NOTHING

“Better than nothing,” is the clearest expression of lack.

PRESENT

Uncertainty forces us to be present.  Sometimes people misinterpret being present with being still.  While true that we can be still and present at the same time like when we meditate for example.  Being present as we move through our daily lives however, is like moving down rows of fertile ground dropping seeds and moving on.  

In other words, we go about our day consciously living in each moment.  That conscious moment is our existence in the realm of uncertainty caught between the seed we’ve just dropped and the one we’re about to drop and the future desire that the seeds will sprout and grow and yield what we hope for.  

Being present is consciously living in trust and faith, in the uncertainty of whether things will turn out the way we need them to AND nevertheless continuing to drop those seeds of promise as we move along.

365

I was berating myself the other day for not having posted a blog in over 100 days.  What’s the point, I thought, so much time has passed, I can never catch up... and on and on.  Just as anxiety over failure and disappointment started to well up in my chest the little voice that comes from my heart and knows what’s real and true whispered, so what, start again today.

We have 365 chances to start.  There are 365 times Matilda, our primal lizard brain, our ego’s mouthpiece, can shut us down.  Stuck in the middle is our freedom to choose.

The bottom line?  We have 365 opportunities to choose.

What choice have you made today?

I ate badly all week, what’s the point...

OR

So what, I’ll start again today.

I haven’t worked out in a month, I’ll never catch up....

OR

So what, I’ll go today.

I disappointed my kids yesterday, they’ll never trust me again...

OR

So what, I will apologize and follow through on a promise today.

What have you said SO WHAT to today?  I’d love to know.

COWARDS

Rationalizations are for cowards.  If we're engaged in something that involves lying to others but most especially to ourselves then we need to stop rationalizing why it's okay to be cowards.  

ENOUGH

Dimming your light so another's can shine is not leading with love, it's coming from lack because there is enough light for both of you.

HIT REPEAT

Emotionally sticky things become old, worn, unproductive, and disfunctional patterns.  These patterns skew our perceptions and hinder our growth.  And the more pain surrounds an emotion, the stickier it is.   The more skewed our perceptions and the more emotionally stunted we become.

BROKEN

Some things: companies, people, structures, processes, etc., are broken, AND IT IS NOT OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO FIX THEM.

Conflicted

Everything we do that's important is the result of conflict. Not a conflict between us and the world--a conflict between us and ourselves.

We want to eat another dessert but we want to be healthy and skinny as well. Who is we? Who is the self in self control, and who is being controlled?

We want to stand up and make difference and we want to sit down and hide and be safe.

We want to help others and we want to keep more for ourselves.

It's not a metaphor, it's brain chemistry. We don't have one mind, we have competing interests, all duking it out.

This conflict, the conflict between I and me, is at the heart of being human. One side sells the other. Like all kinds of marketing, it's far more effective if you know your audience. You will do a better job of telling a story (to yourself) if you understand who you are marketing to. In this case, I is marketing to me (and vice versa). The marketing is going on in your head...

Successful people have discovered how to be better at self marketing.

Seth Godin
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/

You are not an island...

Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.   
                                                                                                  Maya Angelou

LACK

Your success doesn't mean someone else's failure because there is enough to go around. 

Success is not a finite quantity and you don't need anyone's permission to get it.  Living a small or meager life doesn't mean that you're leaving opportunities open for others, first because it's not your responsibility to do so, second, it's a copout rationalization, and third, the reality is that the more successful you are, when you're living the best and biggest life that you can, that's when you're also able to make a real impact on others.

Competition

Competition doesn’t make you stronger, it makes you insecure because you’re constantly looking over your shoulder.  You’re so busy measuring and comparing that you never feel good enough.  At bottom, hyper competitive people are terribly unhappy and insecure because even though they may be ranked best, it does nothing to actually make them feel that way.

Sphere of influence, 2

It was the middle of the day yesterday when I ran into my local grocery store to pick up a couple of things.  Apparently a lot of people had a similar idea.  As I said it was the middle of the day on a week day, so I was surprised to see there were a lot of people in the store and lines forming at the checkout.  Things moved slowly as only a handful of cashiers were open.  

The store manager, a diligent man whom I had seen many times pacing the floor making sure all was running smoothly, had noticed and called for more cashiers to open.  This took a couple of minutes but already people were starting to look around, fidget and one individual started grumbling out loud about how he should go to their competitor.  The effect this one person’s grumbling had was to raise the level of tension all along the checkout lines.  As cashiers opened people rushed to them without the decorum of yielding to the person next in line.  This led to some more grumbling and a woman cornering the manager warning him that she would expect a refund if her cream was spoiled because of the wait.  Needless to say, this raised the collective tension level exponentially.   

Here’s the important thing about your sphere of influence, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum.  Your actions and reactions will inevitably be brought to bear on those around you, for good or bad.  In other words, the grumblers succeeded in raising the anxiety level around them.  Conversely, had they remained calm, made light of the wait and kept the situation in perspective, they could have had a calming influence over those around them.

Bottom line, you are responsible for your sphere of influence.  You are responsible for your actions and reactions and the consequences, good or bad that come your way.  So if you don’t like what’s been coming your way lately, perhaps you should check your sphere of influence.

Authenticity

Authenticity is about pure love.  Being authentic means being true to your own personal values and spirit irrespective of outside pressure to be or feel differently.  So how can this not be about pure love?  How can giving the brightest, most shiniest YOU, to yourself and others, be anything but a gift of pure love?

It bears repeating...

So long as you continue to believe that the determining factor of how lovable you are exists outside of yourself, you will continue to feel that there’s something inherently wrong with you.

Denial is a personal choice.

Tell me where I'm wrong!

A Call to Action

I’m terribly afraid that encouraging someone to ‘live their best life’ will become a platitude; a trite, dull, and meaningless statement rather than the critical call to action that I see it to be.

To me living a best life means owning my place in this world and being free to proactively make my life choices.  It means being fully engaged and empowered to realize my potential and then reaching out and empowering someone else.  This is my right, not due to some special status, but because I am a human being.

To dismiss this as naive thinking, or a sound bite, is the first step to relegating this idea to platitude status.  More alarming still is the suggestion that 'reality' is how society is structured now: ruled by whomever carries a bigger stick.  


I couldn't disagree more.  The shift happens with each tiny little step you take to empower yourself and your neighbour.

Live like your life has value

I was researching some statistics on domestic violence and came upon the website from the Ontario Ministry of Community Safety & Correctional Services.  It was a report from the chief Coroner entitled “Eighth Annual Report of Domestic Violence Death Review Committee.”

Here’s what I understood: 

1. From the title alone I understood that this committee has been reviewing these stats for eight years.  
2. Reading on I understood that this committee’s sole purpose is to review the stats and then make recommendations to “organizations and agencies that were in a position to effect implementation...”  
3. From a chart tracking this committee’s work since it’s inception I understood that deaths from domestic violence has gone up from 24 in 2003 to 36 in 2010.

Here’s what I didn’t understand:

1. How many more years of this reviewing is it going to take before it dawns on someone that while collecting and reviewing these statistics is interesting, solely making recommendations “to organizations and agencies that were in a position to effect implementation” isn’t working, the numbers aren’t going down!
2. Who are these “organizations and agencies” accountable to?
3. Is it fair to single them out as responsible? Perhaps not.

The thinking (our thinking, their thinking) that makes it acceptable for a woman in Afghanistan to have to choose between life imprisonment or marrying her rapist for freedom, is simply the extreme end of a continuum that has 22 women dead from Domestic Homicide in 2010 (out of 189 province wide).  It’s the continuum that says, women are not valued.

The reality is that women need to change this. If we don’t stand up for ourselves, no one else will.  This is the whole point of the Flight Imperative.  When you value yourself and live like your life has value, you will change the world.

Half the sky

Whether I like it or not the Shafia trial enters my consciousness one way or another.  It never fails to illicit a strong mix of sadness and fury that begs the question: If women hold up half the sky, why is it that we shoulder almost all the weight and experience only a paltry piece of shelter?  

We need to change this because:

 “None of us is free, if one of us is chained.”

Solomon Burke - http://www.tubelyrics.org/lyrics_solomon_burke_house_m_d_s2_none_of_us_are_free-241403.html

Having a plan

The most perfect plan is the one you act on.  If you have a plan and are waiting to iron out the minutiae before acting on it, it will never become perfect -- perfection comes in the execution so that you can go back and tweak the plan based on the muster it took to see it through.   It’s not only how you will develop making future plans, more importantly, it’s how you learn to manufacture the courage it takes to continue to move forward.

A deferred life

Living a deferred life is not living a life at all.  A deferred life is a life filled with fear, so you postpone, wait and procrastinate making decisions that will help you live up to your authentic potential.   

I’m intimately familiar with living a deferred life, in its depths I wrote:

- Fear, the more intangible and abstract is a superb motivator for more of the same kind of fear, to the depressed mind.

- Fear, a great excuse to be immobile, substantiated by the fact that it pins you to the ground

When you’re overwhelmed by fear it’s almost impossible to see that it’s not as bad as we think it is.  That it’s just our primal brain seeing a sabertooth tiger around every corner.  I have come to call my primal brain Matilda, she’s a bit of an old hag, and every now and again I have to lock her in her cage deep in the basement of my being, just so I can move forward with my life.     

Name your fear.  Write an ode to your fear, sometimes you have to do it many times a day, but do it to extricate yourself, do it to lay claim to your life.

To Matilda

Not so far beneath the surface

She lives her secret life

Wrapped tightly in a heavy cloak

She feeds on vile and strife

Stooped she walks the corridors

And watches for a sign

Of anything that might be joy

To ridicule and malign

“Not enough” she screeches in my head

“More” she asks of me

“My belly isn’t nearly full

Of your tears and misery”

Again and again she strikes my spirit

Pummels it black and blue

For one so old, so gnarled and brittle

Each blow feels marked and true

I drink each blow like mother’s milk

So eager to believe

That all the hate she hurls at me

Is just what I deserve

I am she, and she is me

So tightly intertwined

To kill one, would kill the other

We are both kin and kind

“Old hag,” I rage to spite myself

“Old hag, I’m done with you”

I hear her cackle long and low

“I love you dearly too”