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Posts from the ‘Change’ Category

Apr 20

To Begin Again, and Again…

“You can learn new things at any time in your life if you’re willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.” – Barbara Sher

Today marks the one-year anniversary of starting a new job, changing after 17 years in the same place and a plan of retiring there. A big move later in my career when most would say stay, coast, and settle. You’re too old. Your time is up. Quiet quit.

Not me. I’m not done yet. We settle and stay in places that are stale, over and where we don’t fit and aren’t welcome anymore to avoid change at all costs. Working with a career coach got me out of my own way, challenged old narratives and limiting beliefs. She helped me do the work to uncover what was next and possible. So grateful a friend sent me her way!

This past year I became a beginner again. Exhilarating, daunting and transformational. It has been the best thing that I have done for myself in years. Don’t settle and acquiesce! Take time to reflect and plan, but don’t wait to have everything figured out. Have a direction and move, the road unfolds with action, a step at a time. If and when you make a mistake, then pivot, shift, try something else. Often it is merely a tweak or a shift in attitude. We learn from trying new things and beginning again and again. Life is too short to circle dead-ends. Break trail!

“Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” – Dylan Thomas

Feb 12

The Lens of the Heart

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering… these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love… these are what we stay alive for.”― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”― William James

We are clear on what we are against, murky on what we are for.
It’s easier to criticize than create.
To “other” and “them,” to disregard, disconnect, dismiss.
The world is flat.
God is small.
Being “right” is enough.

May we have the fortitude to question, reframe, rethink and reshape our perspective.
To go beneath the surface of self to the root, to the core.
To see shapes, shadows, nuance, complexity, commonality, diversity, patterns, connection.
Weeding out the old, dry and stale.
Tilling the soil, planting newness, color and hue.
Unknowing, unlearning to expand, invite and open to depth and dimension.
Growth, change, transition, transformation.
Nurturing beauty, understanding, goodness, awe and wonder.
Widen the aperture to let in more light.
See through the lens of your heart.

“Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it.”― William James

Feb 11

Perception Reboot

“Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.”― Walt Whitman

“To change one’s life:

  1. Start immediately.
  2. Do it flamboyantly.
  3. No exceptions.” ― William James

To what, who, when are you clinging to?
What hinges and holds?
Binding or freeing.
Tangling or unwinding.
And, or, all of the above, everything in between.
Create a foundation, a framework, principles.
Less rules, regulations, assumptions, limiting beliefs.
More wonder, awe, inquiry, opening.

Listen, examine, assess, dismiss, remove, replace, reboot.
We have a capacity and agency to change, transition and transform.
Choose and keep choosing each day.
One step, then the next, putting fear in its place, the sideline.
Present yet ignored.

Embrace, expand, step out.
Create, unfold, unfurl.
Clear your cache.
Perception reboot.

“To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds,”― William James

Jan 1

The Royal Road

“Self-acceptance is the path to self-forgetfulness, which is the royal road to Joy!” – Sarah Young

“We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

First day of the week.
First day of the month.
First day of the year.
As you enter the path into 2023, may peace, joy and love be your intention followed by effort.
May beauty, laughter and color capture your attention.
May light, gratitude and enthusiasm be your companions.
Eyes on the road ahead with a renewed hope and anticipation.
Small actions rather than grand gestures.
Travel well.
Share the road.
Be kind.

“A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.” – Liberty Hyde Bailey

Nov 30

Transformation Time

“Time flies never to be recalled.” – Virgil

“Nobody’s going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you’re rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things befall you. Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It’s up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out.”― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

When circling the cul-de-sac of comparison, fairness, control, disappointment, expectations, hard right out.
Leave the familiar and flat behind, venture out and go deeper.
New map, new path, new territory.
Be kind and generous along the way, share the road, make space for other.
In the stillness of winter, create your spring.
Transformation time.

“Breaching out of their rooted darkness, breakthroughs are seeds of nonconformity determined to sprout into the light of freethinking.”― Monica Gagliano

Nov 13

Most Precious Today

“In being with dying, we arrive at a natural crucible of what it means to love and be loved. And we can ask ourselves this: Knowing that death is inevitable, what is most precious today?”― Joan Halifax

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”― Lewis Carroll

Leave yesterday at the door and cross the threshold into now and the possibility of unfolding.
Letting go, forgiveness, gratitude, kindness unbind, free, loosen and release.
Lighten the load, only carry what is necessary, what serves you well.
New day, new person.
What is most precious today?

“Resolving grief means both to release ourselves from responsibility for all the things that weren’t up to us, and to come to terms with the choices we’ve made that can’t be undone.”― Edith Eger, The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life

Oct 5

3 Comments

Luminescence of Joy

“Grace, like water, flows to the lowest part.”― Philip Yancey

“Sometimes we are joyful because we have known grief. Sometimes we know grief because we have dwelled— for full long days or microcosmic minutes—in the sun-soaked luminescence of joy.”― Heather Lanier, Raising a Rare Girl: A Memoir

A mixed bag.
Struggle and ease.
Sorrow and joy.
Fear and courage.
Surface and deep.
Weeds and flowers.
Fast and slow.
Waiting and arrival.
Yesterday and tomorrow.
All together in our days.
More unknowing than knowing.
Love, beauty, awe, wonder, hope, inquiry, reflection, peace, grace.
Dwell here in the unraveling and revealing.

“Sorrow eats time. Be patient. Time eats sorrow.”― Louise Erdrich, LaRose

Oct 1

Made Free

“Chase your stars fool, life is short. ”― Atticus Poetry, Love Her Wild

“We are all born free
and spend a lifetime
becoming slaves
to our own
false truths.”
― Atticus Poetry, Love Her Wild

Freedom of thought, words, actions
To change
To transform
To take flight
Open sky
Made free, called for more
Wear out your wings
Unbound, chase, fly

“What good are wings without the courage to fly?”― Atticus Poetry, Love Her Wild

Sep 18

Push Through

“Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them.”― William James

“Beyond the very extremity of fatigue distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction.”― William James

A shift
A twist
A possibility
What if?
How about?
Why not?
Flip the equation.
Release, assumption, opinion and judgment.
The push, one more step.
Allow, invite, consider new thoughts, altering of attitude.

“The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.”― William James

Sep 7

The Changed, the Changing

“I hope I can be the autumn leaf, who looked at the sky and lived. And when it was time to leave, gracefully it knew life was a gift.”– Dodinsky

“Blessed are you dear one, when the world around you has changed. Everything is different now. Your body, your age, your relationships, your job, your faith. The things that once brought you joy. The way you existed in the world. The people you love and trust and rely on. Things have changed and it would be silly to imagine you haven’t changed with them. You are not who you once were. Bless that old self. They did such a good job with what they knew. They made you who you were. All the mistakes and heartbreak and naivety and courage and blessed are who you are now. You who aren’t pretending that things are the same and who continue to grow and stretch and show up to your life as it really is. Wholehearted, vulnerable, maybe a little afraid. So blessed are we the changed.” – Kate Bowler

Follow the seasons for cues and clues, directions.
Everchanging, wandering, transforming.
Dirt to bud to bloom, to dormancy, back to life again and again.
Cycles and circles.
Rarely linear.
Made new in the delays and detours.
Shaped and stretched in the struggle.
Resilient, soft and strong.
The work of transition, the fruit of transformation.
Blessed are we the changed, the changing.

“There is something so special in the early leaves drifting from the trees–as if we are all to be allowed a chance to peel, to refresh, to start again.”– Ruth Ahmed

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