Category: clarity

Guided By Your Own Light

Guided By Your Own Light

I’m sure I knew not to shine the flashlight into my eyes. But somehow I ended up doing it anyways.

Black Friday Weekend and I find myself meandering through the aisle of Lowe’s. I wasn’t actually looking for a new flashlight, but a deal is a deal so I stopped to check them out. Apparently the brightness of light is measured in something called lumens, and having no concept of what a lumen looked like I turned the flashlight a bit too high and ended up temporarily blinding myself in the process.

Now I know what a lumen is.

The lumens grew even brighter as I adjusted the flashlight’s beam width from wide to narrow, decreasing the size of the illuminated circle while intensifying its glow.

I’ve found myself doing the same thing in my life, adjusting the width of my focus from wide to narrow, decreasing the size of my own circle while intensifying the glow on what really matters.

I guess at some point if you keep working at it, life finally gets clearer. Purpose meets intention Continue reading “Guided By Your Own Light” →

The Clarity Of Impermanence

The Clarity Of Impermanence

I hadn’t seen Steve in quite a while. We grew up in the same neighborhood, a bunch of us kids enamored with hockey and The Three Stooges. We all knew him as Zig, a nickname my older brother had endowed upon him. I never asked why. Life eventually took all of us in different directions until the unexpected reunion of us neighborhood kids at Steve’s wake.

Losing a friend hits differently. I’ve lost both of my parents, and as painful as their passings were and at times continue to be, I’ve come to accept the inevitable progression of children eventually burying their parents. But there is no natural expected progression when losing someone your own age.

Seeing Steve for the last time brought back a plethora of happy memories of my childhood. I could see all of us again as we once were. 

And now one of us was no longer here. 

There was a sense of randomness about his passing. As if it could have been any one of us who was no longer here. It was in that randomness I felt the uncomfortable presence of Continue reading “The Clarity Of Impermanence” →

The Soul Knows What The Soul Really Needs

The Soul Knows What The Soul Really Needs

I’ve outgrown quite a bit in my life.

People. Situations. Belief systems. Excuses.

But I’ve never outgrown the scent of a brand new box of crayons.

I’m not exactly sure what it is. Maybe it brings me back to a much simpler time of my life. Maybe it reminds me of a time of unlimited possibilities where my imagination could colorfully come alive with a clean sheet of paper and a crayon in my hand. Maybe it prompts me to remember how much joy I was once able to experience by simply expressing myself creatively.

Somehow in exchange for growing up we are often forced to grow out of some of the activities which brought us so much happiness as a child. I guess we’re supposed to find more age-appropriate sources of joy. That upward spiral toward such joy often demands “bigger and Continue reading “The Soul Knows What The Soul Really Needs” →

8,600 Days Of Sobriety

8,600 Days Of Sobriety

It was like losing an old friend. Consistent. Reliable. Predictable. I recognized the arrangement had grown quite toxic, a toxicity I simply accepted as a fundamental cornerstone of the relationship for far longer than I should have. 

Alcohol. A trusted companion which always took me exactly where I thought I wanted to go. 

Until I no longer wanted to go there.

This week an important milestone snuck up on me. I had gone 8,600 days without alcohol. A month-long beer binge in December 2000 had pushed me to the point where I knew I needed to stop, at least temporarily. Honestly, the real challenge was seeing if I actually could. Now, over 23 years later, I guess I was able to definitively answer that question.

I never intended to quit drinking. I was simply taking a break, a longer break than usual. For several years prior I had given up beer for Lent, not for any religious purposes, but as a test to see if I could go 40 days without it. My abstinence would start earlier in 2001, six weeks ahead of Lent.

It wasn’t easy. Once my body recovered from what I had done to it in December, it was ready for more. And it wasn’t happy when I told it no. This temporary abstinence was a personal challenge and honestly I was deeply afraid I would fail. Established habits are powerful forces in life, even if those habits don’t serve you.

As I gained some traction with sobriety, I started to wonder how long I could actually keep it up. I’d always taken comfort in knowing Lent would end after 40 days and I’d then be free to go back to my usual intoxicated ways. After all, I never said I was quitting, right?

But this extended Lenten season would be different. The clarity of sobriety created a space of Continue reading “8,600 Days Of Sobriety” →

An Unexpected Source Of Clarity

An Unexpected Source Of Clarity

Mention their names and you’d swear that they wouldn’t be good together. Polar opposites, most would agree. Yet, it’s that very polarity which can make them important partners.

For most of my life I’ve sought a level of clarity, of trying to understand who I am and what I am here to do with this one life I’ve been given. This inner journey has taken me in many different direction, each path directly or indirectly leading me closer to the clarity I’ve been seeking.

On this long and meandering quest I’ve learned a great deal about life and about myself. Paradoxically one of the key components on my path to clarity has been the introduction of doubt.

Doubt. As in uncertainty. As in compassionately questioning what it is I’ve been willing to accept about myself and what’s possible for me. My beliefs shape my identity, and my identity shapes how it is I allow my life to unfold.

What if what I believe about myself isn’t really true?

What if it actually is?

By introducing doubt into the equation of who it is I tell myself I am – or am not – I create the space for an inner dialog where a Continue reading “An Unexpected Source Of Clarity” →

Embracing The Power Of Clarity

Embracing The Power Of Clarity

With a blizzard on the way, I was able to get my electrician neighbor to finally hook up my generator. Finally, because I was the one who had been putting it off, often forgetting I even had a generator which needed to be hooked up.

In the community where we live, good size storms have usually meant a loss of power. Trees vs. overhead power lines, and the trees usually win. No power means no heat, no water, and no light. Of all the things I take for granted in my life, electricity has to be in the Top 3. Does anyone ever marvel at flicking a switch on the wall and the lights magically turning on?

Now, should we lose power, with a few flicks of a few switches, heat, water, and light will be restored. The generator serving as a back up reserve fuel source to get me through the storms which arrive outside of my control.

Sometimes life gives us different types of storms to endure, where there aren’t a few simple switches to flick on and get our lives back to where we want them to be. These are the emotional storms, equally as unwanted as the ones nature brings upon us, but often far more damaging and painful.

It would be really cool if you could buy some sort of emergency emotional generator to get you through such storms.

I guess the only option is to create one.

When life knocks your power out, what reserves do you have available to keep you moving forward? Faith? Hope? Trust? For me, having the clarity of a vision as to what I want to create in my life has proven to be quite a powerful emotional resource, and understanding “why” that vision matters.

That hasn’t always been the case.

For much of my life I meandered about without a particularly clear and defined destination. Ever searching and seeking, I was no match for the storms of life which would show up, much like overhead power lines are no match for the weight of the snow and ice covered branches of the trees above them. My searching and seeking did eventually get me to a place where what I want and why I want it have become quite clear. That destination shapes every step of my journey. In that clarity is a strength, a resolve, and when the unexpected storms arise and knock me over, and they still do, it’s the conviction of clarity which serves as the fuel source to help me rise yet again and to keep myself moving forward.

“Pain pushes until vision pulls” as Michael Bernard Beckwith has often said. Four words which perfectly define the process of my own evolution.

Perhaps of yours as well?

Where is your vision taking you?

The Art Of Working Against Yourself

The Art Of Working Against Yourself

Maggie and Watson never like to stay in the yard. Our two strong and high energy dogs love to run free chasing whatever they are chasing. Sometimes they are just running for the sake of running. In our fenceless neighborhood, the dogs have no idea where our yard ends and the neighbor’s yard begins. They see no limits or boundaries. They just run.

Recently, we looked into installing an invisible fence, for their protection and our neighbor’s peace of mind. The technology is quite impressive. We define the parameters of where the dogs are free to run, and to condition them where their boundaries are a small device on their collars emits an uncomfortable charge as they get closer to the limits of their space. In time, the conditioning helps Maggie & Watson know their limitations almost instinctively. They’ll know how far they can go.

Kind of like us humans.

And we don’t even need a collar.

The greatest thing standing between where we are and where we want to be in life are the limitations we set for ourselves. The limitations we’ve conditioned ourselves to accept as true. Through the course of our lives we’ve set our own boundaries for how much we are willing to allow to be possible for us. Much like that invisible fence prevents the dogs from running free, our thoughts, both consciously and unconsciously, tend to keep us in our own yard, a fixed space that keeps us exactly where we are.

Understanding your limitations often requires you to look at your life from a different perspective. I never knew I had limitations, simply because I never thought I had anything to do with why my life wasn’t where I had wanted it to be. Blame is far easier than acceptance. How could I be undermining my own growth and evolution? Why would I do that to myself? Yet when I was able to step back and observe and listen to the stories I was telling myself, I could actually see how I had unintentionally constructed my own invisible fence of limitation.

Those stories of lack and shortage and unworthiness become hard wired into our emotional DNA every time we speak them to ourselves. And like the invisible fence, our thoughts train us as to where we will allow ourselves to go in life. We may see exactly where we want to be yet we’ll never let ourselves get there. All because of the limiting stories we repeatedly and often unconsciously tell ourself.

I’ve felt the inner conflict between what I told myself I wanted and what I was willing to allow myself to receive. The same mind which could envision the future of my dreams was the same mind working to convince me I would never attain it. I knew what I wanted for me but I would always find ways to make sure it never materialized. Until I started listening I had no idea this limiting and conflicting dialog was actually taking place.

Recognizing this conflict was my starting point in changing the stories I was telling myself. Our subconscious doesn’t care what we think about who we are. It just reinforces what we tell it and always finds ways for us to remain exactly where we’ve told ourselves we belong, even if we don’t want to be there. Abundance or lack. Worthy or unworthy. Your story is your story and you’ll never out run it or out work it.

The good news is we can always change the stories we tell ourselves.

So, what about you? What are some of the stories you tell you about you? Do you see yourself worthy to receive the unlimited abundance which is all around you? Or does life feel stuck and you’ve accepted that what is will always be?

Listen to those voices in your head. Step outside of you and just listen to what you say to yourself, especially when life gets challenging. Self awareness is the critical first step in understanding where you actually are in your life, and once you understand where you are it’s much easier to get to where you really want to go.

If you want a different life you need to tell yourself the stories that will make such a life possible.

And it’s possible.

It’s a great day to be you!

Time Really Doesn’t Care What You Do With It

Time Really Doesn’t Care What You Do With It

I hadn’t thought of it quite this way.

Just six weeks left.

It’s mid November and the year is coming to an end. Six weeks and it will be the start of a new year. It will also be the start of a new decade.

That’s the part which stunned me a bit.

Where did the last ten years go?

Most of the time I never think about time. The busy-ness of life often keeps my mind on what’s right in front of me. And the next thing you know a full decade has come to an end.

It’s interesting to look back at the decades of your life and reflect and remember what life felt like back then, what you did, or what you didn’t do. The victories and the defeats, the joys and the pains. A common denominator of the decades of my life is that the decades sort of just happened, simply unfolding in the way that they did. Kinda feels for the most part I was in many ways just going along for the ride.

Having collected many decades myself, being reminded that this one is coming to a close has surprisingly stirred things up within me. As I look back at the past 10 years there is a sense that I could have done better. Done better in the sense of showing up with far more intention and presence. It was a decade of transitions on many levels, but my initial assessment is that life during these last 10 years was more reactionary than intentional. Behold the glory of hindsight and experience and looking back in time and seeing how things could have been.

A younger, less-evolved version of me would have used this awareness against me. I can so vividly see that version of me calling me out for not making the most of those years, even though I have no idea exactly what making the most of those years actually would have looked like. Sometimes we can really hold ourselves to such unrealistic expectations, can’t we?

With my new found reality that I’m six weeks away from a brand new decade, I’m giving serious pause and envisioning what I want to become and accomplish and experience in the coming ten years. For the first time I’m setting clear intentions for myself going forward into the new decade, no longer content of just seeing where time will take me.

The next ten years are going to happen regardless of how I chose to show up for them. Time is indifferent. Time doesn’t care if in ten years I’m looking back wishing I had spent them differently.

That’s not a conversation I intend on having with myself in November 2029.

What are your intentions for the next ten years? What will be your priority? What do you plan to become and accomplish and experience?

The life you want isn’t just going to happen.

It’s a great day to be you!

Avoiding The Thanksgiving Surprise

Avoiding The Thanksgiving Surprise

Ever notice how when Thanksgiving approaches some people are surprised that it’s here already? Like it sort of snuck up on them and they never saw it coming?

And that leads to the obligatory conversation about how fast the year has gone by and wondering where the time actually went.

Like Thanksgiving, life, too, can often sneak up on you and before you know it you’re left wondering where the years of your life went. The speed of life can often feel like you’re just trying to keep up with it. When life is lived reacting to life itself there’s not much time left for living.

But isn’t living the real reason we are alive?

Time is moving and it’s not stopping. Not for anyone or anything. And since the clock isn’t stopping, isn’t now the time to make our life our real priority, to clarify and define exactly what the life we are here to live should look and feel like and then refocus our time and energy on making our vision our reality?

Don’t wait until the November of your life to start to living it.

You just might miss it.

It’s a great day to be you!

 

Photo by Elijah O’Donnell on Unsplash