On October 13, 2007 at 5:20 am local time, Harold Mah summitted Mount Kilimanjaro. The final ascent to the summit took the team 5 hours.  He carried Nina’s photo with him to the summit to bring strength and courage.

Odyssey Coaching is about taking a fresh look at your life and focusing on what it is you really want to do with it. Odyssey Coaching is about exploring how you can build on your skills, talents and passions to pursue a meaningful sense of purpose. Many people never actually stop and spend time strategically planning the rest of their lives. Often our daily lives are very busy with activity after activity and when it comes time to take a vacation, all we want to do is relax! But what if you could integrate a vacation with life coaching to actually transform your life? This is what Odyssey Coaching is about. It is about guiding you through personal experiences that will enable your transformation.

Odyssey Coaching gives you a chance to reflect and make the most out of your skills, talents and passion so you get to discover what’s possible within.

Odyssey Coaching is about life changing ideas and personal transformation. It is about creating your very own stories. Odyssey Coaching will inspire and help you consider your own possibilities. Odyssey Coaching will help you see yourself tomorrow.

This essay was written by Mary Chapin Carpenter for NPR’s “This I Believe,” an ongoing series about the core values and beliefs that guide people’s daily lives. Mary Chapin Carpenter’s essay was originally broadcast on June 23.

The following is the original unabridged version.

Eight weeks ago I was released from the hospital after suffering a pulmonary embolism. I had recently finished a short tour to promote my most new cd, “The Calling”. During that tour I had some back pain that required me to sit down on stage every night and I also experienced nearly constant chest pain that I thought was acid reflux. A few days after returning home, it was the severe chest pain and terrible breathlessness that landed me in the ER. The CT scan revealed a shower of blood clots in my lungs, and the mystery was solved.Everyone told me how lucky I was that they had caught it in time, and nearly everyone had a story of someone they knew who had not been so lucky. A pulmonary embolism can take your life in an instant. I was familiar enough with the medical term, but not familiar with the pain, the fear and the depression that followed.

The decision was made to cancel my long planned summer tour. No matter how the facts were presented, I felt that I had let my band and crew and manager down. I worried that my new relationships with my record company and booking agency were going to suffer. All of the elements that were in place to celebrate the release of the new cd were torpedoed. There was nothing to do now but get out of the hospital, go home and get well.

I tried very hard in the first few days to see my unexpected time off as a gift. How often does one get the chance to wake up every day and have very little on the agenda but to feel good? I would go to the gym, but whereas I used to be a demon on the treadmill, now I was a snail. Slow, slow, slow. Where I used to have energy, now I was fatigued just lying down. I thought I would read a lot of books. However, I would open a good novel and not be able to concentrate. I would turn on the radio, then shut if off because I could not find something to soothe me. My beautiful husband would try to find diversions, but I had no wish to be around friends, or to leave the farm. The familiar clouds of darkness were gathering above my head, and I couldn’t head them off with a pill or a movie or a walk.

I tried to remember that the doctors said I would feel unwell for a while. Someone even reminded me that “it’s not cancer”, in order to help me find perspective. The gift of this unexpected time was becoming a curse, turning into anxiety, fear and self-loathing. All of the ingredients of the darkness that is depression. It had come on so quickly, like a freight train.

Sometimes, it’s the smile of a stranger that helps. Sometimes it’s a phone call from a long absent friend, just checking on you. Sometimes it’s the familiar routine of a day that just barely propels you forward. Whatever it is, it is worth reaching out for, like a lifeline. I found it at the grocery store.

Like most people, I say please and thank you and have a nice day. But it’s a habit of manners, not something that I invest with a great deal of feeling. One morning, the young man who rang up my groceries and asked me if I wanted paper or plastic also bid me to enjoy the rest of my day. I looked at him as he smiled at me and I knew he meant it. A simple thing to say but at that moment it stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t a wave, an embrace, or a kiss. It was, quite unadorned, the secret of life. I went out and I sat in my car and cried. I felt something different in my chest for the first time in as many days; instead of the dead weight pressure that had been nearly constant, I felt something lift.

What I want, more than ever, is to appreciate that I have this day, and tomorrow and hopefully days beyond that to enjoy. I am, like many people who are faced with a sudden need to reassess everything from brushing their teeth to breathing without pain, experiencing the learning curve of gratitude. You would think that with all of the blessings in my life that I would know what gratitude is. But this experience has shown me is that I don’t have a clue, that I have no idea how much I have taken for granted.

I don’t want to say, “have a nice day” like I am a robot. I don’t want to get mad at the elderly driver in front of me that has slowed me down. I don’t want to judge people so harshly, or be so critical of strangers, or become so easily disappointed when I feel that someone has let me down. I don’t want to rush through my day. I don’t want to go crazy when my Internet access is messed up. I don’t want to be jealous of someone else’s success. I don’t want to feel ugly, or mean or jaded. You could say that this litany of sins indicates that I don’t want to be human. The learning curve, however, is showing me exactly how human I am. And with it, the importance of being grateful for my imperfection.

Many friends have repeated the homily that things happen for a reason. I used to think that was just something that people said in a crisis. But it sounds and feels and means something different to me now.

I don’t know if my doctors will ever be able to give me the precise reason why I had a life-threatening illness, that forced me to cancel everything, that sank me into a depression, that brought everything I had been looking forward to a screeching halt. I do know that the young man in the grocery store reminded me that every day is all there is, and that is my lifeline.

Tonight I will cook dinner, tell my husband how much I love him, curl up with the dogs, watch the sun go down over the mountains and climb into bed. I will think about how uncomplicated it all is. I will wonder at how it took me my entire life to appreciate just one day.

Odyssey Group is committed to supporting the education of children wherever they can. Odyssey Group supports the Junbesi Education Society to provide funding and support for education in Nepal. The members of the Junbesi Education Society have come together as a group of individuals dedicated to providing for education of children on behalf of our spirit. This is what Odyssey Group is about.

Supported by the Odyssey Group, Junbesi Education Society seeks to find solutions that can by used to provide education for children that are unable to go to school in Nepal. It is the belief of the members of the Junbesi Education Society that transformation comes through and with education. We believe that every child deserves an opportunity to learn.

The Way of the Champion is a deeply spiritual, unique, creative, inner approach to mental strength, leadership and winning that will help to “marinate” your mind and heart in a serene, tranquil and heightened state of self-confidence. Emphasized is a process of thought as well as trust in your intuitive self, what basically makes sense according to the Zen precept of “doing the right thing”. You will learn how to reach personal and team best performances by clearing barriers and neutralizing the impact of obstacles standing in the way of success, whether these obstacles are self related, environmentally induced or brought on by other athletes, teams or personal relationships affecting you in everyday life. According to SUN-TZU, best performances are achieved as much in knowing what not to do and when not to do it.

Odyssey Consulting Group is a group of individuals dedicated to assisting others live up to their potential in everything they do. Odyssey Consulting is about helping clients at all levels embrace the power of their mind, body and spirit to create passion for positive performance wherever they are.

Odyssey Consulting is about taking a fresh look at your life and focusing on what it is you really want to do with it. Odyssey Consulting is about exploring how you can build on your skills, talents and passions to pursue a meaningful sense of purpose.

Odyssey Consulting is about Exploring What’s Possible.