the fact that women with Type A tendencies are my ideal client I’d would prefer to remove the stigma of being Type A. Because that is what I believe is at the heart of this. There is a negative connotation in our culture to having Type A tendencies. The qualities of being driven, goal-oriented, results focused are not considered feminine qualities. The stereotypical image I believe most of us have about a Type A person comes from a masculine image of an aggressive, super-competitive, “winning is the only thing that matters”, workaholic, unfeeling type of person. That’s not me and that’s not you. I don’t even know many men that would fit this stereotypical description. I think this negative stereotype of being Type A is why many women shy away from the term Type A until I can get them to see their own natural tendencies and laugh about them. Let me give you some background on where the term Type A came from, along with some descriptors of Type A tendencies and the positive and negative aspects of these tendencies. Where the term "Type A" came from In the 1950s a study on heart disease was conducted by two cardiologists, Drs. Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman. As was common at the time all the subjects of the study were men and this study identified three types of behaviors: Type A, which they labeled as competitive, ambitious, impatient, aggressive, and fast-talking; Type B, which is more relaxed and non-competitive, and Type C, which is hard-working but becomes apathetic when faced with stress. Now I bet you and I can both consider those categories and see ourselves in some but not all of those descriptors in different areas of our lives. More research ha