Most of us would do better if we became more adept at watching the fire under our work, if we watched more closely the cooking process for nourishing the wild Self. Too often we turn away from the pot, from the oven.*
Clarissa Pinkola Estés

We have not got enough time:
To read the book,
To go for the walk,
To meditate awhile,
To have that conversation,
To finish the course.

It’s more than thirty five years
since Peter Senge published his book**
on systems thinking,
Introducing us to the idea that systems
contain two loops:
The reinforcing one that we are most aware of
and the balancing one
where the problems usually occur.

Every person is a system
with reinforcing and balancing loops:
Once you know who you are
and what you must do,
There can be a temptation
to neglect what aligns you
and feeds your productivity–
What’s in your balancing loop?

The practice
that you cannot not do
gets you up in the morning
and keeps pulling you back
from distractions,
It adds to you
and opens new possibilities–
And tomorrow it will be there again.

*Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run With the Wolves;
**Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline.

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One does not magically get one’s act together – it is a matter of individual choices … And make no mistake: while the individual action is small, its cumulative impact is not.*
Ryan Holiday

Keep in mind that finding your purpose involve uncovering something that has always been within you, rather than discovering something new and alien.**
AleXander McManus

Although we can spend time
working on the negative things
in our lives,
We could try
living towards
our most important
and positive things.

As we identify
our deepest joy
and bring this to
the world’s deepest need,^
We find direction and
occupation and consistency
and grit.

We feel good
when we do good,
So we want to do more–
This will be
our salvation,
Making us strong to deal with
whatever negatives persist.

You are supposed to be generous. You are supposed to be kind. The fact that no one is rushing to throw you a parade is its own compliment in a way. We’re not surprised … because we know you. We know who you are.^^

*Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic;
**AleXander McManus’ FutureU;
^Each sees a different “greatest need”;
^^Ryan Holiday’s Right Thing, Right Now.

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Scarcity of creation and scarcity of distribution have been replaced by a surplus of both.*
Seth Godin

Capitalism is a poor employer
of imagination and creativity,
Producing stockpiles
of talent and stockrooms
of redundancy and landfills of waste.

Yet it is hard to imagine a world where
an overflow of love,
a mountain of unused mercy,
an unused warehouse of care
will ever exist.

Beyond our sophistication,
We rediscover the wildness
of our nature that will not
waste anything
of human creativity and giving.

*Seth Godin’s blog: Small changes to big systems.

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Researchers distinguish between active acceptance and resigning acceptance.*

Experimenting with your emotions helps you move from self-judgement to self-curiosity**
Anne-Laure Le Cunff

A bad night–
Major past mistakes
crowding in on me.

I rushed toward feeling
bad about them, feeling
bad about me.

I thought that I’d learnt
from my errors,
But still they haunted me.

This morning after, I read
how emotions unfold
through four stages:^

Encounter, attention, appraisal, feeling and behaviour–
How, at any stage,
I can bring my curiosity and inquiry.

I cannot go back
but I can go forward
with the time I have left.

An agent of curiosity
continuing to learn,
Living knowledge into wisdom.

*Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s Tiny Experiments;
**Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s Ness Labs newsletter: Experimenting With Emotions;
^The research of psychologist James Gross.

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The Self is not a punitive force that rushes about punishing women, men, and children. The Self is a wildish God who understands the nature of creatures.*
Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Flight from the self allows for avoiding a confrontation with the void of self … We need new types of leisure that allow for contemplation and meditation. To this end, man needs the courage to be lonely.**
Viktor Frankl

May we not run away from ourselves,
There is nothing to fear,
Only a wonderfully plastic being
capable of great compassion,
Who can learn from failure,
Begin again countless times,
Keep dreaming, and, finally,
Bring something wonderful and
beautiful into the world,
Someone’s world.

*Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run With the Wolves;
**Viktor Frankl’s The Will to Meaning.

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The more we unself by widening the aperture to let the world in, the less we suffer.*
Maria Popova

Are you breathing?
Are you here?
Did you just take a breath?
Are you about to take another?
Do you have a habit of regularly doing this?
Gift.
Gift.
Gift.**
Rob Bell

I do not judge,
I seek no opinion,
I will remain open.

I am learning to be open
to the wonder of sunshine
and growing things.

I am realising
wonder does not ask me
to cover great distances.

It is
here and now,
And … oh my!

*Maria Popova’s The Marginalian blog: How to Feel Whole in a Broken World: An Astronaut’s Antidote to Despair;
**Rob Bell’s How To Be Here.

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Unfortunately, those who refuse the call don’t have a life. Either they die, or in trying to lead more mundane lives, they exist as nonentities, what T. S. Eliot called “hollow men.”**
Joseph Campbell

Our human restlessness – our search for meaning, our drive toward extreme adventures, our compulsion to create something of lasting value – these are not separate from longing for genuine connection. Blue moments reveal that our existential quests and our relational hungers spring from the same source.*
AleXander McManus

There are more people
waiting to meet you–
Your adventures
will lead you to them.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote^
about how we are born
with contradictory sets
of instructions:

One is a conservative instinct
for preservation and energy-saving,
The other is expansive,
Embracing risk and exploration.^^

Whilst the former comes easily to us,
The latter demands energy
and may be resisted,
After which it withers, hiding in shadows.

Yet when we respond
to this call, this need, this itch or urge,
There awaits an esprit de corps
With those we meet along the way.

Differing from the communities
we set out from,
Victor Turner preferred to name
these fellow travellers communitas.*^

Just as our hunger to feed our conservative instinct
will include others, so our desire
to feed the expansive will bring us
into deep connection around a common purpose.

Whether at home or abroad,
There is no making of us
without others, our stories being replete
with those who share our days.

*Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss;
**AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments;
^Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Creativity;
^^This is a very simplified version of what Csikszentmihalyi writes;
*^Victor Turner’s The Ritual Process.

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And if I want to know myself, to gain insight into the meaning of my own life, then I, too, must come to know my own story … through our personal myths, each of us discovers what is true and what is meaningful in life.*
Dan McAdams

Culture defeats tactics, every time, and culture is the most resilient component of a system.**
Seth Godin

It’s not that we decide one day
To write a story about ourselves
or not–
We toddled into stories,
Exploring worlds
of “me and everything else.”

We come to find ourselves in
familial
educational
institutional
societal, and
national narratives.

There are more than enough
ideas coming at us to last a lifetime,
To live inside someone else’s life:
We must decide
how to write our own life-myths–
Any other tactic will not work.

You need your story,
I need my story.

*Dan McAdams’ The Stories We Live By;
**Seth Godin’s This Is Strategy.

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To understand the narrative character of one’s own life is therefore to understand its inherent mysticism.*
James Carse

Sometimes a prayerful, painful approach to a difficult day may mean stopping and starting a hundred times until we learn, like a virtuoso, the thorough, attentive, rhythmic presence of the true musician.
David Whyte

The most powerful of stories–
Those with the complexity
and tenacity of a myth,
Form around an experience
of awe and wonder,
Whether awesome or awful.

The story’s power is forged
in talent and grit,
In the struggle
and discomfort
of living our tale into the everyday,
Proffering into someone’s world.

I saw that those who are supposed to be powerless – writers and scholars, grass-roots organisers and movements, visionaries, the disparaged and overlooked – have changed the world again and again.^

*James Carse’s Breakfast At the Victory;
**David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea;
^Rebecca Solnit’s No Straight Road Takes You There.

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I learned this, at least, by my experiment: if you advance confidently in the direction or your dreams and endeavour to live the life you have imagined, you will meet with success unexpected in common hours. You will put things behind you and pass an invisible boundary.*
Henry David Thoreau

None of them has outrun uncertainty. They’ve simply found a way to stop treating it as the enemy. It turns out that not knowing is a necessary part of being alive in the world … Not knowing is part of the adventure.**
Bernadette Jiwa

Your imagination promises some escapade,
But you’ll need to experiment^
to avoid falling into a daydream.

You don’t know where this will end
or even if it will work,
But it’s as though you’ve awakened.

*Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (adapted by Nicholas Bone);
**Bernadette Jiwa’s Briefly blog: On Certainty;
^What would be the smallest iteration of what you’re imagining?

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