Experiment: Gratitude

Musing...

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”

― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Charise’s Turn:

One of the first assignments in my fundamentals coaching course was to keep a gratitude journal. We were learning about the relationship of gratitude to happiness and how gratitude is one of the most malleable character strengths because you can increase your capacity for it. You can put it into practice; you can exercise it. What we did was this: write down three to five things we were grateful for each day for a week. For me this was like piecing the day together, and it made an impression.

I haven’t continued to keep a gratitude journal, but somewhere along the way, I’ve learned to experience gratitude as more of a qualitative state, something like reverence. It’s not really about picking out what I’m grateful for, it’s a wholistic gratitude (holistic may be more correct, but I like the whole in wholistic). What do I mean by this? Think of the stitches that together make a tapestry, and each separate stitch contributes to the overall look and feel of it. The tapestry is too large to see in its entirety and it’s continually in the making. Stay with this image…you may find that you are in awe of the magnitude and uniqueness of the tapestry that is, metaphorically, your life. Then...make no  requirements but to be with the immensity of what you are experiencing. Be wowed. “Gratitude is the most passionate transformative force in the cosmos.” -- Sarah Ban Breathnach  

Get Fired Up:

Practice gratitude. 

www.coachingmoves.com 

Experiment: Stepping Stones

Musing… 

"A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something. "~ Frank Capra   

A hunch is like a little nudge – infuse it with curiosity, and it leads you to the next step to explore. Of course, with every new step, fear is on the sidelines, warning you of impending mistakes or failures. When you allow yourself to be pulled forward by the energy of the hunch, you learn to incorporate those “mistakes” (or what I prefer to call them, “fortunate accidents”) into your creative path. James Joyce said “A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.” Follow your hunches and use the “mistakes” as stepping stones to lead you forward.

Kate’s Turn:    

I have been following my hunches regarding creating work I love. I have planted seeds in my conversations as I speak about my passion for creativity. And some take root; for example, a person wants to explore their own creative process, and so enters into coaching with me. I have an idea (hunch) about how my work can take form, and so investigate many options, based on my hunches; some sprout, but quickly expire; others seem to grow for a longer time but fade; and still others bear fruit. Following these hunches could be called trial and error. Statistics tell us that only about one third of experiments work out. So follow many, many hunches to an eventual creative form.

Simultaneously, I am aware of fear on the sidelines, as I consider following a hunch. I see how easily I am willing to try something I already have familiarity with, such as the one-to-one coaching format. But I see how I become a “shrinking violet” to fear as I shy away from a format that promises a learning curve, such as public speaking or leading webinars. I am facing my fear of public speaking by getting support in Toastmasters and learning from my mistakes. I’ve gotten feedback that I have a radio voice presence and should consider doing a podcast. My next stepping stone will be to find a mentor who can support me as I’m on the learning curve of internet technology. I know I need to frame this risk as a learning experience – “let’s just try this and see what happens” – rather than a perfected performance, where fear has the upper hand in paralyzing me into non-action. When I have support and when the steps are feasible, I can ease the tension between a hunch and my fear, and better listen to the something creativity is trying to tell me.

Get Fired Up:

Our entire life is one big experiment to see how the world works – we need to be open to try new things even when results are uncertain…we get many opportunities to respond to unexpected results and learn from them. 
What do you need in order to follow your hunches so you take the next step? What learning can you attain from “mistakes” or experiments that didn’t result the way you had imagined? 

“The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.” ~ Meister Eckhart, 14^th century theologian

www.kroskalifecoaching.com