I have recently added to my morning routine. I read something inspirational, usually something with some kind of spiritual bent, and then I sit with it for a minute. Because I think better when I’m writing, I then write about it in a journal I bought just for this purpose (which is drop dead gorgeous and I love to see on my stack). And so now, in an act of complete spiritual vulnerability and universal trust, I’ve decided to share some of these with you. Soulfull Sunday Musings starts now.

My current reading is in a book by Iyanla Vanzant. The premise for this piece is hers.

If I am filled with good, with faith, with light…

If I am filled with the truth of my being which is enduring, dynamic, and divine…

THEN

My mistakes are honest, well-intended, and are forgiven.

My security, at the fundamental soul-level, is assured.

My gifts are healing and profound.

I am exactly as I ought to be in every moment.

I am myself a gift from the divine to people around me who are gifts from the divine to me.

New stories to write on my heart.

Early in establishing my business, I got some excellent advice from a mentor. She advised that I think of everything I do today as something I might see in my bank account 6 months from now. It was an excellent reminder of the time that cultivating clients and developing programs takes, but really it was more than that. The advice came with an analogy, one of planting seeds. And I think in our fast-paced, immediate gratification, reactive world, it’s a perspective that it’s helpful to drink in every now and again.

As a Mom and as a business woman, there are probably several times every day when my next move is dictated by the necessity of the moment: meals, laundry, dog walks, client calls, sick kid at school calls, trips to urgent care, assistance for aging parents, the usual stuff that comes along with adulting, parenting, working. And it would be easy for me to fill my day with that stuff. I could literally, especially now during the summer months spend my entire day reacting to every situation that arises and participating in resolving it. But then what? Over time my clients would complete their work with me and I would have no more clients. Over time my children will, well at least if all goes according to plan, move out. Over time there will still be laundry, although it will be less as there are fewer of us here. The question is how much of my time I consciously devote to planting seeds, how much time I spend considering what I want in the future and taking even the smallest steps to get there. What kind of seeds am I planting for the day after these days?

I’ve been talking a lot about pretty BIG VISION stuff – aligning with the best part of you, dreaming big, asking questions – THIS is how you get there. You start with a vision, just like a gardener would. You develop a notion of what you want to grow. Maybe you’ve even gotten some colored pencils out or cut up some magazines or written a stream of consciousness journal entry about it – that big vision, that heart dream, that secret desire. THAT is good magic, all of that envisioning, and I believe there is some power in holding that vision close, but I believe the reason it’s powerful is because your amazing mental machinery will work on that vision. You ask yourself what you should do first to get there, and you have to very swiftly tell your brain to STOP it when it says: “I don’t know.” Just shut that stuff down, and then ask again. “What are some things I could do to get there?” and write down the list that comes to you, as ridiculous or obvious as some of those items might be. THESE are your seeds you see. To get to that big dream, big vision, “someday,” you HAVE to plant your seeds.

The funny thing is that once you do that, help often shows up in unexpected forms. Just like in the garden where rain and sun show up to nurture the plants, help and hope will come to nurture your big vision as soon as you start to work on it yourself. And, well, okay… just like the bugs and the deer come, so too will unexpected problems present themselves as your nurture your big dream garden. These too get tackled one step at a time, more effectively when we drop the “I don’t know what to do” in favor of “How can I solve this problem? What would make this better?” Just like the gardener figures out exactly what bugs she’s dealing with, we examine the problems that present themselves as we pursue our big vision, and rather than taking them as a sign that we should give up, we persist and work through it, because that garden is counting on us.

Our big dreams and visions are counting on us to stop the hustle and bustle of reactive living and take a big enough breath to remember that there are seeds to plant, and that those seeds will come with challenges, but will bring a harvest of delight, growth, and fulfillment that goes much deeper than the day we get all of the laundry done. If you’re not sure how to go about seeing your big vision, or you’ve got that but can’t seem to find those seeds, I’d love to help you out.

The theme for Sunday’s service at my church was dissent. Our brilliant minister took us on a walk through the Supreme Court as an examination of the nature of dissent and the truth content of legal opinion. No, it did not stop there for me… as you’re likely guessing if you’ve been playing along with me for any length of time. Dissent is definitely a key part of the American political system, and any functioning democracy. I’d take a step farther and say dissent is part of an extremely healthy adult life. What am I talking about?

I’m talking about the frequency with which our adult decisions rely on assumptions, rules, and habits of thought and action. So much of what we do has to do with what “should be,” “needs to be,” or “has always been.” These starting points become our sacred scripts just as much as a holy text might for some folks or a legal precedent might be for others. We don’t question them. They are fact. They are written. They are tradition. They just ARE… But ARE they?

Let’s expand our view a little to a cultural level and imagine what would be true if we used the “has always been this way” standard to make all of our decisions. Leaving things the way they’ve always been would make the United States a very different place, right? We would still have slavery. Women would not own property. There would be no public schools. Medical care would most often involve bleeding and hoping for the best. Dental care would feature wooden teeth for the wealthy; no teeth for the rest. I could go on for a while here. The point is that all systems are dynamic. Things change, and thank goodness for that. People also change, and thank goodness for that.  On the changing nature of everything, James Baldwin offers: “For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock.” Even in the repetitions of earth’s natural cycles, change is born.

So what unleashes change in us? Sometimes it is born out of crisis – something in our environment or community creates a need for us to change individually and communally, to find new resources within and without. Sometimes change is born of growth, the moment when the skin we are in is no longer big enough to hold who we are becoming. And sometimes, change is born from dissent, the increasing dissatisfaction with the way that things are, the struggle to pinpoint the root of that dissatisfaction, to question its necessity, and to change it. This is true both in community and within ourselves.

So often people describe what is and isn’t possible in their lives and I gently inquire: “Are you sure? When did you decide that THAT isn’t possible? Would you be happier if that WERE possible?” I’m checking to see if that notion of possibility is a sacred script, an idea that is defining reality for them without being questioned and checked. “Are you sure?” So often people describe what they need to do and I ask: “Why? Do you really NEED to do that? Do you WANT to do that? What would happen if you DIDN’T do that?”  The sacred scripts that dictate so many of our decisions are, by their very nature, unconscious. We accepted them a long time ago, but maybe it’s time for a little dissent. Maybe it’s time to have a little internal protest. If you could make a sign for yourself, what would it say? What rule are you following that you made up for yourself? What parts of your current experience would you protest if you thought you had the time and the ability?

If “nothing is fixed,” why on earth would we expect ourselves to stay the same? How could we possibly trudge on under the same assumptions, the same internal rules, the same traditions? If nothing is fixed, we may very well need to change. If nothing is fixed, we may very well need to think new thoughts, which means we need to start by discovering and finding the old ones. What’s keeping you the same? Are you ready for a little internal revolution? I’d love to help you paint your signs.

Many of my clients come to me when they have a big decision to make. Maybe it’s a job, maybe it’s a relationship start or end, maybe it’s a move or career change. We’ve all got them, big decisions, at least at some point, and it can be daunting to approach that decision. What my clients tend to do, and well, pretty much everybody I know, is to approach the decision with some sort of pro and con list; the lists vary and some get more complex, more of a comparison grid where you can see all the possibilities at once. They gather all kinds of information about all of the elements of the decision. They investigate salaries. They look at housing prices. They find out whether the potential partner wants kids. They examine opportunities in different careers. They look at school performance data. They look on internet forums for firsthand accounts of all of the above. They collect enormous amounts of data.

This past Sunday, my minister brought up the idea of Dataism, the rise of big data in our culture and our economy and our increasing tendency to rely on and consume huge amounts of information and to analyze and attempt to use that data to predict the future in all fields. I see this in my clients and friends. When presented with a fork in the road, the instinct is to gather information. We value information so strongly that our knee jerk reaction is to go get some whenever there is a moment of indecision. The interesting thing about that is that in my own case, and with most people I know and talk to, when these big decisions arise, gathering all of the data doesn’t seem to help people make a decision. It seems, actually, to drown them. They are awash in information and no closer to making a decision than they were when all of their data-collecting efforts began.

Some data analysts might suggest that they are not using the right methods to consider their data. I think the problem is simpler than that. It doesn’t seem simple as someone describes all of the complicated parts of their decision, describes all of the possible outcomes, describes all of the different risk factors, describes the way that trying to absorb all of that data has given them hours of worry and stress. But the truth is that they are usually missing some data. There is a critical piece of information that they’ve failed to collect, and it’s one we are not culturally encouraged to consider very often. They’ve forgotten to check in and see how they feel about the options before them.

When I’m coaching someone, I wait until they are done with their data dump. They’ve described all of the stuff, and then I ask them: “How do you feel about it? What do you want to do?” Most of us are so wedded to our information that we initially respond with another run down of the key points comparing evidence and highlighting pros and cons, and almost without exception this still leads to a shrug and a sigh. I then say something brilliant like: “Take a deep breath. Stop thinking about it. Tell me how you feel about Option A.”  The rest of this conversation usually takes about 10 minutes, because you know what? They almost always know how they feel about it. They almost always KNOW what they want to do. They may want the data to support that, but they know. The move from the question: “What should I do?” to “What do I want to do?” almost always bears more fruit.

That’s when things get really interesting, because that’s when my friend or client reveals that there are many reasons why their preferred option isn’t possible. Me: “Okay, so don’t do it.” Client/Friend: “Wait? What?! You’ve just helped me realize I actually DO really want this!” Me: “So change the question.”

The questions we ask ourselves have everything to do with the outcome we get. “What should I do?” will yield data and society’s ideas about you. “What do I want to do?” gets you your own doggone preference. Finally: “How can I make that happen? What’s the first step?” tears down the barriers that your scared primitive self puts up for you and tells you to watch Netflix in bed with a bag of chips. “How can I make it happen?” allows fresh thoughts, creativity, help from others to play a part. “How can I make it happen?” assumes IT can happen rather from starting from a big, fat NO. Because, hey, what if it can? What if you can have what you want? What if you can be who you want to be? What if it IS possible? Don’t you want to find out? Big change is hard. You need to ask the right questions to get to an answer that will not just be right, but will be right for you, no matter what big data says.

It was miserable hot here on Friday, and I had promised the kids some devoted Mom time. They wanted the pool. I just couldn’t face it, so I pulled my Ace out of my sleeve and we went to see Wonder Woman. I have to preface anything I say about this movie with the fact that while I love movies, I generally enjoy them more at home. The big screen, the loud volume, the explosions, it all gets to be a little much for me. I frequently have my fingers in my ears (or ear plugs if I remember) to dampen the volume. With all of that said, I LOVED THE MOVIE. I especially loved watching it with my 10 year old daughter and seeing her mouth hanging open taking in a female super hero.

There’s a lot I could share from Wonder Woman, but I suspect most of those articles have been written, but there is one moment from the movie that really struck a chord with me (well, okay there were others, but I’m going to pick THIS one). It’s early on, too, so I don’t think I’m spoiling anything. Anybody who goes to this movie KNOWS she’s not staying on the island with the Amazons. This is the moment of the story I want to zoom in on (heh, see what I did there?). Diana has to decide whether to stay in the safety of her island with her people or to go out and challenge the foe that has kept them in hiding for her entire lifetime.

Predictably, her mother would prefer that she stay, especially after getting a preview of the violence that awaits elsewhere. Diana wrestles with what to do, summons her strength and power and decides to go, in the middle of the night, when nobody can stop her. Her Mom, clearly equipped with Amazonian Mom radar, catches her and begs her to stay, to which Diana replies: “Who would I be if I stay?”

I actually gasped in the theater because of how great a question I thought it was. It cuts right to the heart of aligning our actions with the kind of person we WANT to be rather than the kind of person others want us to be OR the kind of person we’ve “always been.” You see, Diana is examining the cost of not choosing to be her biggest and best self. The metaphor is so clear I have to hang out with it for a minute.

So often, when we have a big choice to make, there is risk involved. It could be financial. It could be emotional. It could be just about anything. If there’s something worth thinking about doing, it probably has a potential downside attached to it. And those downsides are so often very easy to identify and quantify. We can spreadsheet the hell out of the pros, and especially the cons. The cons in the story, for Diana, are especially clear as she is standing on the beach where so many of her people were destroyed only hours before. Her mother, as many mothers would – and as many scared voices inside of our heads would, wants her to hide.

It is easier to hide. It is easier to stay safe, whatever that means. It is easier to continue to do what we’ve “always done,” but the cost that Diana calculates that we so often miss out on is the cost of making a choice that goes against who she is at her core, that doesn’t line up with who she believes she can be in the world, that trades vision/ aspiration/ fulfillment for security.

We all face these choices, choices where the voice in our head says: “That’ll never work. You can’t make enough money that way. You have responsibilities! That idea is just too crazy. NOBODY lives like that.”

But what if that voice is only part of the equation? Better still, what if that voice is just plain old wrong, and the only thing that’s driving it is fear? What would be different if you asked yourself: “Who would I be if I stay?” Who would you be if you never took a risk? Who would you be if you always let the fear drown out your sense of purpose? Who would you be if, instead, you dove in? What would be different if you asked yourself: “Who would I be if I stay?” Who would you be if you didn’t listen to what your heart knows is true? What would be different if you asked yourself: “Who would I be if I stay?”

Are you standing on the shore of your own life, arguing with the Mom voice in your head? Are you taking yourself, your heart, your purpose into account? Who would you be? If you’d like some help imagining that journey, I’d love to help.

We are all feeling a little worried and sad over here because my sister’s pooch jumped out of her car the other night, ran across a busy intersection and hasn’t been seen since. We have shared it all over the place on Facebook. My sister and her family put up flyers in the area where this happened. They talked to people. They’ve contacted animal control. No dice so far. And so we try to think of more things to try, and we wait, and we hope.

My daughter asked me what happens if they don’t find sweet little Rey. I explained that the best case (the one I’d like to imagine) is that someone else found her who fell in love with her right away and decided to take care of her forever. I’ve tried holding very positive outcomes in my mind, just in case that makes a difference. I picture little Rey being taken to Animal Control (who knows she is missing). I picture someone reading her tag and calling my sister. I picture her arriving home safe if a little scared. I picture them together.

I picture other things too, though, when I don’t work at it. I picture her lost and scared. I picture her hiding from the very busy and loud part of town where she decided to have an adventure. I picture her being uncertain of what to do because she is young. And when I picture these things, I consciously will her to come out of hiding, to seek help, to use those amazing puppy eyes to get some help from a kindhearted human.

And in that moment of wishing the best for her, I can’t help but think of how we all feel when we are lost. We think we are totally alone. We’ve maybe made a decision that turned out to be pretty terrible in retrospect. We’ve taken a risk that didn’t pan out and now we’re adrift in unfamiliar territory. We feel the loss of what we thought would happen. We feel regret or remorse. We may tell ourselves we’re incompetent or foolish. We hide. We quiet our fear and loneliness any way we can find. We tell people we’re fine but so busy we can’t see them right now. And maybe we even want to reach out and make a change or ask for help, but we’re not sure who to trust or what to do.

If that’s you, if you’re feeling a little adrift, know that I am picturing you right now. I am surrounding you with love and compassion. I am consciously willing you to come out of hiding, to seek help, to find your kindhearted human friends, to know that being lost is temporary and that the way home is always inside of you. The things you learn while you are lost can all be taken home with you, made part of you, in the safety of your heart. I’m here if you need me.