Archive for July, 2009

The Value of Friends

Thursday, July 30th, 2009
Jess, Toni, Donna, Alicia, Fiona

Jess, Toni, Donna, Alicia, Fiona

An extraordinary event has occurred in my life this year, one that I am profoundly grateful for.

For years I have run on a Saturday from the same spot by the beach. In the beginning there was a group of us who met at 5 am every Saturday morning, summer, winter, rain, or shine. However for various reasons this group disbanded and I found myself running alone. A little coffee shop open right across from where we started running, with a view across the beach and the sun rising over the Pacific. Some of us started to have coffee there, but as the group disbanded, I found myself reading the paper and enjoying the beauty alone.

One day a friend I had known for many years, Donna, asked me if she could join me for the run. Of course, come along. And then another mutual friend of the both of us joined in.(Alicia) Then Donna brought along Toni who had been running on her own but never done any specific run training. Toni has an impish personality that bubbles to the surface and finds fun in the mundane.

That was back in March. After each run we would go to the coffee shop, where we would linger over coffee and laughter and the morning sun.

Jess started to join us, if not for the run, then for coffee. (Jess would often do her own run in training for a certain event, and she is faster than the rest of us.)

Then along came Fiona, mother of five. Another girl with an eternal smile and great sense of humor.

Sometimes we would find ourselves lingering at the coffee shop for up to 2 hours. Many of us had known each other for years, some of us had only recently met. However something magical was happening.

This combination of women who run created an extraordinary synergy, even an alchemy. It started with laughter. We laughed so much strangers would come up to us and say we were too happy for 6.30 or 7 in the morning, and didn’t this kind of activity normally occur at Happy Hour some 12 hours later over some form of alcohol?

Underneath the laughter bonds formed. Bonds of support, love, respect, care. We all felt it. This was not just a group of friends, we had become a group of women who were there for each other. The unique alchemy of this group of women has become something very special.

Our little coffee group has become so magnetically attractive, we now get people joining us just for the coffee. (non runners).

Donna’s partner, Byron, a friend of mine for 15 years, started running with us. He is our only male. We laugh and say that’s because he is a girl! But he fits. I doubt if he could have stayed away. You simply feel better when you start the day like this..with a group of people who revere life and aliveness and are there for each other.

The energy we have and generate is compelling.

In all my years I have had many friends, some of them even these people I am writing about now. But I have never had a group of friends who have bonded at such a deep level, and so quickly.

I have watched this happen with awe and amazement. Why this group of women, and why now? Is it the combination of these particular women? Is it that delicious alchemical reaction that occurs? Or is it because the time was right? Did we all came together when we became open to giving and receiving support? Or was it the laughter? The simple joy of being alive and well and starting a weekend in a beautiful location, being outdoors and sharing news, stories and our life challenges? Or has it to do with the larger context of the world, a return from madness of consumption and getting more, to the simple pleasures of shared friendships?

I believe it is a bit of all of these…that it is the alchemistry, plus our all being in a place in our lives where we are open to support, the giving and receiving, plus the right time and place, plus the love of running, of being outdoors, being fit and alive. And because we have been through life enough to know that what matters most of all is our relationships. That these relationships are our treasures of incalculable and irreplaceable value.

Whatever the cause, it is so perfect and beautiful. I couldn’t imagine starting the weekend any better way and I am deeply grateful and feel incredibly blessed.

We now meet for social events outside of running. And we plan some running holidays together, to distant marathons. And even now, when young Jess goes off to live in Sydney and start the next phase of her career, what we have is timeless and enduring.

The running is the common theme, but the support that lies underneath this is what is so compelling. And the laughter. Oh joy…simply one of the very best aspects of 2009 for me. My Saturday running group.

Thank you Alicia, Toni, Donna, Jess, Fiona..and Byron.

How have your friendships added value to your life?

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Being, Trying and Breaking Through

Friday, July 24th, 2009

The piece I wrote this week on my experience during the 2009 Kokoda Challenge created such a significant and overwhelming response from people. I never set out to strategically inspire people or to move them to tears. I just write as I experience events, with extreme honesty. I am always surprised that when I do go into my raw truth people respond with gratitude. It encourages me to continue. However, I still find the process mysterious. I have observed that it is often the case when we have a gift that the lack of striving means that we tend to discount the gift. Our whole society has been built around striving and achieving, and when we do not have to do either of these, we do not acknowledge value. Yet the great wisdom traditions teach the opposite. To let go of striving and be like water.
And yet there is a fine balance between doing nothing and pushing too hard. There is also a lesson to be learned at the other side of crossing the red line of effort.

William James wrote “Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction.”

The art of living is to know the difference between when we are pushing/trying while spinning on the spot, when we need to push through, and when we need to let go and BE.

I am not sure I have this figured out yet, or indeed if I ever will, however the way I discriminate right action is as follows.

Letting go and being is the ground of all existence. The more we are in this place as the foundation for everything we do, the clearer our sight. There is a part of us that is always connected to the being. It is the part of us that is calm, all knowing, and without any ego. It does not require status, things, stuff, acknowledgment. It does not need to be liked, or seen to be good or right. It is the part of us that rests in truth. When I write my aim is to always speak from this place, and let the words flow.

Pushing/striving/trying has as its driving force a neediness and wantingness that is about I, me, mine…= my ego. I want this deal! I want it to look this way! I want this relationship. I want …I want..I want…I want my writing to be good…When I write to impress, I can never pull it off. It smells of writing to impress. People detect when we are wanting and needing for “I, me, mine” from across the floor. It reeks of trying for false gods.

Going above and beyond in any domain and breaking through in the way William James writes is about a beautiful combination of letting go of MY neediness and wantingness, and applying effort because we intuitively know that we must get to the other side in order to have the essential self, that part of us that rests in being and truth, rise above the small ego bound self who wants to quit, or finds it too hard, or boring, or painful, or …..?

I have written about discipline before. Discipline is about being a disciple unto the self. It is honouring the truth of ourselves, relaxing and letting go AND not being seduced by our own petty ego wants and needs. We all have areas where we are tempted to stray from the path of discipline. It is a noble challenge. The battle is with our own small self. You will know of which battle I speak. It will look like the conversation you have constantly with yourself over such things as eating/not eating certain foods, doing certain exercises or not, not spending, committing to activities that you know will support you in the highest way possible and yet not doing them…

It is the rising above this that William James speaks. When my essential self says yes to what it knows is a YES, and no to what it knows is a NO, then I reach a place of such clarity and alignment. The constant noise of battle goes away.

The interesting question is why do we not do this more…?

In my running, part of the love of running is because daily I get to be challenged around the three domains of being, trying and breaking through. It is a practice in discriminating between the three and learning the different voices. I get to listen to that small part of me that is weak and needy, and can can be very powerful in persuasiveness and seduction.
In my writing I am challenged by the voice who wants me to be lazy and not write. Or to only write when I am in the mood. Or..to do my emails first before I write…ughh!!

I know I am not alone in this epic inner battle. I would love to hear of your battles and how you have risen above them and reached the place of ease and power that William James speaks of.

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You teach What You Need to Learn-my current lessons around money

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

They say you teach what you most need to learn. In the last eight months I have been collaborating with my good friend Laurent Labourmene and he is currently working with my on my branding. Last week he asked me to put together a stream of thinking about what I do, what I hold for myself for the future….and it was during that process of self assessment and inquiry, that a few things came to light.

My life from the beginning has been about truth, integrity and speaking up. My first words were not platitudes of endearment. No..not me. My first words were “bugger, bugger, bugger!” Something about my very young life was making me unhappy, and rather than cry, I vocalised the young warriors call. Now to complete this picture, I was born in Fiji, so my attire at a very young age was a cloth nappy (no such thing as disposables in those days), and that was it. I had white hair that stood up on my head, as if I was permanently in a field of electrical energy. Which I probably was. So if you can picture this very cute mostly naked baby with shocking white hair and expletives coming out of her mouth. The light and the shadow in shocking cuteness!

The inability to stay still or silent when there is work to be done and people and places to fight for has been with me since day one. A lot of my work involves supporting people to find their own voice when they are feeling small and marginalised. To be assertive, and to speak with clarity and truth. Thankfully my vocabulary and skill set around communication has evolved beyond bugger bugger bugger, although occasionally this really is the best response.

So…if integrity is a large part of what I teach, where is it that I continue to learn Integrity? For surely, as the sun goes below the horizon every day, finding the places in me that are out of integrity is where the work is for me. And will be until the day I draw my last breath. The beauty of this is that the quest for my own fault lines in integrity get ever more subtle. I have to pay ever more attention. And every now and then a bolder size lesson falls on my head, and like humpty dumpty, I sit in my own brokenness, and mostly fall in love with the whole perfection of life and its messiness all over again. Pick myself up, get the lesson, be incredibly grateful, and move to the next one….

We are going through a collective humpty dumpty moment around our integrity with money. Each and every one of us is being asked to look at our relationship with money and the places we are out of integrity with our money, investments, work, expectations of entitlement…

My relationship with money has been under serious review for many years now. My belief system and experience has been that money is hard, I do not seem to be smart with money, and that I am not being supported.

Well it hit me the other day that the last statement, the “I am not being supported” statement, is a victim statement. And in my work one of the core principles of our teaching at Syzergy is that victims are not taking responsibility for their lives, and that within the word victim lives the word blame. And..even worse…that there is some whiny entitlement gig going one here. Oh please…I hate that in others…so of course, it was to be found somewhere in me. And there it was..this ugly little part to my character.

Of course the next question is “where am I not supporting others?”…because support needs to live in me before it can come from the outside in. Hmm… well, I have not been supportive in my communication with my daughters father. Not at all. I have played the hero…and denied him genuine communication of situations to aid his ability to support. Not nice.

Around the money is hard bit…well that is a deep seated belief I am not far from uprooting for good. The truth is I have always had the ability to make as much money as I really wanted. I have simply not been prepared to make it in the global casino by investing it in etherial stocks, or off the backs of other peoples ignorance. This is a complex conversation that involves ethics and my understanding of the principle of exchange. Needless to say, I am really OK with the choices I have made to this point around how I have made money.
**through my own endeavors and by supporting others in theirs
**by doing work that adds real value
**for the major part of my life, by doing work that aligned with my values, skills and joy

In reference to my not being smart around money…well there is definitely a part of this that has been true. But not any more. I have spent beyond my means, built debt, and not been responsible. I have created a past by living in a future avoiding the present.

Being smart around money is really quite simple.
*spend less than you earn
*in the process contribute value to all living things and the environment and do this in ever increasing ways (ephemeralisation)
*invest time, love, energy, effort and money in places/people/businesses that match your integrity
*live in the deep knowledge of the abundance of life
*surround yourself with people who are complimentary to your skills and abilities and operate from the same level of integrity as you
*be mindful of the shadow elements…greed wants money for nothing, vanity wants money for appearance, lust wants money to fill an eternal void, scarcity is an insatiable monster that will never be satisfied and always cries for more
*have a reserve because life ebbs and flows..its just the way it is
*borrow only when you are making an investment in an idea that will add even more value  to even more people/places

This morning the final flash in this sequence of thought was that I can be healed around money now. I do not need to wait until all my debts are paid before this happens. I am able to forgive myself for my past transgressions, knowing the lesson is learnt and I am done with it. My beliefs, behaviours and actions are changed. Now!

Next lesson…bring it on…

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Life Doesn’t Turn Out As We Expect It

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

I confess, turning 40 was difficult for me. (It was also quite a while ago.) It was difficult because I expected my life to be different than it was by the time I was 40.

What did I expect? I expected I would be more successful, according to the ways we define success in our culture. Basically, that I would have more “stuff”. At the least a house, actually several, in a few exotic locations, probably a lot more money, even a relationship. I expected that from the outside view I would fit all the categories of a successful self-made woman. I would be famous and wealthy.

Not only could I NOT believe I was 40, I just hadn’t made it to my picture of 40. While I wasn’t devastated, and still managed to function quite well post 40, only now, some 8 (nearly 9) years later, am I integrating the whole experience of life not turning out the way I expected it would.

It is a most curious thing, this business of life. Some people with seemingly little intelligence or effort seem to do very well, others with great talent either hit the jackpot and fly, or spend their life in struggle.

I always thought ~making it~ was about intelligence. Hence I have always derided myself for not being all that intelligent. After all, if I was I would have ~made it~!

I have since realised that it is a little more complicated than that. And in its own way, infinitely perfect.

We have people who are born to wealth and privilege. Not me.

We have people who ride on the back of wealth by marrying it, or stealing it, or seducing it. (These can be the same things, and are applicable to both men and women). This was never my path. There were offers, especially in the early days, from very wealthy men who wanted to set me up in some lovely place, but the independent part of me which has a strong internal sense of not wanting to be owned, just couldn’t choose this path.

We have people whose greatest talent is the talent for business as we know it. These people are naturals. They have the Midas touch. While I am not a slouch at business, it is not my natural arena. As we have also discovered in the last two years, some of these people with the Midas touch have been financial engineer’s, and their wealth has come not from the real economy but from the global casino…the smoke and mirrors economy.

Then we have the ones that have lady luck as their companion. Through no explicit talent or application, they seem to land on their feet every time. I am not bereft of this lucky streak, after all I am an  Australian, and have a lifestyle that is fabulously wealthy in every way, in comparison to being born in parts of Africa, Bangladesh etc. I am certainly not unlucky.

If I look back at my life, would I change anything? Really?

From a three year marriage I have the most incredible gift of my life, my daughter. No matter how bad the marriage was, (And it really wasn’t bad at all, and isn’t now as an ongoing relationship), I have only gratitude for the gift of being a mother, something I never expected to be, and for being a very lucky steward to another human being. Actually, if I really dwell on this alone, I realise without too much effort, that my life is richer in so many ways, because of my being a mother. I certainly have more compassion, more patience and a greater ability to love than I would ever have had by staying childless. These qualities are of such immeasurable wealth. The simple joy I get on a daily basis from being a partner in a child’s life – no money can buy that.

From living my life in free form, not conforming to the traditional, I have incredible flexibility, developed great courage (most of the time), the ability to be immensely creative, and to emerge through emergency. It’s not always the easiest path, as there are times when I am not sure where the next dollar will come from, but come it does. There have been times, particularly as a single parent, when I have suffered momentary paralysis from the fear of lack. However, the reality is that to be in paralysis for more than a moment was simply a luxury I couldn’t afford at all, so it was simply -take a deep breath, get up and create something. Immediately. Get into motion. I have learned to really respect this quality in myself, as many people don’t possess this ability.

Security – what is that? How real is security as we traditionally define it? Having lots of money in the bank, having assets, a pot of gold under the bed? Does this really make us secure? It could all be gone in an instant. My form of security is trusting that I have the ability to create. More than anything though, for me security has been about giving up the fear of lack and scarcity. (This fear is endemic in our society – it runs us, fuels us and feeds us. Most of us don’t have a clue just how much we live with a mindset of scarcity. We fight wars over it, we treat our neighbours badly because of it, our need for excess is a symptom of it. A look at how subtly pervasive scarcity is in our world is a worthy article for a newsletter, deserving a more comprehensive look.)

Under no circumstance am I implying that my way of living is the right way. Could I have had a little more strategy around spending money in my younger years? Sure. Are there other ways. Absolutely. Have I been exceedingly smart with my money? Not always. Do I regret the choices I made? No.

For what reason though do I need a large asset pool? So I don’t have to work? Why would I not work? I simply don’t understand that. I love my work. I love what I do. I love it so much that everything I do is my work. The books I read, the movies I see, the travel I do. It all contributes to my work. Oh joy, for the most part, I get to do things I love. Sure there is wood to be chopped and water to carry, metaphorically speaking, however, these tasks keep me humble. I don’t see myself ever retiring. It would drive me crazy. Besides, there is far too much to do in the world!
The only reason I can see I would have a large asset pool is so I can have more stuff. And stuff requires that it be cared for. Stuff also begs the question..how much is enough? (Another great topic for a future newsletter). Already even those on the lowest level of middle class live in more luxury than any King or Queen of 150 years ago, and in better health.
Some people would say that money buys freedom-the freedom to do as you please. I have seen many people with great wealth and such huge responsibilities to take care of their wealth and their stuff that their freedom is limited. I have also seen people of great wealth who would trade it all for health. I have incredible health, through a great genetic pool and very consistent daily action towards its continuance.
I really do see that my life is very free. If I want something enough, no matter what the price tag, I know I have the resources inside of me to create it. However, I will not do anything to have it. And this is where the greatest distinction lies. That there are things I simply wouldn’t do. There are principles involved here, and my own self disciplines. These principles I am revisiting today, to be sure that they are consistent, appropriate and support me in the highest way possible. Principles such as living in my own integrity. (Big word, “integrity”; very overused in our society I believe, so I use it with care.) Integrity to me means wholeness. Natural design. Living in integrity is doing what I am born to do, in the most complete way possible. Honouring my truth from moment to moment. Acting with consistency on it. This sounds very easy, and is actually not. If it were easy, everyone would do it.

So where does this leave me at 48, looking at my life fast approaching 50? No, my life did not turn out as I expected. My hunch is that the next 50 plus years will also not turn out as I expect. Maybe the lesson is to give up the expectation entirely. Hmm. What am I expecting? Probably more of the same old expectations – wealth and fame. And if this NEVER happens, how will I be with myself in that? Will I continue to consider myself a failure? Or will I realise that I have been fabulously successful. Off the charts successful. I have raised a child almost single-handedly, and she has wanted for little, we have travelled the world, made the very best of friends with some amazing people who are doing wonderful work. I have been true to myself as much as I have been able, and always challenged myself to be increasingly more true to myself. I have learnt that I am perfectly capable to make my way in the world as an independent. I work with the most inspirational clients. I have beauty in my life in abundance. Instead of stuff I have collected experience and knowledge sprinkled with some adventure.

My work now, and probably my biggest of all challenges, is to stay completely centred in my connection to my guidance, daily, hourly, moment to moment, and to honour this, to the letter, small and big. To trust and surrender..and serve.. As my great teacher Buckminster Fuller says:
“So, I simply say, what you can do personally is commit yourself to what is truth. That’s all.”

If I can do this, and do this with my life now dedicated to service to as many people as possible, to support their healthy emergence, then I will have been a success and one of the wealthiest women in the world. To that I will drink deeply.
And hey….bring on the unexpected! …..anything can happen.

I would love to hear from you….has your life turned out as you expected…or has the unexpected brought you gifts beyond your imagination…?

(This is a reprint of an article I published 2 years ago on my newsletter, Dare to Care.)

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