In the life design work that I facilitate, my clients take inventory of the major areas of their lives and decide where they want to grow, what they want to work on, and how they want to improve their lives. One of my clients this week chose: I want to learn to be a better friend.
It’s interesting how this desire arose for her. She has a friend who is going through a breakup of her marriage and isn’t handling it very well. My client, who we’ll call Jane, feels really bad for her friend and wants to help, as does all of her other girlfriends. However, Jane’s been observing what’s going on….watching all the other girlfriends wheeling out the advice, the should’s, even the threats. You know how that goes, “You’d better not let him back in the house, or…..” In the meantime, Jane sees her friend getting smaller and smaller and more and more frustrated and powerless. And this isn’t from the husband, this is from the loving help of her friends. (more…)
There was a time when farmers on the Great Plain,
at the first sign of a blizzard,
would run a rope from the back door to the barn.
They all knew of stories of people
who had wandered off and been frozen to death,
having lost sight of home in a white-out while still in their backyards.
Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness
I feel like I’ve been in a blizzard, walking lost in my own backyard. I know that I’m still in my backyard but I haven’t been able to see my way back to the house. And I know exactly how I got lost. Nothing unusual or exotic happened, just the same old stuff. I’ve been working very hard this winter season and it’s been really cold outside. So I kinda went into a cave….I hibernated…I wentto sleep. I just put my head down, burrowed under all the work and didn’t look up to see where I was. (more…)
Taking the time to stop and figure out who we really are and what we really want and finding the courage to live it is the work of life design. (And I hate to tell you it’s work, but it is. It gets easier over time, but it is work.) It requires paying a lot of attention, asking a lot of questions, and making a lot of choices. It requires honesty, courage, self-love, commitment, discipline and even more. People ask me all the time, why bother?
Because there is a HUGE payoff. Because, after doing all of this personal growth work, you will finally be living your own one true life. Imagine what that would feel like? I promise you it will be worth the effort. (more…)
A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up all along thinking she was a barnyard chicken scratching for worms and insects.
Years passed and the eagle grew older. One day she saw a magnificent bird above in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty on powerful wings. “That’s an eagle,” said another chicken. “She belongs in the sky.”
This eagle, however, lived and died a chicken, for that’s what she thought she was.- Anthony de Mello
I love telling this story of the eagle who grew up believing she was a chicken, but my daughter hates it. She says it’s too sad. She says the poor bird simply never knew she too had the possibility of soaring.
Do you know what your possibilities are? Are you a chicken or an eagle? (more…)
Below is a beautiful piece that I recorded for you about designing your life, but it is written by an anonymous someone.
Consider it a gift. A perfect gift to give yourself on a Sunday morning. Sunday morning (or afternoon or any other day) is a good time to take five minutes just for you. Create a comfortable physical place and emotional space and then relax and listen.
Give yourself just a few minutes to stop and to reflect. It will take you on a journey inward. Let it inspire you to think about what you would do if you were brave. (more…)
