Turn Every Experience into Opportunity
Connect to be Fully Human and Turn Every Experience into Opportunity. If you’ve been following this year’s Newsletters you know the Rise Up! purpose, month to month, is to answer our lifetime’s most challenging question: “How do we survive and thrive, be reliable and compassionate human beings every day no matter the hour, the barrier to entry, the high hurdle or the bottom-of-the-pit we face? How do we find our True Self, deep, real and authentic and remain positive, courageous and even ambitious, ALIVE in possibility, no matter the experience?”
We’ve learned to Stay; to Identify Ourselves by enlightened Self-Definitions and Be Grateful. In the meantime our world continues to challenge resolve and throw problems our way. We cannot control the world but we can SHOW UP, continue our personal work bravely with consistent self-love and self-care.
We’ve learned to Take Credit appropriately; to balance Gain and Loss with generosity and grace. We become Mindfulness Ninjas practicing mindfulness within and Act, not allowing stagnation to decide our futures. We commit, through the first nine principles, to Be Fully Human, to find personal success whatever that means to us and Turn Every Experience Into Opportunity.
The Tenth Principle, Connect, comes exactly at the right time, asking us to consider the weave of constant relationship and the possibilities available to us when we understand the reality and power of interdependence. Connect and fulfill the promise of what is true; we are ONE within ourselves and we are ONE with the world. Connect authenticity to authenticity and bring forth what creates possibility and opportunity in every experience.
Featured Journal Entry:
Allison has the Hollywood job that makes young entertainment students everywhere envious. “I worked hard to become a movie editor. When you edit film you start by running for coffee for the real editors and directors and even assistants. It takes years to move up to assistant editor; and crazy-long hours indoors, often well past midnight and most weekends when a new film is meeting a distribution deadline. Pretty soon you lose all perspective, and, while this sounds dramatic, I felt like I lost my soul. Then I found Rise Up! It took me several sessions to re-learn to just breathe, STAY, to Question the Definition of Myself and even more time to Face Fear. But when I did I felt authentic again! You could say my spirit woke up after too many years in dark editing bays.”
When we Connect we understand the vital importance of the Golden Thread that weaves our hearts to minds, to emotions and spirits. We experience ourselves as a continuum of finely tuned, always changing, essential elements! We come to understand how not one piece, or element, of ourselves, not one process or part that we identify as “me,” can be separated from another. From that space of authenticity we are able to reach out and Connect the dots that make us part of ALL humanity. Once we are ONE with ourselves and ONE with the world, truly, we see how Every Experience creates Opportunity.
“The deeper I questioned the more I understood I had lost my innate ability to connect my heart to my mind to my emotions. I pushed for one goal, film editor, until I was anxious and worried all of the time. It was the love of story and human connection in movies that made me want to go to Film School! But, now alone most of the time, working crazy hours, I didn’t have a spiritual connection with myself; how could I hope to connect with anyone else? Striving for a title, for a position in the industry I had narrowed my life down to the dry cut of movie edits. I was shriveled up in my editing bay, alone, with no time for anyone else, totally not connected! In the heart of the film industry I thought connected me to the world, I was alone, away from people, life, nature and my own deeper self!”
In order to “Be Fully Human and Turn Every Experience into Opportunity” we Connect ourselves completely to ourselves: mind-body-spirit and emotions. The knowledge and compassion we gain about our authentic selves allows us to Connect to circles of family, friends and community and to the larger world. “Understanding comes first,” and understanding how to Connect: life to health, to compassion for the aches of the world to self-care to work we love, to the generosity of spirit and to our inner process and outer accomplishment, makes us authentic human beings.
Being Fully Human we connect because only then can we be part of the entire context of shared experience. Connect and the next person leads us to the next experience. In EVERY EXPERIENCE our lives expand and OPPORTUNITY grows from the connection. Each new story, every connection, gives us perspective; awakens compassion; educates us beyond the small self. We learn to see POSSIBILITY in all that connects us to a bigger story where we can search for ways to create an authentic, compassionate, peaceful and prosperous world!
Look for Opportunity in Every Experience and commit to Face Fear and Embrace Freedom. Our brains, the energetic engine that creates the very processes of being human, are created and function best when we connect with other beings. The unique energy of connection is the truth of how our hearts, bodies and minds inform behavior and thought. Connection allows us to thrive and our individual talents become expressed! Connect our inner and outer lives, reach out and share, and experience the possibility and opportunity that make our personal dreams come alive everyday.
Refuse the Illusion of Separation! Instead choose to be whole within and send wholeness into the world. This Season, and all year round, commit to Connect!
Featured Exercise:
Stay: The three deep inhales, exhales that allow our hearts and minds to unwind and connect together are always the best way to begin a commitment to SELF-Care and therefore to care for and about others.
Connect should not be a push to compete for “best contribution” or for some goal that isn’t truly a reflection of who we are as Defined by Ourselves. So ask yourself: (in your meditative Stay heart-mind) “what is the contribution that I may make that best aligns with who I am!”
3. Connect works best when our inner life and outer life are truly one! I.E: If you are artist ask yourself: “how can I use my ART to connect?” (That is what my friend Cathy Salser asked herself twenty years ago; click here to see what she created!)
4. Face Fear: We all have some fear around reaching out: fear of failure or being misunderstood or choosing the “wrong” path or “biting off more than we can chew!” BUT if we connect within ourselves the answer will come naturally, out of the internal flow of personal interests, out of the emotional connection of mind to spirit, or from the successes of our own lives.
5. Connect close to home: Connection starts with who and what we know and care about. Click here to check out my friend Nadine Heimann’s amazing contribution to childhood trauma that came to her because of her personal work to heal HER childhood. OR Check out Get Lit that was the creation of Diane Luby Lane, who as a young teacher, devoted to bringing literacy to the her inner city students, saw how her love of poetry and expression could literally change the future of her students!
6. Think SMALL: Don’t start with the BIG idea that is overwhelming in scope. Start with connecting your heart to words: call, write, text a loved one and tell them what they have contributed to you or meant to your life! Make someone’s day: By praying for them; sending a small gift; lighting a candle in their behalf; RECOGNIZING THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS TO YOU! Tell a friend you’ll babysit so they can take a nap; feed their cat while they are on vacation; market for them when they are sick. IT IS THE PERSONAL CONNECTIONS THAT CREATE THE RIPPLE EFFECT OF LOVE, COMPASSION, CARE AND “PAYING IT FORWARD” THAT CHANGE THE WORLD!