Pursuing our passions: big ideas and practical details

I decided the other day that I would write four books in the next five years. Two of these books I’ve already researched well, one is a fun, easy book to put together, and one is a start-from-scratch idea.

Yes, I just started a new job, just agreed to be on another board, and I’m growing my Tending the Fire Within business. Oh, and I’m a single mom with three kids still at home and one out in the world.

But it’s been nine years since my first book came out. I’ve got some things that need to be written. So, here goes. I will keep this blog going as well, albeit with less frequency.

I am excited about all these opportunities, because for me, they all work together and fit so soundly into my life’s work: I connect people. To themselves, one another, and to ideas. That’s why I’m here.

I might be a little terrified of being overwhelmed, too. It’s happened before. But I need to stop just talking about these books and start writing them. I have the support. (Feel free to ask me how the writing is going.) I have the skill. And more to the point, I’m not attached. I’m making plans. Ambitious plans? Sure. I don’t know any other kind.

But these aren’t too ambitious. There are all kinds of people who have written (some famous) books in days or weeks. Five years is a long time. When we want to do something, sometimes the hardest part is getting past all the reasons why we can’t possibly make it happen.

A friend of mine has an effective reminder to herself that she’s using a lot these days. Whenever she starts imagining how challenging something might be to accomplish, she stops herself and says, “No barriers. Drop the barriers.”

This is a woman who has accomplished so much, and is brilliant in her field. Yet she, like most of us, has to resist the thousands of ways that we can sidetrack ourselves from doing what we really want to be doing. From being the person we know we are.

Conventional wisdom says that we have to know our life’s purpose to be happy. That we need to be clear about what we’re here to do. Figure out our passion and life gets a whole lot better, right? 

Okay, so far, so good. It is excellent to get clear about what is going to help us feel alive, connected to our best selves and our loved ones, contributing our unique gifts to the world.

But that doesn’t fully cover this driving need that comes from the human heart. Because it’s in the doing where things get really fulfilling. It may seem obvious, but it’s not enough to know what we ought to be doing. For life to flow with ease and joy, we’ve actually got to figure out how to do the very thing that makes us tick.

I’ll admit to a bias towards doing. I like getting things done. So I will add the caveat here that we all have to figure out how to simply “be” as well. If you’re all jazzed up about the doing and you are puzzled by what “being” is…you may want to consider taking up a meditation practice. I’m convinced that there is nothing that meditating regularly doesn’t help. Meditating makes everything else work better. If we can be easy and loving with ourselves, it is so much easier to be that way with the rest of the world.

Then imagine what we can get done! Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not talking about being a CEO, or making tons of money, or winning an important prize. If fame and power and fortune happen along the way, then they do.

What I’m talking about is fulfilling the thing that calls from the depths of your heart, your soul, your very being. This is the reward that most of us are yearning for. What I’ve seen is that the people who can accomplish so much and stay healthy and kind are the people who have mastered the essential balance between internal and external work.

The internal work is knowing ourselves, taking a continuous survey of our internal landscapes, creating space and time for our hearts to sing, understanding that we are creatures of connection and passion that need ongoing nourishment in these realms.

And the external work is creating the practical, real steps to support the very thing that makes our hearts sing. It’s setting up support and practices that keep us on the right road.

Knowing what we’re here to do, we can line up the rest of our lives to support that one thing. Even doing the laundry and mowing the lawn become service to the thing that we must do and accomplish and contribute.

Not in a frantic, obsessive sort of way. But in a practical way. In a flowing way. In a committed way. In a way that trusts that there is enough time. There is enough energy. There is enough. If we’re tending to the balance of internal and external factors, there is enough.

For me? I’ll make breakfast for my kids, and keep seeing who they are, and love them up. I’ll work hard in my business ventures, giving my best strategic thinking and powerful work to the causes that I’m passionate about. I’ll meditate and do yoga and sleep and eat well. I will delight in my family and friends.

And I’ll write at least a thousand words each day. It’s a practical, real number. It is a manageable number, a realistic expectation.  It might be a pain some days. I may write a thousand words of pure drivel. But something good will emerge. I’ll keep on along this road. I like where it’s going. 

Never underestimate the power of a small group...

"Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead

I recently completed a year-long commitment to self-development work called the Wheel of Initiation. I’m left in wonder at the power of a small group of people to change the world.

We did change the world. For fifteen people, the world became a shade brighter, a bit easier to accept, and a less random and confusing place.

The world became what it has been all along: a beautiful, supportive place where people can see all of us and find us more than worthy of love and respect. Most importantly, we were able to see ourselves in this way.

What this means is that fifteen people will move out into the world differently. We’ll be more connective and less combative. We’ll accept more and resist less. We’ll find ways to get to places where we want to be more and figure out how to stay out of places we don’t really belong. We’ll say yes to life’s sweetness. And when it’s time to say no, we’ll be more likely to do that, too.

Bit by bit, we’ll all become more of who we really are. We’ll contribute to our lives and the world as a whole the very gifts that are ours alone to give.

A while back, I was having a conversation with a friend about hope. He said that genuine hope – hope that is based on concrete and tangible reasons – is hard to come by.

There’s no question that the world offers a wide and deep selection of reasons to feel hopeless. There is so much pain, so much suffering, for the people of this planet. And much of this pain comes from one another. It is easy to drift into disconnection, into despair.

Which is why I’m such an enormous believer in small groups of people, doing the work of self development together. When we are a part of a group that is committed to seeing ourselves and one another, working towards harmony, life makes more sense. Life works more easily, we smooth the way for ease in our other relationships. We don’t get as caught up in our own default patterns that don’t work. Those things that we do even though we know they don’t work. But that, somehow, we do over and over again.

But if we are committed to changing our outlooks, if we can dedicate ourselves to seeing and understanding our inner landscape, and if we have a supportive and loving group to do it with us, slowly or suddenly, life begins to morph. It begins to make more sense. We begin to not take things personally. We begin to understand that we are completely and solely responsible for our experiences. We begin to accept people and situations as they are, and not keep expecting them to be how we would like them to be.

These are tall orders. And yet a group of committed people, well led, delivers every time.

I started joining my first groups when I was eighteen-years-old. I marveled then at how I could do this: I could do this thing called life! This realization after so much pain and hardship. And then, for a while, I imagined that I knew what I needed to know and I could manage life on my own. I left groups for about ten years. Want to guess what happened?

I lost my sense of serenity, my ability to remember that my life is my creation. I created and lived in pain. When I joined groups again, I saw the peace in my life return. Now I know that my life works best when I am working with others. I find the ways to connect and keep myself supported and loved in groups.

These days, I’m a part of any number of groups. Self-development groups, fellowship groups, writing groups, and women’s groups. No matter what I ever think I know, I will always be a part of a group striving to live life well.

These days, I know that to be the best I can be – mother, daughter, friend, lover, writer, woman, person – I need a solid group.

The miracle is that any group of people—committed and well-led—will serve this purpose. It doesn’t matter the history, the depth of pain, the amount of loss, the volume of  hardship that the group has endured. I’ve been in thousands of groups, I’ve led scores of groups. It is always the same: the human being is an adaptable creature. Given love, support, and instruction, we can help one another becoming loving and supportive. Think of it. Any group of people, with any amount of pain, can be transformed.

How’s that for hopeful?