They're really saying I love you...
They’re really saying “I love you”…Everyone who has heard this song loves it. It is a song of wonder and joy. A song of seeing deeply to the heart of what is happening. Yes, on one level that person that just reached out and said “Hi” or “What’s up?” or “How’s it going?” is following a customary greeting practice when we meet someone. But what Louis Armstrong knew, is that this was only the surface of the interaction. At the heart of the greeting was “I love you”, a desire for connection and community; an example of caring and kindness.I can almost hear your smart minds going, “How can s/he know that?” Or maybe it is saying “That is a sweet idea but really? Come on.” Here is what I know for sure: we are all a mess of different feelings and motivations and intentions. We are everything. None of us purely good or bad. That’s what makes us so interesting … and impossible to predict! For me it doesn’t matter if the idea that someone is reaching out to me is accurate or not. When I choose to see a greeting as a request for contact and connection, my better angels take over, I become someone I admire. AND the world becomes a little brighter, softer and filled with wonder! Just like the song says.So, where can you shift your seeing and hearing just enough to hear "They're really saying "I love you"? Often it is only those smart minds of ours that cover over our experiences of wonder and joy with the mind's need for predictability and control. Predictability and control are fine for machines and schedules but they can hurt living things, like relationships. The choice is ours moment by moment. This new year, I apprentice myself to wonder and joy. To turn my dial to the frequency of ..."they're really saying, I love you" I so hope you will join me.
"These are the days of miracle and wonder..." Paul Simon
When I left my homestead of 25 years and moved 6 blocks south to my dream cottage home, a 1928 craftsman bungalow,I envisioned an ache in my heart that would never really leave. I mean my babies grew up here. They only home they ever knew. And we had to say goodbye to it and those memories. A lump in my throat accompanied me as I went through getting the home ready for sale and then packing up to move. I NEVER envisioned, being back at said homestead on retreat while the men who own it now, vacation elsewhere. I thought I would have to say goodbye forever.But today I sit next to a newly re-plastered perfect pool, in a new remodeled home that still structurally holds the best of my "old" homestead. And I am amazed at how wrong I was about what I thought the future with my children's and my home would hold for me/them. AND more importantly I so created unnecessary suffering by getting out ahead into a future that ...never happened! Instead I got to leave a home that was too much for me and move into a new chapter in my life. AND I got visiting privileges. How great is that?!"These are indeed the days of miracle and wonder..." The miracle of shifting your mind and the wonder of opening your heart abound. Had I trusted the future and trusted myself to meet it, I could have saved myself some unnecessary pain and heartache.
- Where do you need to open your heart and trust yourself to meet the future?
- Where are you out ahead of today with a story that diminishes you in large or small ways?
- Where can you make a miracle just by looking at something differently?
The ideal and the real...
Mom's pin-curled hair, now loose and blowing in the March Wisconsin winds as she applies the clothes pins to the wet laundry on the clothes lines strung through the backyard by my father. Four children, I the oldest at 8 years, followed by three more all two years apart. Her life. Her busy and full life. Many fighting for her lap and her attention. "Mama", "Mom", "Mary" ...my mother and many mothers' lives in the 1950s. It was a different time. Another time. Or is it?I watch my young friends, juggle work schedules and a variety of enrichment classes for multiple children. They are having their children closer together, like my parents generation did. And they are having larger families. As I sit on the large patio of the local city golf course looking out ...and back in time...I am struck with the cycles of life.When I was in that jam-packed family and house-holding phase of my own life, I missed time to read, time for me, time for museums, brunches and gallery walks. Now I have much time for all of these things. And I miss the sound of "mom" "momma". I miss being sought after and adored. I miss the fullness. The busyness of it all. Truth be told each phase of life has its exquisite beauties AND the places it falls short. I advise a young client who currently has no romantic love in her life to enjoy this time because when love finds her again her life and time, will no longer be primarily about just her and her own preferences. But do I heed my own advice?Not so much...Do I wake up excited about being the sole person I get to please and care for today? Somedays. Today, this day, I glance back and wish that I understood 20 years ago that to everything there is indeed a season. Such a life-long challenge for this visionary, this midwife of change and possibility, to fully embrace whatever cycle I am in, rather than lean into the next "ideal" vision, I glimpse. For too often that "ideal" arose out of an anxiety or sense of lack. Years back, when covered over in motherhood, I wondered if there would ever be time for me again. Would there be enough? Was I enough? And when I thought that thought I was leaning away from the reality of my life without deeply embracing it for its particular beauties and flaws. So often the inner dialogue then was "I better..." "I need to..." "and I have to..."So now when I hear myself say "I better______" and note an anxiety that time is running out, or that something negative will happen if I don't act now, I breathe and question that thought. Same thing with "I need to______". or "I have to_________." And often I discover that these thoughts have fear-scarcity-lack or some sort of anxiety lurking at their base.For example, today I could say to myself "Nancy you need to appreciate your current state of being single." And if I respond to that inner command it is ultimately a lack-based response. Ditto, if I say "Nancy, while you are still single you better enjoy and make the most of it." But, what happens, if I say to myself, "Nancy, lucky lady, you get the privilege of a low maintenance life with enough time to focus on those things that you set aside during the years you were raising your children"?Shift is what happens. Shift inside of me. Shift to a deep gratitude and a wholehearted embrace of the life I have been given.
Psyche (aka your unconscious): Holds all the trump!
More and more neuroscience is demonstrating the limits of the logical and the rational. Thus proving C.G. Jung, (Jungian Psychology) to have been a prophet. The power of the unconscious, the mysterious and unfathomable, within each and everyone of us is truly breathtaking. AND it is efficient! How does it get better than that?!I write about this because there are tools that one can use (many of which I have practiced for almost 2 decades) that help us actually hear the voice of our own psyche. AND why that matters is because it turns out ..that it is not "Father who knows best" but Psyche. (Yes, I am that old!)Our own sweet souls are what will make the best and happiest decisions on any and all matter of preference for each of us. Whether it be the next car we buy, the person we live with or career path we take...or which pair of shoes to buy and where to go for dinner. Psyche (soul) always speaks to us in the language of feelings, energy, moods and dreams. She is always letting us know what will make us happy in the long run.So why aren't we happier? Because our Strategic Mind generally overrules her and so quickly we often don't hear her at all. She says, "I want light and space." Strategic mind jumps in with "We can't move, we don't have time and where will we find....blah, blah, blah." Conversation over...except it isn't because Psyche will now start to disturb our peace with ennui or discontent or weird dreams. AND she won't stop.Our distrust of her is part and parcel of our inherent distrust of joy and happiness. (See my post: Trusting Joy). Most of us trust suffering and struggle more than we do joy and happiness. That is why we mostly change through the school of hardknocks. What would happen is when Psyche whispered "I want light and space." we would respond with curiosity with "Tell me more"?Maybe we allow Strategic Mind (SM) to register it's concerns immediately...but in the spirit of a brainstorm, instead of control.SM: "Look, the easy way would be to change our exisiting space if that is possible, but why is it you want light and space and are there other ways we could achieve that, because moving is a a big chunk of time and money?"And then the ideas surface. The brainstorm is on. Strategic mind doesn't have to and should not just say "yes" to Psyche, it is meant to be a true conversation between the rational and irrational within us. We can learn how to stay in the tension of the conflicting needs within our own minds, knowing that one day something greater than either "move or stay here and ignore the need for light and space" will emerge. Einstein said, "you can't solve a problem with the level of thinking that created it." I say, ask yourself where you are stuck. AND put those two opposites together and ask "how can I have both X and Y?" Then settle in and wait, trusting that an answer will come. Stay open. Wait for what is fresh, new and alive to arrive.
Part 1: Moving from one year into the next ...
Let my history then, be a gate unfastened to a new life and not a barrier to my becoming. David Whyte We humans are such funny creatures. We have stories about everything and everyone ~ even ourselves! Maybe especially ourselves. And unfortunately, we ~ I ~ stick like crazy glue to that story. Think about it. When was the last time you surprised yourself by allowing some otherness, some unknown frontier to rise up and … arrest you? Alter your path? Carl Jung called that God. We often think it is the devil! How dare life deliver anything but our expected results, right?What is also true of us, is that most of us have a story that often differs in small or large ways from others’ stories about us. Today, on the eve of a new year, we invite you to step outside your story about your history and who you are and who you can be. Who exists beyond that story? Discover your unknown, your unclaimed otherness, your becoming.…not known because not looked for…(T.S. Elliot) So, why not consider seriously aligning with the call of 21st century life? To trust and welcome the unknown, rather than resist it. “To learn to love the unknown for itself, to take it gladly like a lantern to help you see where ordinary light will not go.” For me this line suggests we align ourselves with a positive expectancy, similar to what we felt on Christmas morning as children. What would be under the tree for us? Our most cherished desires or something else, yet still wonderful? Maybe more wonderful? You are leaders, whether you are leading just yourself, into authenticity or an organization of hundreds. You are leaders. And you are 21st century leaders, living in challenging, uncertain, and unpredictable and terribly complex times. Now, how do you find your way to say YES to that fierce embrace?
EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE.
AND
EVERYTHING IS AT STAKE.
What an amazing time to be alive and part of history. If anyone needs to become comfortable in the unfamiliar, the unknown, it is us: we rational planners and doers. I invite you to place, who you think you are, what you think you love, and what you think is possible for and through you, on your right side. Set them down. And allow your left side, your own dear unknown, to offer, to reveal, to announce itself to you. As you move from this year passing away, it matters to name what is done and complete for yourself so that you can create the space to invite new growth and imagination into your life in 2013. Consider using these questions to help you become clear about what needs to recede or die back in your life:
- What is finished, complete in your life now?
- Where have you achieved substantial mastery and need to allow that particular gift to recede in order to create space for your next level of growth?
- Where in your life might you be taking a strength of yours and over using it, or applying it to something that doesn’t need it? For example, let's say you are a good idea generator. You have most of them at meetings. But what if NOW it is time to develop discernment. The ability to pick between ideas, the one that will really hit it out of the park. That means listening and observing and reflecting. Opposite of the idea generator mode. But if you keep going to the “creative” idea generator, it will actually become a liability. This is an example of over-doing a strength so it becomes a liability.