OPI - Opportunity for Positive Impact

Opportunity for positive impact is a high-motivator for many people.

Emphasis has shifted from output to impact – from how many products are sold to how much the products enrich people’s lives in the broader society.

According to Rosabeth Moss Kanter, these 3 things foster OPI:

Mastery: Help people develop deep skills.

Membership: Create community by honoring individuality.

Meaning: Repeat and reinforce a larger purpose.

...Continue Reading

Inspiration

The biggest unmotivator, in my experience, is low expectations. People don't ask enough from themselves and the life they lead.

Life evolves when you set higher aspirations for yourself. In the field of motivation, the highest level is inspiration, the best motivator of all. When people are inspired, they are willing to undergo trials, setbacks, and discomforts because they have such a strong belief in what they're doing. Whatever you might think of religious missionaries, Arctic explorers, and sailors who cross the Atlantic single-handedly, their aspiration gives them endurance, courage, and the ability to overcome hardships.

-- Deepak Chopra

Today's Work

The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.

Furnace

As sure as ever God puts his children in the furnace, he will be in the furnace with them.

-- C.H. Spurgeon

Awareness, Prayer, and Waiting

It had been a long week. Two weeks actually. And, usually Friday nights have ended up being my first chance to breathe, to not complete an agenda, to not anticipate something, to not have to plan for something. This Friday evening was full and most of Saturday, too. ...and still more to do.

My family was gone and it would be a few hours before their return. I started to notice not only my fatigue, but also my longing for something. I recognized this moment; I should do something constructive, I thought.

But, other offers started coming in - watch a movie (not a good one either), get some junk food (and lots of dessert), call someone to come over, and on and on. I wanted something. I was wanting to get away from something. I knew the consequences of the options that were showing up - I have tried those many times before. There had to be an alternative. I knew I needed to turn to something. I knew I needed to turn to God. I went to Walmart instead - Ben & Jerrys (pistachio) ice cream was my goal (in addition to the distraction I was wanting).

I got home and ate the ice-cream and ended up at the same place I was before I went out.

 

I turned to God. It retrospect it was both a "I'll give you a try" and an act of faith, at the same time. Funny how such opposite things could be true.... I prayed and asked for help, I asked for protection, I asked for insight...only to return again to 'help!' I went to bed with a faint sense that I would be more pleased in the morning, if I chose that option than the others.

This morning I awoke a hour later than normal and felt the sunrise coming. I headed out to find it, continuing to pray as I went. God and I talked and He gave me the following:

It is important to acknowledge that you feel something. In fact, it takes something to deny it and this rarely leads to good things...more often than not, it leads you away Me.

It is also important to try to recognize 'what' you are feeling. Noticing that you do, is one thing...exploring what it is, is another.

When you face these things, you then have options to acknowledge what want to do with it. Where will you turn with it? Will you turn to something that will only provide you temporary relief or escape from it or do you want to turn to someone who really cares about you in it - Me.

If you turn to Me, the One who really cares about you, will you then be willing to wait for a response from Me - an answer or the care you need? Or, will you simply turn back in your unwillingness to wait for My care and toward the relief or escape that also feels so available.

Sometimes, you know (and, yes, more than you think), the real care you need requires your ability to receive it. And the truth is, one that I am quite patient with, is that part of your readiness to receive My care comes through your willingness to wait for Me to give it to you - the real care you need and in the perfect time and way you need it. You ask Me for 'help', will you let Me to administrate giving it to you, as you really need it? What if waiting for it, in fact, is part of your ability to become ready to receive it?

It is your pause of desire, as you describe above, that allows Me to care for you. You need to acknowledge, to recognize, to explore, to pray, and then to wait...for Me.

You needed the absence of answer from Me last night, in order to recognize and receive from Me today...what you needed the most to have restored.

I'm not the first guy who has discovered this:

Psalm 27:14
Psalm 130:6
I Corinthians 1:7

He didn't want my activity last night...He wanted me to wait for Him to answer.

The Christian Meaning of Enlightenment

"You can only see what you're told to look for".
"The group you belong to was your identity".
"Religion is always looking for one absolute".
"How you see is what you see".
"Most people do not see things as they are...they see things as 'they' are".
"Religion is often observation...not participation".

-- Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

Questions

Judge a man by his questions, not by his answers.

-- Voltaire

I Deserve

Underneath the statement or belief that I deserve something is something I really want.

Conformity

The opposite of success is not failure the opposite of success is conformity.

-- Earl Nightingale

Thanks, Randy, for this one.

What Matters

It is not how much you do, but how much Love you put into the doing that matters.

-- Mother Teresa

Preparation

If I had nine hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first six sharpening my axe.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Satisfaction

Find satisfaction in Him who made you, and only then find satisfaction in yourself as a part of His creation.

-- St. Augustine

 

Holistic Care: Can We Handle the Truth?

Holistic care is, in fact, most important when it's hardest to do -- when there is a lot that needs fixing. I suppose there may be a holistic way to suture the finger of a healthy, young person lacerated while dicing zucchini, but I doubt it would matter much. It does, however, matter a great deal in complex cases of chronic illness, attendant despair, social isolation, and hopelessness. And at such times, it's really hard!

Here's an illustration, based on any number of patients we've treated over the years. Consider a woman of roughly 70, who comes to the clinic ostensibly to get dietary advice because she wants to lose weight. She is, indeed, obese -- with a body mass index of 32. She has high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes, and is on medication for these. Her husband passed away 4 years ago, and she lives alone. She is lonely, tends toward sadness, and is always tired. She sleeps poorly.

She eats in part because she is often hungry, in part to get gratification she doesn't get from other sources. She does not exercise because she has arthritis that makes even walking painful. Her arthritis has worsened as her weight has gone up, putting more strain on already taxed hips and knees. Medication for her joint pains irritates her stomach, and worsens her hypertension. There's more, but you get the idea.

If you can descend one degenerating spiral at a time, you can reverse engineer the process -- and ascend the same way! In my view, that is what holistic care -- in its practical details -- needs to be; both when practiced by a health care professional, and in the context of self-care- when practiced for you, by you.

For the hypothetical case in question, and innumerable real people like her, reversing a descent begins with one well prioritized move in the other direction.

...Continue Reading

-- David L. Katz, MD, MPH

How to Fix the American Skills Gap

...the idea of graduating from a four-year college in the U.S. is so firmly ingrained in our culture that many of us have trouble envisioning anything else. It seems we send some kids off to college because there is nowhere else to put them. The campus is a convenient, albeit expensive, warehouse....

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-- Jeff Selingo

Fine Work...and Doubt

No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.

-- Max Beerbohm

To Become

We work to become, not to acquire.

-- Elbert Hubbard

At The Core

The most successful companies of the future will be those whose leaders make sure their internal reality matches their external appearance and that put doing the right thing at the core of the business.

-- David Jones, WHO CARES WINS

Little Progress

Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil; our great hope lies in developing what is good.

-- Calvin Coolidge

Peace of Christ

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

-- Colossians 3:15

How do we 'Let the Peace of Christ Rule' in our hearts?  This image on Dawn's site captures the answer perfectly - acknowledging God's Presence with us.

Just By Watching

You can observe a lot by just watching.

-- Yogi Berra

Radiance Of All Powerful Things Combined

There is a significant power in 'presence' - in being with another, in being together.

There is significant power in a lot of things...

We tend to want to name one of them and measure it, in order to elevate it...to 'the most important thing'.  But nothing powerful will completely submit to that effort of ours.  And, that is because we need to discover that many things are powerful, for different purposes and at different times.  Our efforts to summarize eclipse the undeniable radiance of all powerful things combined -- that is, the thing that holds all of them together -- the source of all powerful things, the Source of power.

What To Do

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

-- Susan Ertz

Mindfulness

Alexander Graham Bell, noting how the sun’s rays ignite paper only when focused in one place, advised, “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand." Yet ordinarily our attention wanders, a sitting duck for whatever distraction comes our way – especially when our email inbox alone offers constant distractions that seem urgent, but are just not that important.

Then there’s multi-tasking, which really means switching from one narrow focus to another – the mind cannot hold more than one at a time in what’s called “working memory.” So interrupting one task with another can mean taking many minutes to get your original focus back to speed.

The opposite of multitasking is single-tasking, the ability to bring our focus to bear fully on just what we are doing. It comes to us naturally in those do-or-die times when a deadline forces us to focus fully. But how can we have that full concentration during the rest of our work life – or our life in general?  ...Continue Reading

-- Daniel Goleman

Focus - Well You Don't Say

Finally, someone says something again about the importance of focus:

...it appears that the ability to multitask is more of an illusion, than a bona fide skill. Have you ever wondered who might really be approaching work in the most effective manner? Well, it appears that "paying attention" is still required.

In reality, we should be on a mission to break our multitasking obsession. (I believe that many of us feel obligated to multitask.) While we have the ability to switch between tasks — we do not have the ability to attend to all of them effectively. Recent studies have documented that performance can drop significantly when attempting more than one task, and this becomes more of a challenge as we age.

Research at Stanford has shown that heavy multitaskers have trouble mastering even the simplest of tasks. (In fact, multitaskers didn't do much of anything well.) ...Continue Reading.

-- Dr. Marla Gottschalk

...I've wondered about the impact of focus (or, lack of it) in 'our times', particularly as it relates to habits developed through neural pathways.  It's a challenge not to put a moral judgment on something like this, as us older folks are 'want to do'.  But, either way, it seems we lose something important when we lose our ability to ability to focus...whether that be because of our age, our habits, or our times.

Talking A Good Game About Being Open-Minded

Lots of people talk a good game about being open-minded. But how many of us are truly open to ideas that challenge our most closely-held beliefs?

...we are limited by our beliefs, attitudes and - most importantly - restricted access to information.  Many of us are surrounded by people who share our views. If you are religious, you congregate regularly with people of the same religion. Americans are surrounded by Americans; the same is true in Russia, India, China and Portugal.

...few of us have the courage to SEEK OUT our blind spots. Doing so requires challenging many of our most cherished beliefs. It makes us feel foolish. Why would we deliberately do something our brains are telling us is nonsense?  

-- Bruce Kasanoff

I think Kasanoff nailed this one; worth continued reading...and consideration!

Girded You

Take your burdens, and troubles, and losses, and wrongs, if come they must and will, as your opportunities, knowing that God has girded you for greater things than these.

-- Horace Bushnell

UM vs Minnesota 2013

 

More pics here....

Any Intelligent Fool

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent. It takes a genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.

-- E E Schumacher

This Possibility

We love this possibility (see yesterday's post) - that someone, who doesn't have to, actually loves us.  We love this possibility, in part, because it off-sets another possibility.  One that we most dread.  The possibility that no one really loves us for who we actually are.  We live with a presiding fear that the only ones who do, kind of have to.   In other words, they should.  They're supposed to.  But, below it all is still the unrelenting question; would they, if they didn't have to?

Where does this notion come from?  Why is it so deeply entrenched within us?

Isn't it because somewhere along the line, we have ended up with a conclusion that love is something that needs to be deserved?  At one level, we know this can't be the basis of things, but yet we still largely operate out of this most of the time - that I need to be lovable, in order to be loved.  And, we know that there is much about us that is not...lovable.

But love has a completely different premise, does it not?  Love, in its purest form, is independent of the deserving nature of its object.  It is complete...from the source of the love, not based on the recipient of it.  ...at all.

This is strange.  Unfamiliar.  And yet, in the deepest places of us, it resonates as true.  I am not loved because I am lovable.  I am not loved because of I am deserving of love.  I am loved because another chooses to love me.

This is the impossible realization of love, one that often takes a lifetime to discover.  One that, once realized, perpetuates the truth of love itself - from us, to others.  A mystery.  A marvel.  A sure and true thing.

Love the Notion

When we first 'fall in love', it is hard not to notice that we are mostly in love with the notion that someone, who's not supposed to (like family), actually loves us.

Comparison

Comparison, a great teacher told me, is the cardinal sin of modern life. It traps us in a game we can't win. Once we define ourselves in terms of others we lose the freedom to shape our own lives.

-- Jim Collins, BUILT TO LAST