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Deadlines!

We’ve all met face to face with them – the hard and fast (or soft and arbitrary) deadlines we’ve been asked to meet. Whether is’s a task at work, the child needing a ride to practice that begins in two minutes, or the self-imposed, “I should call so-and-so who is struggling.”, deadlines seems to be a non-negotiable part of life.

BUT … I am writing to suggest that we just might want to reconsider something. Really, DEADlines? How many of the things we label deadlines really are a matter of life and death? Continue reading “Deadlines!”

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Supporting Roles

Where are you in a supporting role? What energy do you bring? What characters support your starring roles?

Awhile back, I learned about many organizations in this community that do great work. I met some of the talented folks who have created programs which serve others and who do the work to make it happen.

As a life coach, I am often inviting folks to vision what they can create, what they are uniquely prepared to offer our world. We often imagine the business or program they will start, the book they will write, the “something new” that is theirs to manifest.

Yet, too often we forget both the supportive others we need in order to live into our dreams and the supporting roles we are meant to “star in”. Continue reading “Supporting Roles”

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Substance over Status – is it time?

What do you crave?
What tempts you?
How do you know when it’s “too much”?

Okay. I get it. You are sensing that this is going to be a counter-cultural message. You aren’t sure you want to hear it. You have a choice. You can stop reading now. You can return to the mainstream message and settle back into acquiring, needing, wanting, craving, doing more so you have more, never feeling satisfied, never simply enjoying this moment with this person or celebrating this accomplishment. You can continue striving for quantity over quality, status over substance.

OR YOU CAN STOP

Continue reading “Substance over Status – is it time?”

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Do you succumb to this violence?

Ease in Abundance

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

– Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

“… it destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom …” This points me to an understanding about being and doing. Continue reading “Do you succumb to this violence?”

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Who, me?

Yes you! Why not you? What if you don’t?

Call to mind all those whose writings, ideas, bold actions have touched you:

  • a special supervisor
  • a spiritual teacher or author
  • your favorite blogger

I bet the ideas that had an impact on you had been shared by many others.  But, you “got it”, it resonated for you when it came from that particular person.

What if they had refused to give it?

Continue reading “Who, me?”