Friday July 30

I watched Blind Side tonight. Great movie. This has been another week of transition for me. I had an insight after the movie. I have been wishing for the wrong thing most of my life. I have wishing for life to be easy. I have been wanting it to "happen." Somehow it would happen, almost effortlessly. Maybe it partially had to do with being the youngest in the family. Maybe it had a great deal to do with a lack of personal power at key points. Whatever the reason, that is what I wanted. I wanted someone else to do it for me. Someone to discover me.

Sure, I was willing to work hard. I have always worked hard. Truth is that I have worked harder than I should have at time.

So what should I have been wishing for? Actually, that is the wrong question. Asking what I should have been wishing for is a waste of time. I can't change what has already happened. I can only change the future. What am I going to be wishing for in the future?

That life will present me with opportunities to manifest my true greatness and that I will be up to the task.

July 29

Last night Tyler and I crashed in the living room and watched a movie. It has been an extremely busy summer. Drew's wedding, new clients, something on every weekend. Last weekend Chase and I went camping and had a great weekend, but you never sleep as good on the ground as you do in your own bed.

So, we determined on Monday evening that we would crash Wednesday night and watch the next Netflex moving coming our way. We met someone in Athens for sushi and then headed home. The movie was Broken Arrow. It is an old John Travolta and Christian Slater movie from the 90s about a disgruntled Air Force pilot who crashes a stealth bomber intentionally to steal the nuclear bonds and then bribe the government to get them back. We both remembered the movie as a good action packed thriller - mindless blow things up entertainment.

When the movie ended Tyler said, "The acting was terrible. I thought it was a great movie, though, when I was 13." While it was entertaining, Tyler was right. We both remembered the movie as being better than it actually was. Maybe acting , graphics, and pyrotechnics have improved since then, but what we remembered as great was not really as great as we thought it was.

A little like life isn't it. During this year of living intentionally I have realized that I don't want to go back to anything in the past. The memories of how it was are always different than it actually was. I am moving forward to a new future.

On another note, my sister Janice and I were talking yesterday afternoon and I made a comment about a major shift that has occurred during the last month. I have stopped worrying about most things. It is a true manifesting of a different future. I stepped back and realized that during this entire journey, things have always come through. Rather than being consumed by anxiety about the future, I learned to let it go.

Another move is that now there is the thought and focus on forward action, what I want.

July 28

There is an interesting phenomenon that has occurred since I started this process. While I made the emotional commitment to change and took action related to that, things begin to happen. It appeared almost like magic or that money or relationships came at exactly the right time. Whether it was money, relationships, or other things, they started happening after I made an emotional change and then begin to act.

The phenomenon leads to a major question. How much of what happens to us is because we program it to happen? Is it possible that we are actually in control of even more than we thought. (And I have always thought we were in control of a lot.)

In seminary the air was full of discussions about the nature of the universe, God, and who is in control of what. The predominate camps of thought were in the extremes - full control and no current control. God is actually in control of everything like the chess player moving the pieces on the board was one of the common camps. This was particularly popular with the more conservative crowd (of which there were a lot a Southern Baptist Theological Seminary). The other camp was closer to the deist view. God was the celestial clock maker. He built the universe, set it in motion, and then stepped out of the picture.

The middle ground was the concept of the dance. God can't do what he (or she) wants to do alone and neither can we. God is always inviting us to dance. When we say yes and step onto the dance floor, together we can do more than either one of us could do alone. I resinated with that concept for many years.

I am migrating now toward a model that is a spinoff of the dance model. I have not fully thought this through, but I get the sense that God wants us to be co-creators in the universe. Instead of asking the question, "What does God want me to do," the logical question for me now is "who was I created to be?" I was created, and I believe that we are instinctively driver to find meaning in our lives. Therefore, the driving question is not about what someone or something else wants me to do. The driving question is about who was I created to be.

In that train of thought, obedience is about discovery and manifesting, not following. Paradoxically, with good intentions, it seems that in our pursuit of following God in our lives we focused more on submission to someone else's path rather than discovering our path and what that means.

I leave with a thought. I now believe that our one task in life is to discover who we were created to be and then live that out in the time and space that we have with the people that we encounter. When we do that and we do it with gusto, magical things do seem to happen.

Friday, July 23

Transitions are always the hardest part. From a blog perspective, the challenge is working 12 hours a day and still finding the discipline to keep the blog updated. It is a good bit like keeping all of the pieces moving forward.

Latest updates are very good. While the physical fitness goals are off track some and the piano goals are off track some, the business goals are very much on track - which are the most important ones.

For years I have heard it said, and verbalized myself, that when you are ready the teacher comes. I truly belief it now. I have another thing to add to that thought. When you shift your mindset, opportunities begin to come available to you. After I made the decision to live intentionally for a year, I found that some opportunities began to present themselves to me. What is just coincidence, was I creating the opportunity, or was I simply seeing the things that were there all along? I am not fully sure. All I know is that when I got my mind cleared and my heart cleared that I suddently got contacts again that were off the radar screen during the months before.

July 14

Today I worked with someone that has been hired to continue the work that I have developed for new employees with a client. During our meeting there was a coaching moment that enabled me to explain in a simple manner what actually happens when anxiety occurs. You know if you have been reading this blog that I have been plagued with anxiety for many years. I am just mastering life without anxiety so it was exciting to describe what happens in a way that made sense to her and me.

She was a basketball players in high school, so we were using a basketball analogy. We were preparing for a meeting that she was to have with the owner of the company this afternoon. He is a great guy and the project that I have been working on is very important to the future of the company, so I wanted her to be comfortable and confident when she went into the meeting.

We were role playing numerous times. She would get stuck or started rambling and go blank. This happened numerous times. At one point, I realized that there was some anxiety underneath that was creating the blockage. I thought about a descriptor that was at least helpful for her and created some clarity for me.

Anxiety and fear create chatter in our mind. If we are not anxious or fearful, we tend to think clear and know what we need to do. When this happens, the wiring tells our body to do certain things and we do it. This person is a driven individual and applied her driverness during basketball. My guess is that she was a pretty good guard. I asked her what happened when she found herself being guarded by someone who she discovered was better than she was. It obviously created frustration and then anxiety.

In the discussion, I used this analogy. As long as you are confident in your ability and you have practiced things to the point of mastery, when you go in the game your instincts take over. You don't think about what you have to do, you just do it. But if someone is better than you, then it can shake your confident. When that happens, if we get anxious, then we get chatter in our mind. We are no longer thinking clear. The wiring that told our body to do certain things no longer works. When this happens we then start doing something different. We push too hard or we change our rhythm or something else. What has actually happened is that we have changed wires in our brain.

When we are not anxious we have trained our brain to do certain things without thinking. when anxiety happens, though, it is like we move from one wiring which tells our body to do something to another wiring that tells it to do something else. This other thing usually leads to actions that reinforce some negative belief. This is why anxiety leads to less than desirable results. Our wiring is sending signals for us to do something that will not help us achieve success.

July 12

Had a good weekend at Camp Merrie Woode. Caught up with some dear friends. Met on Friday with Yates Pharr at Falling Creek Camp to plan a big father/son weekend we are doing in August. There are a lot of things going on these days. In reflecting back over the past few months, I realize a couple of major changes that have occurred for me.

First, I have learned to finish things. I am still not great at it, but I am definitely better than I was. Second, I have learned to control my emotions instead of letting them control me. This is a huge breakthrough for me. In the past, my anxieties and fears certainly controlled me. I now can recognize when the fear and anxiety is creeping up and take action. Third, I have been able to focus on what I really want to do.

This sounds like such an easy set of things to understand and do, but as with almost all things, it is much easier to say than actually execute.

The major element that is still left to do is learning to take action externally, not just internally. Most as we go thorugh this week.

July 9

This week I have been thinking a lot about prosperity and success. Propsperity, these days, seems to be tied to making a lot of money or having a lot of stuff. I suppose that is one definition of prosperity. But prosperity, in its root sensse meetings growth. When something prospers it grows. It might be a relationship, a non-profit endeavor, a hobby, or a career.

It occurred to me that there are five keys for prosperity or success in anything you do. The first is that you must love what you do and the process to get to it. So, if you really want a relationship to prosper you must love the person and also the things that you do to build the relationship. If you want your career to prosper, you must love what you do and the process of doing it. If you don't love it, it will not prosper.

The second is you must separate your identity and self-worth from whatever you want to prosper. This may seem odd at first, but it is critical. If you have your self-worth tied up in something then it is hard to look objectively at it.

The third is you must be curious about it. What makes it work, how do I do it better, what are the little things that make it work right.

The fourth is you must nurture it. Nothing grows unless you nurture it.

The fifth is you must be persistent. Nothing will prosper unless you keep at it.

See you in a couple of days.