Being Point

Month: June 2010

  • Contributing To Someone Else As A Means Of Leaving Something Better Than You Found It

    Leaving a situation better than you found it translates into the opportunity for taking complete responsibility in our personal relationships. Consider trying on the idea of being 100 percent responsible for the results of any relationship.

    This approach is best done with zero negative judgment as a means of asking the pure play question: what is my role in the dynamics of the relationship?

    Taking responsibility is central to the idea of leaving something – or someone – better than you found them. “Better” in this context means nothing even close to that you “fixed” or “improved” someone. Rather, it engages the idea of contribution to other(s).

    Can you think of people whom you leave – and have left – more empowered, more loved, more attended to than when you first met them? How much of that result was intentional? Who has contributed to you in such profound ways? Have you acknowledged that person(s) for leaving you better than you were found?

  • Striving For Noble Goals To Make The World A Better Place

    Consider Winston Churchill’s quote:

    “What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?”

    Now, try substituting other words for “this muddled world” like:

    * Your romantic relationship, marriage or love life.

    * The lives of the people with whom you work.

    * Charitable causes that make a difference.

    * The outcomes that your customers experience.

    * Your school, college or university.

    * Our very, very flawed political process.

    You get the idea, even if the translation with Churchill’s quote is not exact. He’s essentially saying that making things better is the reason that we’re here on earth.

    How do you feel about his position? Do you consider it extreme? What kind of improvements have you effected in any of the items above? Did your contributions rise to the level that Churchill describes?

  • Leaving Things Better Than You Found Them

    When I went camping as a child, I was taught to always leave the campground better than I found it. That most often meant not only completely removing any trash that my group had left behind, but also picking up and removing the trash generated by people whom I did not know.

    I remember feeling good about doing something that my child’s mind identified as noble. Making the world a better place even in the smallest way was very rewarding.

    That concept has remained a cornerstone of how I aspire to live my life. But I’m human, so the aspirations have been far greater than the realities of my being able to live up to that ideal.

    Do you ever pick up trash that others have left? Literally or metaphorically? It’s great to do it anonymously so that there’s no opportunity for ego gratification. How aware are you of leaving any situation better than you found it? What has been your experience and success at doing so? Is this concept something to which you resonate – or is it something else to you?

  • How Open Are You To Being In Love With Everything?

    Wake-up calls can be poignant, sweet and deeply moving parts of the human experience.

    Actress Jennifer Anniston said, “I love that feeling of being in love, the effect of having butterflies when you wake up in the morning. That is special.”

    Among the most profound wake-up calls is awakening to being in love with oneself, with the world, with all other humans, and with life itself. Yes, of course, we love romantically, and certainly we love our families and friends. Yet, how many of us are just now experiencing waking up to the love of life in all its forms?

    Have you noticed an expansion of your loving nature far beyond those in your immediate circle of friends and family? Are you open to being in love with everything? What is the degree to which you cultivate gratitude for your waking up to loving beyond all ego concerns?

    What kind of connection do you feel to animals in peril, oceans being damaged, hunger and plague? Can those experiences contribute to our “wake-up calls” as humans to make the world a better place for all life?

  • “To Improve The Golden Moment Of Opportunity, And Catch The Good That Is Within Our Reach, Is The Great Art Of Life.” ~ Samuel Johnson

    Wake-up calls can be perceived as opportunities because a choice not to do something is also a choice to do something else. Moments of focused choice often highlight the consequences of all the actions under consideration. We can become more awake and aware.

    Samuel Johnson wrote, “To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.”

    Have you ever thought of an opportunity as a wake-up call? What opportunities have you accepted and developed that felt momentous like you were literally being awakened? Can you think of opportunities lost where you did not awaken – and you later wished you had?

    Would you characterize yourself as an “opportunist” in the positive sense of the word – as Johnson described – to be mindful of the “golden moment of opportunity”? Do you provide opportunities for others in ways that can feel like wake-up calls?

  • Creating “Wake-Up” Calls To Engage Our Evolution

    Consider a different relationship to wake-up calls than alerting you to potential difficulty. It’s possible to manifest wake-up calls that are inspiring and energy-giving.

    Give yourself ten minutes with a kitchen timer. Come up with at least 20 different opportunities that you have in your life to move forward and evolve.

    The use of the timer in conjunction with the target number of opportunities creates the feeling of “wake-up,” and the subject matter is enlivening and useful. “Waking up” to what you can have happen in your life is a kind of “self-induced” alert or focus.

    What opportunities exist in your life to dramatically grow and evolve? What kind of regular practice can you create to connect with these opportunities? How do you like using exercises like this to expand your feeling of “waking up”?

  • What Do You Have To Learn From How You Handle Wake-Up Calls?

    Wake-up calls, of course, occur not just for individuals, but for every kind of human organization: families, teams, companies, institutions, governments – even countries and perhaps for the entire human population.

    A wake-up call is a warning that something more dire could happen – like hearing your tires hit the raised bumps on the freeway edge when you go over the line.

    Maybe you’re beginning to dose, but those bumps awake you – presumably to continue driving forward fully alert – or to pull over and rest – or take corrective action.

    Are you a person who heeds those calls? Has your pattern been to ignore them or to pay close attention?

    What do you have to learn from how you handle wake-up calls?

  • Heard Any Good Wake-Up Calls Lately?

    Wake-up calls are events which provide opportunities to make needed changes before it’s too late to make them.

    Perhaps a smaller version of a hugely undesirable consequence occurs, and we have the potential advantage of dealing with a situation before more serious things happen.

    What is your experience with wake-up calls? Can you think of times in your life when you were awakened and stimulated out of your day-to-day to take action that you might not have otherwise taken?

    Wake-up calls often occur in the area of health because health-related events can often start out slowly and build. Similarly, financial and relational aspects of life can worsen if we have been paying insufficient attention to them.

    Are there any wake-up calls that you are not now heeding? What would be required to listen and to make desirable changes? If you have been ignoring or resisting, why has that been the case?

  • Beating Ourselves Up Has Not Been Confined To Individuals

    Beating ourselves up is not limited, of course, to individuals. We as a country seem to be engaged in a serious and prolonged syndrome of beating up ourselves and each other.

    How much do you feel any sense in the U.S. that we are beating ourselves up over any key issues such as wars, damage to environment, poverty, health care, the political process, consumerism?

    John Adams said, “Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war,” and one could extrapolate that many people subscribe to, “Great is the guilt of causing harm to others and to the world.”

    Yet, can we fashion a more productive response to difficulty than guilt and beating ourselves up? It feels as though beating ourselves up can become a substitute for meaningful action.

    Where do you stand on the question of beating ourselves up and feeling guilty? It’s easy for us to say that we don’t believe in it, but what do our actions indicate? What would it look like and feel like to pour all the energy that has gone into beating ourselves up into moving forward?

    Have a great weekend! (and don’t beat yourself up, please!!)

  • “My One Regret In Life Is That I Am Not Someone Else.” ~ Woody Allen

    We humans have often beaten ourselves up based on comparisons that we make of ourselves with others. Comparison, skillfully used, can be highly beneficial. Yet, if unskillfully used, comparison causes enormous self-inflicted pain.

    Woody Allen said, “My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.”

    Have you ever thought that someone else was inherently better than you? More “deserving” of love and happiness? Can you see that beating yourself up, because you had established a set of rules that judged you harshly as compared to someone else, has been needless suffering?

    How about cutting yourself a break and giving up beating yourself up once and for all? You can declare it a behavior that no longer works for you. As situations arise that could degenerate into beating yourself up, you can choose differently. What do you have to lose?