“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” Henry David Thoreau

“Don’t ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes YOU COME ALIVE (my caps) and go do it.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Howard Thurman

The quest for fulfillment and possibility calls all of us several time during our lives.  As children, every year is a quest filled with new learning and edges as we crawl, walk, talk, read,  taste new foods; learn about numbers,  history, nature, physics; and about parents, siblings, pain, joy and video games.  We grow up to choose a career, friends and intimate relationships, whether to have our own children or not, and on and on.

As adults, our lives often become less adventurous and more about being prudent, healthy, and following all the rules we’ve internalized.  Eventually, we outgrow our status quo and must begin a new quest for fulfillment or we will “explode” with frustration, pent up desire, or illness.

You KNOW it’s quest time when you experience any of these symptoms:

* Work that was fulfilling is no longer
* You dread getting up and going to work
* You should be happy with everything, but you’re not
* Your long-time lover just left or you just left your lover
* Your health and vitality have diminshed
* Your life has taken on a predictability that is stifling rather than comforting
* You have dishonored one or more high priority values long enough and it’s time to express them  before you explode
* You ache, you long, and you may or may not be able to put your finger on what’s missing

Where do you begin? You begin where you’re at. You begin with love.  Love what’s here before you go on a quest for what’s not here yet.  Do not be afraid of or angry about where you’re at.  Allow and love the not job state; the extra 40,60,100 pounds; the mixed up relationship; the unpaid bills. Sit down next to your fears and have coffee with them. Just own them.  Love your ability to create.  Resisting what is tends to keep it in place.

I truly love to work with women who are on a quest of fulfillment, spirituality, and letting their brilliance finally and fully emerge.  I’ve been on physical quests up mountains and biking across the country.  I’ve been on healing, spiritual and and career / fulfillment quests. I’ve been on educational quests for knowledge.  I still take large and small quests.  Contact me for an exploration session about your quest – and join me on one of the Awakening to Your True Purpose calls.

Graphic: Through the Desert © Stiven | Dreamstime.com

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.

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.

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.

Come home.  Why come home to you?

1. To know your own wisdom,  value, values, preferences, purpose.  To get to know you like you know your Facebook community or co-workers.  To discover the culture that is unique to you.
2. To experience the very alive, sweet, precious essence of you.
3. To  love.  To know love – love of yourself and others.   To grow love so that when you’re with partners, children, colleagues, family and friends you have your own wellspring of love to bring to the relationship.  You are not needing love.  You are full and  sharing it.
4. To choose.  The input of the world meets your own personal biology, beliefs, values, and purpose when you come home in order to choose.  Your choices will honor your own personhood – not that of the outer world.  You can say yes to a request from being home rather than from not knowing home and thinking that what others want is also good for you.   You can say no, thank you.  You can honor the wisdom of your body in order to sustain your own inner peace and follow your purpose.
5. To rest.  Your lives are lived at a tremendous pace – every 5 years adds dozens of new distractions, games, shows, demands, and possibilities.  Bodies are built to recieve input – nerves fire and process all over them all day long.  Sleep is a way of coming home.  And so is hitting the pause button in the middle of the day.  When I feel exhausted in the day, often just five minutes of quiet time re-energizes me.

How do we come home? Here are my suggestions – you check out your own biology, life, and style and discover what coming home is for you.

1. To begin, stop  leaving your home, your body / mind / spirit for a period of time each day.   Sit here and just know you.  Even if just for a minute a day to begin.
2. Come home from phones ringing, buzzing or vibrating;
3. and  music, no matter how spiritual it is to you.
4. Come home from digital images flickering through your eyes and brain.
5. Just for these moments,  come home from  people in your space
6. and thoughts churning about problems.  Yes, you can pause them.
7. Come home to your presence in nature, in quiet, in reduced input.
8. Yes – seated, standing, or lying down.  Yes – awareness and senses turned inward.
9. Try the meditator’s way to center -  be aware of your breath. If you are doing this for a minute that is about 10-12 calm breaths.  That’s all.  Be aware of your breath in your nose, throat, chest.  Good.
10. Massage is good for becoming aware of your body.  Start here.
11. At any given moment, just tune in-ward.  After a workout,  during or after a meal, during or after sex, during or after an argument, turn your awareness inward for a deep and pleasurable homecoming.

Now that you have come home, what inspired actions arise from your connection to yourself?  Write them down, then take off!

I offer coaching and workshops on inner peace, and taking off from there

In what ways do you come home to yourself?  What do you discover?

Once you find your way back to your heart, the head does the implementation. It works out the details, gets the help, designs, and plans in service of the heart.

Finally, success is an outside job.  The body gets into action with speaking, writing, building, selling,dealing and doing whatever it takes to bring to reality the heart’s passions and purpose.  This is the most challenging step – to go from the mental, emotional and spiritual energy of the heart and head to the slower, denser, physical energy of the body and of making an idea real.  Just know that it is normal to have bumps and setbacks bringing your brilliance to reality.  

And, when actions and goals are aligned with the heart’s purpose, those goals flow, things work better, and the transition to the physical has more grace and synchronicity.

Moving gracefully from inside to outside, may your success flow in 2010.

Coaching Mode!

Ten years ago I hung up the phone and cried tears of gratitude after my first completion call as a coach.  I’ll call him Roy.  He had achieved his goal in about 5 or 6 sessions, and our final call was to acknowledge and celebrate and clean up anything left undone or unsaid.   He had trusted me with his life and heart; and allowed me to journey with him for a while as he created courage and stepped into a new, bigger experience in his life. That moment marked a turning point in my years of seeking fulfilling work, training, certifying, letting go of the old work, starting a business, marketing, and finally coaching.  It’s been many clients and sacred journeys since and I am filled with gratitude for all the people who have allowed me to serve their emerging brilliance.

Love like you’ve never been hurt and live like it’s heaven on Earth.”

– Mark Twain

Dance Like Nobody's Watching

Sing like no one’s listening.
Listen like the speaker is divine.
Work like you’ve never been burned or burned out.
Do relationships and conversations completely -whole, nothing left
out, all is said, and any mess is cleaned up.
Play like a child.
Paint like everybody loves your work!
Feel your grief to the depth of your soul.

Laugh from the depth of your soul.
Live like a child – from moment to moment – emotionally present to every shift and new discovery.
Learn something new every day.
Work like you don’t need the money.
Wear your favorite colors.
Whatever it is, don’t wait until the special occasion to use it or
say it.  Right now is a special occasion.
Take this opportunity to be yourself.  Do it again now.  And now…

Sleep like it’s the best vacation you could ever give yourself.  It
is.
Treat your body like you’ll never be able to replace any parts.
Make up with someone.  Forgive someone.  Set down the burden of
resentment or guilt.
Live like you just fully recovered from a life-threatening illness.

Thank 10 people for their contribution to you.
Walk in nature like you belong with her.  You are made of her.

Action

Take action on whatever of these resonate with you.  And choose one
that doesn’t. Live fully without the stops for a few moments or a
few days, and notice what happens in you and around you.  Thank you.

Leave a comment – what in this list are you taking on and why?

A Leg UP

I just finished watching  Michael J. Fox  special on optimism.  He visited a country between India and China called Bhutan.  They measure their Gross National Happiness instead of their Gross National Product.  Wikipedia says, “While conventional development models stress economic growth as the ultimate objective, the concept of GNH claims to be based on the premise that true development of human society takes place when material and spiritual development occur side by side to complement and reinforce each other. The four pillars of GNH are the promotion of sustainable development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance.”

What if we measured our GPH- Gross Personal Happiness. What would your GPH be based on?   Productivity?  Integrity?  Laughter?  Connections?  Income?  Balance?   How are you doing with it?  Leave a comment and let us know.