When our actions don’t seem to be hitting the mark, it can make sense to try a biggish shift to ‘move the needle’ rather than tweaks that fall short of making a noticeable difference.
Seeing Your Stories
Coaching
Is It Broke? Don’t Fix It. Reinvent It!
If your assumptions and habits are all invented and they are not delivering the life you want, why not reinvent them?
Some Challenges Outreach Success
We would all benefit from a close look at the things we’re using to distract us from aspects of our work and lives that seem too painful for us to bear experiencing directly.
Rhapsody in the Key of L
Live: Engage, Explore, Experience, Express, Expand, Enjoy (a little E digression there…)! Also ache and cry and grieve and long. This is it, and it’s all for you.
The Perfect Frisbee Toss
owers and catchers. Please excuse the modesty failure, but we are. I’m trying to apply a couple of meta-truths from that excellence to other areas of my life.
Values and Moments of Truth
These moments are when the truth of what matters most to you gets its chance to shine. Finally, you create, one critical moment-of-truth at a time, a response that points toward a life and a self of your own creation.
Eating My Own Dogfood
Study after study shows that putting emotions into words can markedly improve our physical and mental well-being.
Flavors of the Need for Change
I’ve found myself thinking of the different ways the need for change shows up for people. It can be a complex recipe of feelings.
Survival, Success, Significance
Fundamental orientations on life: Survival, Success, and Significance.
By orientation, I mean a fundamental drive or approach to life.
Friction
We look to change, but elements of friction can work against us. Plenty of forces out in the world can make things a bit more difficult for us, but the counter-forces I’m considering are ones inside us.
Physics Lessons for Personal Change
A quick, peak effort, however impressive, is unlikely to make a big change. Much more valuable in these cases are persistence and stamina.
Finding Yourself
Stop looking for the mother lode – Your True Self. Instead, pan for the golden nuggets in the complex stream of your varied and shifting identities.
Stories We Tell, Stories We Are
Much of the work I do with people is to help them look at their story in addition to the non-stop experience of looking through it. This wouldn’t be especially helpful unless we had the ability to change our stories. Luckily, we do, although they are stubborn.
Beyond Achievement
This doesn’t make us morally superior people. It means that our felt disparity between who we are and what we do pushes us onward. Our disillusionment with the cost-benefit analysis of our success spurs us to ask more questions, experiment beyond current comfort zones and seek a more expansive perspective. The bits of us that have been compressed or stifled demand attention.
Unfulfilled by Success? Try This…
Successful career? Yep. Track record of achievement? Yep. Impressive earnings? Yep. Living the life you truly want? Fulfilled? Um, not really. You’re not alone!
Set Down the Burden, Taoism’s Way
We carry unnecessary emotional backpacks through life. The more we see them in their proper context, the more frequently we can set them aside. They may always accompany us, but we needn’t bear their weight.
Working with What Is
The most profound personal growth comes from a deeper understanding and acceptance of Now, of What Is. Any moment, regardless of its particulars, is dazzling in its completeness, and this insight brings a new perspective.
Faces of God
The world’s wisdom traditions point to one truth, but each highlights distinctive features. Spend time with each to see the summit from different angles before choosing your path to it. Here’s what I’ve found in several.