What's on Your Mind?

Please share your thoughts with us!  

Our ongoing survey is a way to stay in touch with you.  Please let us know how you are doing in this survey and we'll respond in the next issue of our newsletter or in person.

It's good to be in touch with you!

Your Story

Please share your story with us here.

Getting Personal

The learning we experienced from the May 2008 IAM Summit is still percolating even as most folks involved felt the need to move on to other efforts.

 

What’s funny is that we’re still talking about what happened … the lessons to be learned won’t let themselves be ignored!

 

Some tidbits from Summit participants:

 

·   Musing about why I didn’t speak up about what I wanted.

·   Wondering if I should have participated more in follow-up debriefs.

·   Experimenting with personal power versus collective responsibility.

·   Discussing the ways people protect their hearts and bypass learning.

·   Re-committing to IAM core work, especially Personal Everyday Leadership, Essential Everyday Communications and Career Savvy.

 

For the most part, the IAM collaborators have used the Summit experience to more deeply connect to their passion for transformative work, and get clear about what they really, really want!

 

What's New

Summer! We don’t have much new to report …

We took a break in June to get ready to dive into our new Career Development Program at Lash Group. With everything we’ve accomplished so far this year, the respite feels good.

 

Communications Corner

We are now targeting the end of 2008 for our first delivery of Essential Everyday Communications.

The Communications Corner Column will therefore be on hold until the Fall, when we will dive into final development of this material. But we would still love to hear from you and learn of your communications challenge.  So, please, share your communications challenges with us here and we'll be back in touch on them in the Fall.

Call To Being

A call to being is an opportunity to connect more deeply with the aliveness and possibility that has been awakened in you by reading this newsletter.

In pushing this button, we invite you to the "other side" to clarify intentions, launch them into your larger Life, and open to the delightful certainty that you will be met.

 

 

 

 

Last night, as I was sleeping,

I dreamt – marvelous error! –

that I had a beehive inside my heart.

And the golden bees

were making white combs

and sweet honey

from my old failures.

    ~~Antonio Machado, Times Alone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Write the wrongs that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble. Let go of all emotions such as resentment and retaliation which diminish you, and hold onto the emotions, such as gratitude and joy, which increase you.

                         ~~Arabic proverb

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you don’t feel that you have to be perfect to be accepted, when you are given the freedom to be yourself in every situation, when you can share your heart without risk of betrayal, when being together is more important than what you do … that is when you’re in the presence of a friend. “

                                 ~~ Unknown 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”

                            ~~M. Scott Peck

 

 

 

 

 

Healing Feelings

In the process of developing the IAM, I posed a question to our group of Associates: is sustainable and real transformation possible without feeling and healing? After a short discussion our unanimous and emphatic decision was no, it’s not possible.

In our July 2008 issue of Playing in the Gap! we explore how to invite others to the natural, normal process of healing feelings, in environments where leaving our emotional body at the door is common practice.

Table of Contents

Being Messy 
Learning to Fly with Healing Feelings

Using your feelings to be like Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

 

Being Messy
Learning to Fly with Healing Feelings - by Karen Tax

“We’re free to go where we wish and to be what we are.” ~ Richard Bach

I recently re-read Jonathan Livingston Seagull after my son read and enjoyed it. The story was a perfect reminder to me of why I love transformative work and the resulting freedoms …

and why risking healing feelings is worthwhile.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull, aka JLS, was dedicated to learning how to fly: he wanted to know about every nuance and possibility in the process of flying. For JLS, flying was intense, terrifying, challenging, easy, exhilarating, joyful, edgy, enlivening, delightful, guilt-free, limit breaking - all at the same time. 

JLS wanted "to learn, to discover, to be free" - to fly higher. In "heaven", JLS found others who thought like he did: "for each of them, the most important thing in living was to reach out and touch perfection in that which they most loved to do, and that was to fly." 

IAM transformative work is like JLS learning to fly: practicing everyday whatever it is that you most love to do, so that you see who you already are – perfect in your true nature and Essence.

It was said of JLS: "you have less fear of learning than any gull I've seen in ten thousand years." I equate “fear of learning” with “fear of feeling” – the messiest and scariest part of the transformative process.

Having the courage to feel and learn:

·  allows you to know when you are aligned with your best self … or not

·  provides challenge and opportunity to clarify what you want

·  heals the gap between holding yourself back and allowing your true nature to emerge.

The poet David Whyte said, “You can’t get into the truth of self unless you are in discourse with something [someone] other than yourself.”  Great learning happens when we are in community, in relationship with others – where feelings are sparked and drama is triggered.

Ironically, when we protect ourselves from feeling, we prevent ourselves from learning, growing and healing.

Imagine what would happen if you had the courage to feel absolutely everything that your community triggered for you! With practice, it becomes easy and your resistance to your best self dissolves.

By allowing healing feelings, I have experienced freedom from the fear of:

·  being alone and outcast

·  being bad or wrong

·  being seen: the best and worst of me.

 The result: I have nothing to hide and I am free to fly!

Calling Passion
Adversaries: Life Would be Better Without Them ... Or Would It?  by Diane Craver

You’ve met him or her. They steal your ideas, ridicule you in front of your colleagues, ignore you, compete with you, dazzle the boss with their compliments and get everyone else to do their work – you get the picture. Ugh – life would be better without them … or would it?

When these situations happen to us, what do we do about it? We complain. We take our frustrations out on the people we love. We get even. We become self-critical. We hope and pray this person “gets what they deserve.” We keep ourselves busy so we don’t have to think about it. We may even become apathetic.

We may think we’re stuck, but perhaps we’re not. Let’s start to focus on what we want to heal in our lives and stop focusing on what’s wrong with that person, what they did to us. Let’s start thinking about what that person is teaching us about ourselves? What feelings need to be acknowledged? Where do we need healing? How can we play with it?

One of the best ways I have found for healing is through storytelling. Storytelling allows us to feel the experience and begin to unravel themes in the story that will help with our own transformation. There are many ways of storytelling – journaling, art, music, dance, talking with a friend, praying, and so on.

Feel it, get the information you need, and let storytelling propel you into action. It may be time for an authentic, courageous conversation with that person. It may be time to create some distance. Perhaps silence is needed. Find what works for you and start your journey towards healing and transformation. Maybe this adversary can become a teacher for you so that you can acknowledge your strengths, contributions, relationships, what is good and wonderful about YOU!

Finding Courage
Seeing the Blessings in the Loss of a Friendship - by Lorraine Cohen

For the last several years I have been friends with a woman several years older than me. In many ways we were kindred spirits, in other ways you might wonder what brought us together because of the vast differences. Over the years she has supported me in so many ways.

In the past year some of those differences began to widen. Two months ago we had a falling out and she voiced feelings she had been withholding because she had lacked the courage to express what she’d been feeling for a while. From that conversation, we knew it was time to step away from the friendship and stay open to our paths crossing in the future. We are moving in new life directions and we want different things in a friendship.

People come into our lives for brief periods, perhaps moments, and then they are gone. Some come into our lives and we feel so intensely connected that we expect to be in each other's lives forever...others might remain for a lifetime and beyond. The blessings and gifts they bring to enrich our life experiences are not always apparent especially when we view those experiences negatively.  

I believe people come into our lives to serve us to grow and evolve through the experiences we mutually create. We are all teachers for each other and students of life at the same time. Even in those times of conflict and discomfort, the invitation to discover the hidden blessings and gifts is always there if we are willing to look.

Nothing stays the same forever. Change is a constant in life. No one is to blame or wrong. It isn’t about holding onto to people and things in our life that insures our happiness. We are the source of our own happiness. Regardless of any external situations, we choose to be happy or unhappy.

I could choose to be angry and upset about things that happened in the past between us, ruminate about some things she said that I didn't like, or focus on something to justify our friendship shifting in order to block my feelings of sadness. Instead I choose to feel it all - to let all my feelings hang out without negating anything and making plenty of space to celebrate all the times we shared that were gifts and blessings in my life. I am gratefull for them all. I know I am a better and more courageous person for knowing her.