I’m always surprised and delighted when themes show up with my clients through the week.  I work with diversity of clients… it’s one of the things that challenges me about defining my niche… but that’s a post for another day.  My point is, it’s not like they all get together and decide what to throw my way in a given week!

This week the issue of truth telling has come up with almost all my clients.  None of my clients are liars.  However, they do play the game that humans play… and sometimes they aren’t completely honest with themselves about themselves.  Why keep the truth from seeing the light of day?  The answer almost always comes down to that overpowering  four letter F-word… FEAR.

It might look like not asking for what you need in a relationship because you don’t want to rock the boat.  Or not charging enough for your products and services (yes, this includes not raising your rates) for fear of customers no longer buying from you.  It might look like stuffing your dissatisfaction and frustration with a staff member because you don’t want to deal with the morale dip that sometimes accompanies the feedback.

All of these examples and more, came up in my conversations this week…. and what the client (and I) realized in every case is that not telling the truth is not sustainable.  It might feel easier in the moment but in the end it creates problems… usually much bigger problems then telling the truth would have created to begin with.  Not to mention the energy drain it is to walk around in-authentically, which is a recipe for exhaustion.

I invite you to look at your life and discover where you are not being honest… and speak up.  When you say your truth, it gives others permission to say theirs.  And what’s available are deeper relationships… or a business that sustains you…  or a staff member that has the information s/he needs to be successful… all of which is valuable.  Getting your authenticity back and freeing up energy to have some fun… priceless!

“Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.”
– Thomas J. Watson

What are you playing for in the game of life?  We attach so much significance to failure… what if in your game it were the equivalent of rolling the dice and getting a seven instead of a two.  Shift your view of the mistakes… PLAY as if the more mistakes you make doubles, triples, QUADRUPLES your chances of winning… and have a great time! Play on!

I am your constant companion.

I am your greatest helper or heaviest burden.

I will push you onward or drag you down to failure.

I am completely at your command.

Half the things you do might just as well be turned over to me and I will be able to do them quickly and correctly.

I am easily managed – you must merely be firm with me. Show me exactly how you want something done and after a few lessons I will do it automatically.

I am the servant of all great people and alas, of all failures as well.

Those who are great, I have made great.

Those who are failures, I have made failures.

Take me, train me, be firm with me, and I will place the world at your feet. Be easy with me and I will destroy you.

***WHO AM I?***

ANSWER: A habit

What is your symphony? What notes, measures and tempo would your symphony include?

“To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy , not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.” –William Henry Channing

How often do we consider contentment or fulfillment as worthy goals.  Where in your life are you striving, pushing, doing, forcing?  Consider your personal symphony.  What can you let go?  What does your heart have to say? Where are you connected and contributing to the symphony in your communities, large and small.  Take a moment and consider your life through this lens.  Let the music play!

I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that’s unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.

Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you, because you would not be able to live them, and the point is to live everything. Live the question now, perhaps you will then, gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. –Rainer Maria Rilke

Coaching is an opportunity to partner with a trained professional to achieve results. Through a process using powerful questions and focused action you will find direction and increase performance not possible without a coach. Conversation creates our reality, relationships and ideology. Questions are a corrective mechanism. Life is a quest(ion) – a series of choices as to what path(s) you take.

Is there an opportunity you’re considering? A challenge you’re confronted by? Dreams you’ve let go of?  Please contact me for a FREE 1-hour session. Call me at 206.920.4426 or email me at alyse@joywork4life.com and schedule your sample session today.

If you’re interested in deeper work or becoming a coach, consider a coach training program.  Accomplishment Coaching has a mission of “Setting the worldwide standard of excellence, we lead, coach and train in the service of transforming lives.” Information about their coach training program available at www.accomplishmentcoaching.com.

Ever feel lost lost,  without direction or purpose?  Where do you find ‘explosion’…   people, work, music, movies, nature, etc?  When the calendar flips from one year to a new one… or one decade to another, many of us pause and look at where we are on our journey.  Are you learning and growing toward your  potential?  Are you in a holding pattern until some circumstance shifts?   Living fully requires connection with your inspiration… your inner box of matches… I invite you to have a look at the excerpt below from Laura Esquivel’s novel, Like Water for Chocolate. Take a moment now and ignite a flame within you.

“As you see, within our bodies each of us has the elements needed to produce phosphorous. And let me tell you something I’ve never told a soul.  My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said each of us is born with a box of matches inside of us but we can’t strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches.

For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn’t find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lit.
If that happens, the soul flees from the body and goes to wander among the deepest shades, trying in vain to find food to nourish itself, unaware that only the body it left behind, cold and defenseless, is capable of providing that food.” –page 115

There is only one admirable form of imagination: the imagination that is so intense that it creates a new reality, that it makes things happen, whether it be a political thing, or a social thing or a work of art. –Sean O’Faolain

“I’m sorry about your dad,” the football coach said to one of his players whose father had died the previous week.

“Coach, please let me start Saturday,” the players asked.

Now the player was strictly back-up and only saw playing time when the game was either won or hopelessly lost. But the coach read the expression on the player’s face and agreed to let him start. “It will only be for the opening series,” he warned.

On the first play from scrimmage, the player tackled the opposing quarterback. He was all over the field and ended up playing the whole game, which turned into an upset victory.

After the game, the coach awarded him the game ball. “What got into you today?” the coach exclaimed. “You played like a pro.”

A lot of people didn’t know it, but my father was blind,” the player said.

“Today was the first game he ever saw me play.”

Consider if there is a perspective shift that will allow you to play like a pro…

I am speaking to the Bainbridge Island Rotary Club (a big shout out and thank you for the invitation by the way)… I’m presenting on purpose and service.

As I prepare for my presentation I’m present to how much better life works, how much better I work, when I’m aligned with my purpose.  Kids’ books often strike a chord with me and this topic was so beautifully addressed by Brian Selznick in his Caldacott Award winning book.  Take a look and let me know what you think.

An excerpt from the novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick:

“Did you ever notice that all machines are made for some reasons?” he asked Isabelle. “They are built to make you laugh, like the mouse here, or to tell the time, like clocks, or to fill you with wonder, like the automaton. Maybe that’s why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn’t able to do what it was meant to do.”

Isabelle picked up the mouse, wound it again, and set it down.

“Maybe it’s the same with people,” Hugo continued. “If you lose your purpose…it’s like you’re broken.”

…..

“It’s so beautiful,” said Isabelle. “It looks like the whole city is made out of stars.”

“Sometimes I come up here at night, even when I’m not fixing the clocks, just to look at the city. I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So I figure if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too.”

The African Impala can jump to a height of over ten feet and cover a distance of greater than 30 feet. Yet these magnificent creatures can be kept in an enclosure in any zoo with a 3-foot wall. The animals will not jump if they cannot see where their feet will fall.

Faith is the ability to trust what we cannot see, and with faith we are freed from the flimsy enclosures of life that fear creates as traps for us.   –Anonymous

Take a look at any place in your life where you are stuck.  Is there a place you are not willing to go?  A risk you are not willing to take?  A jump to a new level you’re not willing to try for because you can’t see how it will turn out?

Take a leap today… or to quote Les Brown, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.”