Category Archives: finding purpose

Why Staring at the Sky Isn’t Just for Wise Men

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I’ve been staring at the sky a lot this month.  I think it’s because it’s been unseasonably warm, and I am usually way too cold when I’m outside in Dec. to amble and look up.  It’s not only the stars that inspire.  The cloud formations, the bluish light of the winter sun, the oversized pearly moon lurking above the horizon at 4 in the afternoon have all been sources of wonder this month.

Did you ever learn in music class to look up when you sang in order to amplify your voice?  I think looking up when I think elevates my thoughts.  Makes me rise above my petty little obsessions:

“why is the supermarket out of pine nuts?”

“when is that publisher going to get back to me?”

“did that waiter really call me M’am last night?  What’s the good of that wrinkle cream?”

When I look at the sky more, I obsess less.  I remember that these aren’t the live-or-die issues; that there a lot of us living under this sky who’d give a ransom to be concerned with the inavailability of pine nuts.  Or actually, they’d be singing hosannahs if pine nuts were their only worry.

I volunteer in a nonprofit that helps folks in our community avoid eviction and keep the power on.  We don’t have a lot of money, can’t do much more than that, can’t even do just that for everyone who asks.  Yesterday I worked with 2 women, equally worthy, equally desperate.  I was able to help one and not the other.  I took the applications and told each what was needed to push their request through.  One complied and was able to provide all the info I needed within the 90 minutes before my shift ended, the other couldn’t.  For at least the rest of this month, I know when I look at the sky, I’ll be wondering about the woman I couldn’t help; wondering if she still has shelter, wondering if she’s safe.  Praying that someone could help her when I couldn’t.

I’ve provided services to people in poverty on the behalf of non-profits and government agencies for about a third of my career.  I am both hardened and softened by the experience.  The hardened part allows me to cut through the complicated presentations of chaotic lives and find the match points for the help that’s available.  It allows me to summarize these stories so that whover needs to approve their benefits can say yes.  It also allows me to let go when we can’t help.  Usually.  Unless the softened part is saying “there but for fortune…” or “she sounds like my daughter” or “we’ve all made these mistakes and he’s really trying to set things right.”

It’s when the hardened and softened parts of me collide that I am reminded for the thousandth time how many crying needs the world has and how many roles are open.  I find myself looking at the sky a lot.  Feeling small and insignificant, searching for clues, as men always have, but also wondering how many others are staring at the sky.

Ready, Fire, Aim

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2011 was my first year of trying to combine coaching and writing and living more fully in the present. So, I’ve set aside the month of December for reflection and planning.   “Ready Fire, Aim” was advice from a Tom Peters book that I read many years ago that urged managers not to delay action until their plan was perfect.  I’ve always felt that we gain confidence and learn an awful lot from taking action that can feedback into our plans. I’ve seen again and again how planning too long without acting can cause a kind of planning paralysis that can actually prevent us from living our dreams (isn’t there always more we should learn first?).

I did jump into both coaching and writing this year.  People I coached discovered new career paths, could articulate their transferable skills with new confidence and enthusiasm, got new jobs and found satisfying outlets for their creativity.  I wrote enough to feel like I have the base of a portfolio.  I completed a few short products, started a bunch of new formats like personal essays, entered contests and actually sent query letters to publications I’d like to have relationships with.   I’m no longer talking about writing–I’m doing the work a writer does!  Through jumping in, I’ve discovered some of the things I’ve learned about coaching will make my writing stronger and some of the creativity strategies I’ve learned through writing foster out-of-the-box thinking in coaching relationships.

If one of my goals for my change focus life is living fully in the present, I have a ways to go.  I can see that I need to shut down the “shoulds” more often, allowing myself to “be”.  (Who said we are “human beings” not “human doings”?)  Important to remind myself that I didn’t change focus in my own life just to be as harried as I was before.  This is surely my tendency–one I need to guard against.  But looking at the year as a whole, I’ve made progress.   We did make 4 trips to see the grandchildren and had 2 weeks of vacation, one week with the family and one on our own.  We made time for lunches with friends and planning the re-landscaping of the yard.  All of those have been joyous opportunities to seize “right here, right now” and squeeze it hard.

Maybe our landscaping project is the best symbol of this year–by year’s end the hardscaping was done, the ground was turned over, the new plantings were in.  Trees, shrubs and flowers were all dormant, so we’ll need to wait to see how they all come to blossom.  We may need to add some annuals to the bare spots, may even need to transplant some new residents that don’t do well where we’ve placed them, but there’s an outline, a direction that’s clear, even if the implementation isn’t perfect.  It combines dreams and visions with the good feel of earth in our hands and it’s always a work in progress.

What plans for change are you making for the new year?

What experiences have you had of”ready, fire, aim”?

Have you ever experienced planning paralysis?  What has it kept you from doing?

Going from “What Now?” to “Now!”

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I just came back from visiting my daughter in Texas and I want to share a career “aha” she taught me during this visit.  Since the birth of her twins 2 years ago, Sarah hasn’t worked outside the home.  After a decade in retail sales, four years of which she excelled as the manager of a large cosmetics counter, she knew she needed to do something, but  daycare for 2 infants wasn’t a cost she could take on.  Last year, she became  a mompreneur and began selling Discovery Toys and Scensey.  After a year, she isn’t where she wants to be in terms of profit.  Sarah’s pretty practical and so she had establishedsome goals  for herself, analyzed what the real costs of the business were, and decided it wasn’t just the growing pains of a new business that were holding her back.   She projected the sales increase she’d need to make her financial goal and determined it was time for a change.  When she told me this, I was pretty skeptical.  I thought she should give it more time.

“Now,” she told me, “I realize how the financial structure of the business impacts my ability to earn.  I didn’t know what the ins and outs were then.  I do now.” She took that confidence and her experience in selling cosmetics and is now an Arbonne consultant.  She held her first 2 parties at her home while I was visiting and sales seem to be going great guns.

sometimes you just know when it’s time to move forward.  My “aha” was the realization that in those situations, when you’re being led by heart or Spirit, cautiously taking it slow isn’t a virtue–it just saps your energy and blunts your resolve. Changing gears in our careers takes energy and boldness.  We need to capitalize on those moments of clarity and inspiration when we  experience them and use them to propel us from dissatisfaction to joy!

This doesn’t mean quitting our jobs today and becoming Marco Polo.  It does mean we need to stop contemplating and take a step – any step that our hearts tells us is right – toward something we’re dreaming about.  That step can be in any direction–right or wrong, we’ll learn something about making the dream come true.

When is a Boomer Like an Albatross -2

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OK –See I’m bad at this part 1 and 2 stuff-I’ve gotten busy with my workshop and forgot to post the rest of my essay–here’s a few more bites!!

“For the unlearned, old age is winter;
for the learned it is the season of the harvest.”
—The Talmud

Not all of us leave the workplace
licking our wounds.  Many of us have played the game long and hard with the tacit understanding that if we did it all right, the pay-off was we could STOP.   We have many avocations that we have been looking forward to pursuing.  For awhile, we may be content in the whirl of long-delayed pleasures and deferred family needs we now have time to fulfill.  Some Boomers find, however, that the novelty of an open schedule and pleasurable activities— like a steady diet of nothing but ice cream – becomes boring.  We become nostalgic for the social interaction of our working lives.  We miss being depended upon and recognized for our talent.  We become acutely aware that our e-mail boxes are empty and our phones ring less frequently. While we may not miss our work, we miss our roles.

Boomers came of age amidst the idealistic calls for change, revolution, equality, social justice.  There may be issues we’ve spent a career or a lifetime advocating and supporting.  Or our careers may have left us passive bystanders to our most  passionate causes.  Retirement can re-kindle old passions.  We tentatively scan the volunteeropportunities available.  We might even glance at the want ads.  Maybe now’s the time we can create change, leave our mark, we think.  In our hearts, there is the little voice that nibbles away at our idealism: “did I work long and hard to ultimately be saddled with time and energy commitments again?”  Our ambivalence may end our quest.

We start our retirement journey with mixed emotions about our identities and what we have to offer, some of us discouraged, others supremely confident.  Some of us are content to withdraw.  Others seek paid or volunteer work that has meaning; that feeds our passion to make a difference, but doesn’t consume all of our time.  We don’t want the worry and responsibility we once had, but we want assignments that use our unique skills.  If we imagined we’d be welcomed with open arms by the community loathe to support us, we may have a rude awakening.