Celebrate the magic!

"There's no use having a universe, a cosmology, if you don't have witnesses. We are the witnesses to the miracle. We are put here by creation, by God.... We're here to be the audience to the magnificent. It is our job to celebrate."

-- Ray Bradbury

"The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper."

-- Eden Phillpotts

Well, I must be finally finding my seat in the "audience to the magnificent," and my wits must be sharpening just a tad, because the world seems to be exploding in a kaleidascope of fantastic beauty and multi-faceted possibility over this last week, and I am celebrating full-out. I feel like whole new vistas of contribution are presenting themselves and creative ideas are flying back and forth, and it's both massive in dimension and global in scope. For those of you who have interacted with me and stirred this pot this week, I say thank you for your role in this fun. For the rest of you, clarity about what I'm talking about will show up over the next few months. But you have all played a role in being the community that helps me come alive and experience myself fully, and I thank you. I totally believe that there is something in this for all of us who are on this journey together, and I can't wait to share its unfolding.

Know (and express) Thyself.

"I must insist upon telling my deepest truth and sharing my deepest love, especially when that truth and that love carries me across the borders of my own tribe, or I will wither and die in the narrow cold light of my own eyes."

-- June Jordan

I will be speaking at an internal employee luncheon at Shell here in Houston today, as described below through their company Intranet to prospective attendees:

"The Shell Hispanic Employee Network and Vista will be hosting a series of special speaker luncheons to promote and support the professional advance of Hispanic employees within the Shell businesses. The first
presentation, entitled "Coaching in Action," will be given by Jim Spivey of Revolution Consulting on Wednesday, June 19, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m."

To be perfectly honest, I am a little nervous about this meeting. What do I know about the specific issues and challenges facing Hispanic employees at Shell? I have absolutely no background, credibility, or experience within the Hispanic community, at Shell or anywhere else for that matter. Why should these total strangers want to come listen to me? As an added personal complication, when I get scared I tend to try to act like I really know something about my audience, even when I don't. I have a feeling that strategy won't work here, and I'm afraid I might alienate people. Now what?

I asked for guidance about this last night, and God was very succinct in first delivering the above quote to me. Next, he reminded me that the subject of my talk was "Life Coaching and Self-Empowerment," a topic of widespread interest these days, so get over myself about not being Hispanic. He then reminded me that self-empowerment challenges me to answer two important questions in the affirmative in every situation: 1) Have I empowered myself to share my deepest truth with others in a respectful way, even when I feel different and am scared?, and 2) Am I free to share the love in my heart with others wherever I am, under any circumstances? He then suggested that I simply give whoever shows up a brief overview of Life Coaching as I see it, and its possible benefits, within the context of my own self-empowerment. And then he asked me to leave the rest up to Him. Simple enough. I can do that.

How did I get here? Well, I coach a person who happens to be one of the Hispanic employees at Shell who will be attending today. He invited me here on behalf of his colleagues and co-workers. I have supported his self-empowerment within his work and his life, and he appreciates me and wants to share it. I will show up and be fully who I am today, both as an expression of my love and respect for him as my friend and to honor his intended contribution to his fellow employees. This one's for you, B.P.

Keeping the fire burning

"When we work up the passion to follow something wholeheartedly, we blow into life the fire of love within us. This devotion, rather than the object we pursue, is the real goal of life."

-- Neil Douglas-Klotz

As it so often happens, a friend came through with just the right words to capture the essence of the day today. Thanks so much , H., for your timely offering. As stated yesterday, I met with a group of 5 people today who shared a common interest in brainstorming about the possibility of creating a shared professional enterprise or undertaking. They agreed that it would be something that would supply each of them with a creative outlet for their own unique skills and talents, but also would offer them an opportunity to completely be themselves, have outrageous fun with people they enjoyed and respected, integrate their commitment to their families into their work, be consistent with their deepest personal values, and, oh yes, it needed to provide them an abundant life. Although we didn't get to the definitive "it" that they would work together to create, we got a lot of important things captured about the desired nature of the thing (in the words of another member of this community, it needed to be "real and alive") and the process we would follow to go forward in creating it. In planning our next steps, we gravitated toward an idea that was so much fun to talk about that we were all laughing wildly, so completely out of everyone's box, so counter to all of our previous experience or conventional wisdom regarding how to go about creating an enterprise, that it left many of us uncomfortable and not even sure how to describe it to our spouses. Something was clearly blown into life by this conversation, and the quote above gives me some much needed context to provide support to the group. The passion that we each felt sparked today was a sign of something - something so great and wonderful that it scared us all a little. I ask each member of the group to trust that we know exactly what fire was just lit and that we find the courage to keep that fire burning until our next gathering.

About today

"Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have
drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you."

- Richard Bach

The collaborative brainstorming session with CDLPW is today.
They have drawn themselves and each other to this event.
It will be fun to see what gets created as a result.