Forty years ago, my brother dug up tree seedlings in the forests or yards around us, rescued a catalpa tree from the bulldozers, and started some from seeds or acorns.  He planted them in our yard.  About a dozen grew up, so now, forty years later those trees are a foot or more in diameter and taller than the house- oaks, hickory, catalpa, maple, walnut.  It’s like living in a forest.  The sound of the wind riffling through the tops of the trees is a joy to hear when cooking or having a meal.

The learning -  each tree has an internal intention to become itself – to gather the nutrients, materials, water and light; to follow its own DNA patterns, and develop trunk, branches and leaves characteristic of its species.   It also grows into a unique tree in shape, height, location, etc.   All the trees did that together, so now we’ve got a beautiful forest.

Our goals and dreams have their own internal DNA.  The dream or goal, once stated or planted, gathers the resources, time and energy it needs to grow into itself.  If you state that your desire is to own a blue hybrid car, you don’t start looking at trucks or bicycles.  You don’t save $100.  You save or plan on $30,000 and you look at blue hybrids.  The dream contains the DNA, the blueprint for action.

So I invite you to plant your dreams, especially the ones that will be the biggest and brightest of your forest of dreams,  and let them direct your actions, so your realized dreams  grow into a beautiful, fulfilling life.

Mini Coaching Session:

Look over your forest of dreams you’ve created so far in your life.  What do you love about it?  What’s wanting to happen now?  What dreams have you avoided planting?  What are the conditions that will be more inviting for a beginning?  Choose a dream and plant it, and discover what its DNA guides you and others to do to make it grow.

This is my eucalyptus tree – I walk by it nearly every day and do my Chi Gung exercises beneath it.  It’s a grand tree – it’s about 80 feet tall.  You can see the smooth branches (which are about 1.5 feet in diameter) and whitish colored bark. Do you see the shreds of bark hanging over the forks between branch and trunk?  This tree sheds its bark generally every year. The smooth branches have lost their outer layer of bark.  I googled eucalyptus and only found one statement as to why -that the tree grows fast and it keeps making new bark – it outgrows the old.

Anyway, my eucalyptus inspired  today’s article.  I worked with several clients today who are shedding their current identities (what we believe, what we love and fear, our values, what we’re willing to express in the world) and restoring long lost ones or creating new ones. The new brilliant identities are bright, eager, a little shy or scared – they’ve been under the bark of more familiar, weathered, and  hardened identities for years, decades, a lifetime.  Or they are just being created anew.  Nature continues to let go of what’s done, recycle it, and nurture new beginnings.  We also do that through shedding identities that are no long big enough to hold who we are becoming.   The changed identity shows up in new actions, words, choices, relationships, and beliefs.  Just like our bodies grow and change every year,  our identity changes.  Perhaps we are too slow to change it once we become adults.  We forget that growth can happen all through life.

What brilliant new identity is ready to shove the current one to the side and show up for you?  I invite you to leave a comment.

Peace is an inner experience and an outer expression. As we discover, nurture, and deepen our own peace, we nurture and deepen peace in our family, among people, nations, and between humanity and the earth. Peace has an inner definition: “freedom of the mind from annoyance, distraction, anxiety, an obsession, etc.; a state of tranquillity or serenity”. The experience of inner peace includes presence, love, purpose and choice.

Peace has an outer definition: “a state of mutual harmony between people or groups, esp. in personal relations: the normal freedom from civil commotion and violence of a community; public order and security “. Outer peace is possible when enough of us choose inner peace.

Choice – that is what you have. You can choose to be aligned with purpose and values; you can choose self love and love; you can choose to be present rather than resentful or worried. You can choose from inner peace in your thoughts and words and actions to bring about a more peaceful world. What’s possible if you lived peace? What if it took a lifetime to cultivate? What a journey! What if it took a moment to finally find peace and know how to return?

Mini Coaching – Recall times of inner peace in your life.  If you cannot, then imagine it from stories and pictures.  What’s it like?  Who are you being here?  Who are you not being?  What choices did you make to be peace?   Recall times of peaceful expressions among people.  Who are you being here?  Not being?  What choices were made to foster peace?

What did you discover?  What do you want regarding peace?  Leave a comment.

Turn-on is compelling, enrolling, motivating, creative, fun…..and more.  At a women’s group this week we filled two flip chart pages with words defining and expanding what turn-on is. I realized that when I’m turned-on, things get done, business flourishes, life works, and relationships are alive.  When I’m turned off, the opposite is true.  I never thought of it this way, but one of my joys as a coach is to support turn-on in my clients.  Turn-on keeps their energy, juices, ideas, connections flowing in a project, business, relationship, etc.

Napoleon Hill, in his book “Think and Grow Rich” has a chapter called “The Mystery of Sex Transmutation”.  He says that the highly successful people he studied and those he read about  going back 2000 years “possessed highly developed sex natures”.  In other words, they’re turned on!  He writes about transmuting sexual desire from only physical expression to creative and intuitive and mental outlets.

“Sex desire [turn-on] is the most powerful of human desires.  When driven by this desire, men [and women] develop keenness of imagination, courage, will-power, persistence, and creative ability unknown to them at other times.  So strong and impelling is the desire for sexual contact that men [and women] freely run the risk of life and reputation to indulge it.  When harnessed, and redirected along other lines, this motivating force maintains all of its attributes of keenness of imagination, courage, etc., which may be used as powerful creative forces in literature, art, or in any other profession or calling including, of course, the accumulation of riches.” Napoleon Hill

Many of my clients have been looking for work, and they are not turned on.  Sometimes we find that the kind of work they feel they should be seeking is not really the work they desire right now.  They get turned on when they let their dreams come to the surface.

Mini-Coaching:
If you’re not turned-on about something you care about, just notice without judging what is happening.  Explore the circumstances and the environment around you as well as within you.  Get curious about what might be the turn-off.   Don’t immediately try to fix it- keep exploring and allowing it to be for a few hours or days.  Begin an inquiry, “What is turn-on for me?”  “Where am I turned on in my life?”  “What’s happening in me and around me when I’m turned on?”  When you’re ready, turn up the turn-on in your turned-off situation by experimenting with inspired changes and actions.  I’m available to work with six more clients in August for you to make some powerful changes here.

Have a hot, turned-on rest of the summer, because why not?  What’s turned on in your life?  Why?

The sun bounced off the water on a beautiful summer afternoon at Lake Chabot where I was walking with my business partner, Julia.  She’s about to take off for 10 days and won’t be looking for internet connections or have her cell phone on. We started looking at how, even http://www.emergingbrilliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Dreamstime-Mountain-Hiker-150×150.jpgthough we own our own businesses, we don’t shut down and take off for fun.   We need fun, happiness and laughter for health and creativity.

I asked a client who was looking for work for months and frustrated to take a day off for her favorite activity, golf. She agreed not to spend any mental energy on her challenge and fears around finding work during the day.  A few weeks later, she had an offer.  I assert that the peace, centering, and rest afforded by a true, deep, fun chunk of time is invaluable for clear and heartfelt thinking, creative solutions, and results.  You all know that, but do you do it?  Do I do it?  No.

So, since I’m the coach here, I’ll ask the questions you’re expecting, and some you may not be expecting, to uncover something new about fun.  What’s your payoff for “keeping your nose to the grindstone”, for staying in electronic communication even when you’re out for fun, for never taking more than 24 hours off?  If we’re doing it, there’s a payoff.  And an underlying belief.

What’s the price you pay for going and going and going and going with the daily commitments?

Since fun leads to relaxing which leads to reduced stress (which is a physical state in your body that wears on it, not to mention your productivity and joy) which leads to increased health and creativity, what do you need to do to take care of yourself  for fun?  Will a few hours do it?  Or will it take a week or two or a month away?  A woman I’ve worked with has her own business.  She took two months off over the summer.  She was afraid she’d lose all her clients.  Many waited for her.  When she got back, she had more business than ever which has been steady for two years.

What brings you pleasure and joy?  Leave a comment. 

The Rubber Band Factor

I spent three days just south of the San Francisco airport at a seminar with Jeff Slayter and Kane Minknus, http://jeffandkane.com/, two passionate trainers bringing their brilliance to service professionals as well as Fortune 500 companies.  They are an example of a unique brilliance plus passion meeting the world’s need. Their passion is to free people up from negative beliefs and pattenrs in order to get on with making the difference they want to make with their business.  Their brilliance is their experience as entrepreneurs, coaches and consultants; their practiced presence in front of a room, and practical and useful steps to change.

Here’s one great insight I learned from Jeff and Kane: we are far more entangled in old family patterns, unconscious decisions, and limiting beliefs than we realize. This snarl of beliefs, history, genetics and more is called our ecology.  It acts like a rubber band snapping us back into our status quo whenever we dare to take on something so audacious as to live the life we want.  Perhaps we desire love, abundance, peace, and success and our ecology is about scarcity, no self-worth, fear,failure, or being the doormat.  Until we take steps to soften the pull of our ecology on us as we step out into our full life we will find ourselves on our butts back where we started.  An example of this – 80% of people who win the lottery are either dead or broke within five years – because their ecology could not expand to allow that much wealth – they were too different from family and friends and their own deeply held beliefs.

I won’t go into all the ways to relieve the pull of ecology on us as we seek our desires, but here is a step in the process – becoming aware.

* Whenever you act a certain way in a certain situation notice what you do, what you think, and what you say to yourself or others.  For example, in the seminar there were opportunities to work with Jeff and Kane in the front of the room. Being up there would be personally very enlightening.  However, I sat glued to my chair.  I clenched up – with tightness in my chest, feet planted on floor.  I remember that same feeling whenever I get in front of a room, way back to 1st grade show and tell. Any of you ever like that?

* Next, ask yourself, “What are the beliefs of someone acting and feeling like this?” Jot down several of them.  In the example above, someone who stayed in their chair instead of take an opportunity could be afraid of being found out, afraid of not looking good, not believe they deserve it, afraid to be in a place of not knowing something, afraid of ridicule, believe they are shy, feel ashamed….and more.

* Pick the one or ones that most resonate and notice where else it shows up in life.  Get acquainted and curious.

I  invite you to take this further and contact me to take on ways to move through these beliefs to unleash your brilliance in the world.

What are your dreams, desires and/or goals – the ones that come from your heart?  Leave a comment.

When your passion, your brilliance, meets a need of the slice of the world you’re meant to serve, you can experience more synergy, service, gratitude, ease, reward, and purpose.

“If you had a secret passion, something that you rarely speak about because it’s just too big or outrageous or unlikely, what would that be?” I ask this question of my long term clients.  Sometimes we do a little digging to uncover what’s been buried since childhood or college. This is what’s in your passionate heart, not your logical, reasonable and  perhaps cautious mind. It can be big or small, and it can be single or plural.  No rules. It could be to travel to a certain place, learn an instrument, go to college, get fit, climb a mountain, go camping again, write a book, change the world in some way.

At age 12 a passion to “Discover America, It’s 3,000 Smiles Wide” was born when  I saw that written on an Amtrak advertisement.  Sixteen years later I took a leave from  my job for the summer and rode across America on my bicycle. It was now or never.  It was more than the challenge of the ride, it was seeing the beauty and connecting with the earth and honoring my brilliant passion before it was too late.  It took many people to help me make it happen.

Action

Close your eyes, relax with a good breath, and ask yourself what is my secret passion?  If you don’t come up with a response, let it be and use that question as an inquiry over the next couple weeks.  An inquiry is a coaching tool where you ask a broad, curious question and let your experiences give you many answers and take you down many tunnels.  If you’re already in your passion, that’s good.  Help someone else find and claim theirs, and get curious about what it is to live your passion, and if all the elements are in place.

What can you do this summer to bring the experience of your passion into your life? What steps can you take, what is ready to happen?  Maybe your passion is to play basketball professionally, but you’re already 40 years old.  Where/ how/when can you experience or live

the essence of your passion?  Find a team, form a team, coach a team, write about a team….? Get creative!  Well, will you?

It’s a good idea to keep it to yourself; or share it only with people committed to helping you realize it, until it takes shape.  Don’t let anyone stomp it out of existence, don’t let it die before its born..  If you’re ready, I invite you to write me how your brilliant passion is emerging this summer in the comments below.

Let a passion be part of your life every year, no matter how small it might need to be to fit in with everything else.  Let it nourish you.

Late May and June signal the end of the school year here in the US and students are graduating from their complete course of study or their grade level.  So, in this time of  endings and new beginnings, I invite you to do a Life Happiness Checkup.  Take a look at your life situation today and ask yourself the following questions.  You can also  download the Wheel of Life Checkup form.  It’s easy and takes only 5 minutes or less.

On a scale of 0 to 10, how fulfilled and satisfied are you in these eight major life areas? (10 is completely fulfilled, with nothing left out).

Fun and Recreation

Health and Fitness

Career

Money

Friends and Family

Significant Other and Romance

Physical Environment

Spirituality or Personal Growth

Do you have a clear, unobstructed path to getting to fulfillment in these areas and are you are on that path  with enthusiasm, optimism and effectiveness?

Do you know what you are best designed to do and be on this earth?  Are your head and heart are aligned; your soul and ego in partnership as you gloriously do the actions and have the impact that you love, love, love to do and be?

For those of you who are  finding clarity or momentum around career, money, relationships, fun, health, environment and/or joy while simultaneously in your busy life commuting, working, raising a family, or handling problems,  I invite you to consider an alliance with a professional to help you focus on you.  It might be a therapist, group, or coach (believe it or not, I’m partial to the coaching solution!).

Businesses readily hire coaches to ultimately improve their bottom line.  Well, the bottom line for your life is what you call fulfillment. That’s my business.  For a no-cost consultation,  call me (510-886-7374) or email me.  I am on purpose as a coach when I  create a courageous, energetic relationship with you so you can clarify and manifest your vision or dream.

I recently checked a book out of the library (remember those?)  called “Extreme Ice Now” by James Balog.  It tells how Mr. Balog set up time lapse cameras on about 30 glaciers to record their movement over months and years.  I wanted to see the time lapse results so I searched the Internet for a video.  This video is a presentation Mr. Balog gave at TED in summer of 2009.  It shows some of what his cameras recorded and the implications of what we’re seeing.   It is astounding and sobering – a message communicated by merging art and science that neither could do alone.

I don’t usually blog about the environment, ecology and politics.  However, when I saw this video I felt compelled to share it with as many people in my world as possible.  First, it is an extreme work of art.  Second, it is a sobering wake up call – it makes climate change real and vivid.  Third, it ends on a note of optimism and hope – so let us do what we can do every day to heal our global community.

Let me know what you think and how you feel in your comments.  Thanks!