Lifting Up

My friend Mindy recently quit a secure corporate gig to follow her dream.  She holds a high personal value on beauty and creating more of it in everything she does. She also has a great love of community. Mindy’s unique expression of heart, passion and savvy business skills have come together in the form of a yarn shop. At the Grand Opening celebration something she said struck me deeply. In researching for the...

Living in Gratitude

Angeles Arrien’s newest book, Living in Gratitude – A Journey That Will Change Your Life, has just made a timely debut.  Like all of her work and past writings she brings multicultural wisdom to everyday life in a practical way that supports each of us in living our life dream. From the Introduction: “Living in Gratitude is designed to carry you through a full calendar year, month by month.  It approaches the topic...

Busting My Assumptions

We’re big Jodie Foster fans in our household.   We were curious about this odd little film that she made with her pal, Mel Gibson, unfortunately titled, The Beaver. If Jodie hadn’t been associated, I would not have given it a second look based on my assumptions about Mel – a combination of what I had read about his politics and his messy and public implosion when picked up for drunk driving.  I swallowed the whole...

Calling All Allies

Many of us do not belong to an organized spiritual tradition.  Some of us weren’t raised with any or are atheist or agnostic.  Others didn’t resonate or couldn’t fully accept the whole package of a particular theology and chose to go our own way. What has worked for many who still desire spiritual practice and ritual is to take the best of what works from others and craft our own.  The beauty of creating something...

Standing Still

Lost Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger, Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here. No two trees are the same to Raven. No two branches are the same to Wren. If what a tree or a...

3 Tools to Build Personal Resiliency

In times of uncertainty – stress, breakdown, crisis, upheaval or even disaster our natural inclination is to rush to action and answers.  Rushing inhibits access to our higher reasoning skills.  When physically rushing we have less motor control.  This is not a personality flaw; it is how humans instinctively function in highly stressful situations. These 3 tools will help build personal resilience, provide more...

Here’s to the Crazy Ones

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs Why does...

Clearing the Clutter

I’m in the midst of a practice Angeles Arrien introduced me to many years ago with the goal to create more spaciousness in my life.  This is about my fifth time through it and every time it has produced delightful and surprising results. Everyday for nine days in a row you give away, throw out, donate or think of another use for twenty-seven things in your home.  27 things a day for 9 days.  Numerologists in the...

Play Time

I’m a sucker for flash mobs. The (seemingly) spontaneous eruption of creativity, imagination, community and generosity get me every time.  When I watch one of these I often weep with joy.  Granted, some of them are staged marketing events but that doesn’t matter.  I love the way it makes me feel.     What I love is watching people of all ages, colors, aptitude and backgrounds perform some whimsical...

Celebrating Creativity

In teaching the Creativity in Business program, we often start by asking people to rate themselves on how creative they think they are.  It’s always fascinating and informative to witness. It is the rare bird that claims the high end of the spectrum without equivocation. For many people, the metric they use for assessing their creativity is comparison. If we don’t know the people we’re comparing ourselves to, we...

It’s All The Mystery

This week on Fresh Air, Terry Gross interviewed first responders to the World Trade Center bombings.  A comment I heard has stayed with me.  After humbly relaying what by all accounts was the heroic story of his experience in the South Tower on the morning of September 11, Capt. Jay Jonas was asked to comment on why it was that he didn’t like it when people said to him that God was with him on that day. “By saying...

Lessons From Building Birdhouses

With the first cut of the wood, the idea for building birdhouses was out of my head and into the universe.  Never mind that the initial foray was a mess.  Ideas, resources, tools, solutions, and allies came flooding in once I took action.  I did it for fun and the pure joy of self-expression.  My only plan was how to get more materials and get my “real work” done faster so I could get back to the workshop –a.k.a....

Taming Your Gremlin

I discovered a new voice in the choir of inner critics that serenade me on a regular basis.  In Taming the Gremlin – A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way, Rick Carson suggests we name those unhelpful voices of judgment– a.k.a. gremlins – when we become aware of them.  Give them a personality, a nickname.  Makes them more manageable is the theory. This one is called ST – the Sullen...

The Art of Disappearing – Part 2

        The Art of Disappearing by Naomi Shihab Nye When they say Don’t I know you? say no.When they invite you to the party remember what parties are like before answering.Someone telling you in a loud voice they once wrote a poem. Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate. Then reply. If they say we should get together. say why? It’s not that you don’t love them any more. You’re trying to remember...

The Art of Disappearing – Part 1

How good are you at disappearing?  Vacation used to mean getting away from it all.  Time to rest, play, relax without the worries or concerns that envelop us at home. Savoring time without a clock or agenda  feels strange when we’re used to go-go-go and do-do-do.  It usually takes me a couple of days to settle into a slower rhythm when I get away; to keep my twitchy fingers off the keypad, not check email,...