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Posts from the ‘Growth’ Category

May 25

Replete with Meaning

“Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.”― Madeleine L’Engle, Swiftly Tilting Planet

“Growing up is a process that never ends. It isn’t a point you attain so you can say, Hooray, I’m grown up. Some people never grow up. And nobody ever finishes growing. Or shouldn’t. If you stop you might as well quit. What I have to tell you is that it never gets any easier. It goes right on being rough forever. But nothing that’s easy is worth anything. You ought to have learned that by now. What happens as you keep on growing is that all of a sudden you realize that it’s more exciting and beautiful than scary and awful.”― Madeleine L’Engle

Eyes on the road ahead, not too far.
Feet anchored in path of this day.
Stop looking for a different ending in the rearview mirror.
Start where you are and carry on.
Time is moving.
Join the flow.
Transformation, ever unfolding.
Growing new, not old.
Stories yet to be written.
Canvas to paint.
Use all the colors.
Go outside the lines.
Bending, not breaking.
Stretching and reaching.
Stumble, trip, get up.
Laugh, alot.
Wander, wonder, delight.
Scattering, mattering, blooming.

“The everyday human gesture is always a heartbeat away from the miraculous — [remember] that ultimately we make things happen through our actions, way beyond our understanding or intention; that our seemingly small ordinary human acts have untold consequences; that what we do in this world means something; that we are not nothing; and that our most quotidian human actions by their nature burst the seams of our intent and spill meaningfully and radically through time and space, changing everything… Our deeds, no matter how insignificant they may feel, are replete with meaning, and of vast consequence, and… they constantly impact upon the unfolding story of the world, whether we know it or not.” – Nick Cave

Apr 9

Roots to Shoots

“We can’t expect roots to ground us, magnificent birds to surround us…or flowers to bloom from our deeds- without first planting the seeds.”― Selin Senol-Akin, Earth Up Your Roots

“Nothing is more fertile than a beautiful mind—a garden where kindness grows, wisdom blooms, and hope takes root.”― Bhuwan Thapaliya

Seeds, roots, bloom.
Plant, tend, gaze.
Kindness, hope, joy.
Right where you are planted today.
Grounded and growing.
Gratitude and grace.
Keep casting seeds. love, light.

“Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.”― Victor Hugo, Intellectual Autobiography

Feb 24

Arriving and Unfolding

“Thriving is not an end state—it is a continuous” journey.”― Sahil Bloom, The 5 Types of Wealth

“The arrival fallacy is the false assumption that reaching some achievement or goal will create durable feelings of satisfaction and contentment in our lives.”― Sahil Bloom, The 5 Types of Wealth

Perpetual spring.
In all seasons.
Desert and oasis.
Changing, growing, unfolding.
May I never be done.
Present and grateful.
Finding and sitting with joy woven into the daily journey.
Hidden in the ordinary.
Knit into detours, delays, waiting.
Hope. Light. Bloom.
Revised. Renewed. Refreshed.

“Accept that you are a work in progress, both a revision and a draft: you are better and more complete than earlier versions of yourself, but you also have work to do. Be open to change. Allow yourself to be revised.”― Maggie Smith, Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change

Nov 4

Cultivate, Bear Good Fruit

“Solitude is the soil in which genius is planted, creativity grows, and legends bloom; faith in oneself is the rain that cultivates a hero to endure the storm, and bare the genesis of a new world, a new forest.”― Mike Norton, White Mountain

“Cultivating the power of presence comes from creating the space to observe one’s mind and one’s self.”― Dee Waldeck

Till soil
Cast seeds
Water roots
Look up to the sun
Tend to self and others
Cultivate joy, kindness, love
Garden well
Bear good fruit.

“We must cultivate our garden.”― Voltaire

Jan 18

Varieties of Presence

“The pine stays green in winter… wisdom in hardship.” – Norman Douglas

“At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing?
At this time in my life, what am I leaving?
Where am I about to enter?
What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold?
What gift would enable me to do it?
A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres.
Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up.
At this threshold a great complexity of emotion comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossings were always clothed in ritual.
It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds: to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there;
to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward.
The time has come to cross.” – John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us

Varieties of presence
Narrow and wide
Clear and cloudy
Middle ground of ordinary days
To bridges and thresholds
Before and after
Transitions to transformations
Pause, mark then move
Cross over, walk through, other side
Frontiers of growth.

“But high on mountains,
the pines stand praying,
their voices whisper low
as they chant together
an ageless measure,
‘Reach out and up, and grow!’
– Lorraine Babbitt, Tree Portraits

Dec 30

Brilliant, Bright, Becoming, Daily

“It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.”― Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

“Growing up, I never knew a relaxed woman. Successful women? Yes. Productive women? Plenty. Anxious and afraid and apologetic women? Heaps of them. But relaxed women? At-ease women? Women who don’t dissect their days into half hour slots of productivity? Women who prioritize rest and pleasure and play? Women who aren’t afraid to take up space in the world? Women who give themselves unconditional permission to relax? Without guilt? Without apology? Without feeling like they need to earn it? I’m not sure I’ve ever met a woman like that. But I would like to become one.”― Nicola Jane Hobbs

To becoming
Daily
Imperfectly, beautifully
To unfolding and unfurling
Slowly and surely
From bud to bloom, again and again
Seasons and cycles
Transitions to transformations
Planting, feeding, harvesting
Waiting and arriving
To aim and focus on what matters most
Loving every version of ourselves and others too
To failure because it shows we are still trying
To getting back up and swinging at the ball again and again
As we continue to grow, deepen and become
With all the detours, delays and wanderings
Awake, aware and grateful for it all.

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”― George Bernard Shaw

Jul 16

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From Stasis to Transformation

“I’m very concerned that our society is much more concerned with information than wonder, in noise rather than silence. How do we encourage reflection? … Oh my, this is a noisy world.” – Mister Rogers

“Every day in every way we are gently, and sometimes not so gently, being guided in the direction of our inherent truth. Every experience is walking us home to ourselves.”― Shayne Traviss, Your Vivid Life

When I want to …

Put up walls and call them boundaries, knock them down;
Stay hunkered down in the nest, push me out and remind me I have wings;
Bounce from one thing to the next scattered from demands of others, tune out the noise and make music;
Return to old narratives, assumptions and judgments because they prove me right, prove me wrong, show me love and kindness;
Get comfortable in the containment of the chrysalis, wiggle enough to break the pod into a beautiful butterfly;
From stasis to transformation;
Our call and calling;
Change, connect, grow;
The path of walking home to ourselves and the world.

“Stop, be still for a moment, drop your shoulders, close your eyes and take a long deep breath.”― Shayne Traviss, Your Vivid Life

Jun 4

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The Second Arrows

“Press on, regardless.”― Mary Stewart

“The Buddha speaks about the ‘second arrow.’ When an arrow strikes you, you feel pain. If a second arrow comes and strikes you in the same spot, the pain will be ten times worse. The Buddha advised that when you have some pain in your body or your mind, breathe in and out and recognize the significance of that pain, but don’t exaggerate its importance. If you stop to worry, to be fearful, to protest, to be angry about the pain, then you magnify the pain ten times or more. Your worry is the second arrow. You should protect yourself and not allow the second arrow to come, because the second arrow comes from you.”― Thich Nhat Hanh, Your True Home: The Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh

First arrows come.
Second arrows are our own.
Our response.
Worry. Fear. Overdoing. Fixing. Complicating.
The past. The future. Missing the present.
Struggles a given.
Our response, our own.
Pause. Do less. Deep breath.
Give some space between stimulus and response.
Shoot a few less second arrows today.
Choose well.
New day, new eyes.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Viktor E. Frankl

Mar 27

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Bit by Bit

“At the gates of time, blessing waits to usher toward us the grace we need.”― John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?” “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit

In the culmination
The cumulation
Time and wearing
Imperfection
Stops and starts
In betweens
Ordinary days
Transitions and thresholds
Weathering
Joy and laughter
Wilting, weeding, seeding, planting, blooming
Growth, fruition, transformation
May you love your Realness and others too
A beautiful thing to behold and unfold
Loved into becoming.

“Faith is not an art. Faith is not an achievement. Faith is not a good work of which some may boast while others can excuse themselves with a shrug of the shoulders for not being capable of it. It is a decisive insight of faith itself that all of us are incapable of faith in ourselves, whether we think of its preparation, beginning, continuation, or completion. In this respect believers understand unbelievers, skeptics, and atheists better than they understand themselves. Unlike unbelievers, they regard the impossibility of faith as necessary, not accidental …”― Karl Barth, Reader

Feb 23

Friction to Fruition

“Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you. It is meant to, and it couldn’t do it better. Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition.” – Florida Scott-Maxwell

“Friction is necessary. Ease of life leads to complacency and the atrophy of the human will and spirit. Within our struggles lives our strength, within our trials lives our triumphs. Friction creates a platform for change, generates heat and or fervor and creates a motivational charge that gives us an opportunity to be better. A gem cannot be polished without friction and so neither a person without hardships. Friction within and friction without sharpens our senses and revives our internal resolutions. Friction is uncomfortable, hardships are distressing but both are necessary. We cannot light a match without friction nor can we hone steal. Uncomfortable as it may be, our adversity ultimately lights a fire and sharpens our very will to flourish.” ― Jason Versey, A Walk with Prudence

Seeds to flowers.
In time.
In struggle.
In seasons of honing, sharpening, friction, growth is at work.
The path to fruition, a bumpy road with detours, delays, potholes.
The journey longer than we want, beauty always woven through.
Not the way we would choose.
The start is not the finish.
The middle is where we reside.
The finish comes only if we start and keep moving.
Arriving at new start lines.
Keep moving and take joy, awe and wonder on the ride.
From friction to fruition.
And everything in between.
Keep planting seeds.
Flourishing in ordinary days, in extraordinary ways.

“We like things to manifest right away, and they may not. Many times, we’re just planting a seed and we don’t know exactly how it is going to come to fruition. It’s hard for us to realize that what we see in front of us might not be the end of the story.” – Sharon Salzberg

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