mAgNoLia 2

Saturday, September 10, 2016

The Solitude of the Open Road


I have traveled at night in such darkness that it left me to feel as though the road had fallen away. Feeling my heart rise up, I took a leap of faith that I had not been abandoned, that there would be more than air to greet me, and that I was safer than the fear whispering in my ear. It was a long journey that moon less night with only the stars for company . . . Or so I had thought, until I was greeted by the dawn of a new day.

Saturday, February 6, 2016

A Hummingbird Life

From a very young age we are prodded by society to pick one specific thing; What we want to be when you grow up, What are you going to major in in college, What career are you going to pursue . . . but as we are discovering more and more, some of us aren’t wired that way.


I know that many of you are struggling because you feel that you don’t know what your passion is, and for some of you it’s because you have a variety of different interest. I remember when I was in 6th grade, and my teacher told the class that we were going to do a special project, for a yearbook. We had to pick what we wanted to be. I didn’t really know what I wanted to be, I struggled, and I felt pretty uncomfortable. Most the other kids seem to have all kinds of idea of what they would love be doing when they grew up, but not me.


I’m a very curious person and I have always had a lot of different interest so I ended up picking journalist; I loved writing, telling stories, meeting new people, and traveling. Needless to say I’m not a journalist, but I am still writing, traveling, and meeting new people.


I want to share with you this video, made by Elizabeth Gilbert, I love this woman, and hope to meet her at some point. You might know her from her internationally successful memoir, “Eat, Pray, Love”. You can find her on Facebook and see all the delightful and utterly authentic life stuff she shares. I think in watching this video, though I didn’t completely realize it at the time, that  God/The Universe, or as I like to call The Divine, was giving me a prelude, a sort of nudge to stop worrying, that things were going to be okay, that I was going to be okay. In this Liz talks about that maybe some of us need to put the idea of a passion; an all consuming drive to fiercely bare down on just one all consuming thing, aside. That for some of us, it is about living a curious driven life, rather than a passion driven life. Check it out, I think some of you will not only identify with this, but start to feel a sense of relief. That maybe you too can start to realize, that’s it’s all going to work out, that it’s going to be okay.


While  to some my life may appears as meandering and chaotic career path, there have been advantages. The last business I owned was a large fine art gallery. I represented over 78 different artist. In running that gallery I was able to make use of all of my previous professional experience; cooking at a country club - to catering gallery events, making, buying and selling jewelry - helped me be highly successful in picking pieces for the gallery that my clients would love, graphic design, marketing, photography - for doing the layout of the gallery, designing and shooting the advertising, direct mail marketing, and bookkeeping for, well you know. It was a really amazing place for a number of years, and it’s closing, as I later came to understand, had a notable impact on the community.


I have felt like I had lost my passion, that didn’t have any dreams anymore. I felt lost and like I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. I was really struggling and sometimes I felt depressed, and that there was something wrong with me that I couldn’t just pick one thing and stick with it. Until recently when I started working with Michael B. Beckwith and Brendon Burchard. Michael helped me reignite my joy and enthusiasm, and Brendon reminded me that I love helping people. It’s something I’ve done much of my life, whether is was on a weekend out on my bike back when I was in junior high school and I helped save two young kids who had been playing with matches from a house fire, or helping people who had been abused and were suicidal, being in the right place and time to insure that a young Vietnamese guy didn’t die from appendicitis, or helping a woman who had suffered a traumatic brain injury during a brutal attack, lost her career, and a long term relationship, start to heal the inner wounds, and move back toward having joy in her life.


Every time I’ve had the deep honor and privilege to help someone come through a time of great difficulty and vulnerability into a place of thriving, it has always been a very humbling experience of serving divine grace. It’s about being open and willing that when the occasion presents itself, to step up and serve. It doesn’t mean you have to have all the answers. It means having the courage to care, and the willingness to try, to make a difference. I highly recommend it.


I don’t even remember how I ended up working with Jeff Walker and Product Launch Formula (you may have heard Brendon mention him), then I happened upon Brendon Burchard and his New Year's Day talk, which led me to sign up for the High Performance Academy, then dropping everything for the 4 intense days of free Thought Leader Roadmap training, while also working online with Michael Beckwith in his live Visioning series, and soon to be apart of Expert’s Academy, I feel like I am really developing skills and discovering tools to move forward with . . . something.


Little by little as I took notes and shared them, for which I got some really great feedback, things started to come together. I got my Twitter page up, and more recently my professional Facebook page up and running, became a group leader, and started writing down things that I know can help others, ideas started to form, a direction is emerging.


Then this morning, I saw another video that I want to share with you. When I watched it I jumped up, YES! That’s Me! It felt great to see someone else up on a stage saying Yes! There are people like me, people who struggle when it comes to having that one specific passion. I know I’m not alone, and for those of you like me, I want you to know the same thing, that there is nothing wrong with you, and you aren’t alone. If you are not familiar with TED talks, you are in for a treat. So, here it is the TED talk I watched. I hope it brings you joy, or at least some send of relief: http://www.ted.com/talks/emilie_wapnick_why_some_of_us_don_t_have_one_true_calling?utm_campaign=social&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_content=talk&utm_term=social-science#t-734431  
Thank you Emilie Wapnick, thank you for that term Multipotentiality. We are in good company . . . Other notable multipotentialites throughout history are Averroes, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin FranklinRenĂ© DescartesSir Isaac NewtonAristotle, and Archimedes.