In my “grit lexicon,” therefore, purpose means “the intention to contribute to the wellbeing of others.*
Angela Duckworth

Yes, getting your wish would have been so nice. But isn’t that exactly why pleasure trips us up? Instead, see if these things might be even nicer – a great soul, freedom, honesty, kindness, saintliness.**
Marcus Aurelius

Pursuing pleasure will
always be outstripped and
outlasted by
purpose:
Win/win.

*Angela Duckworth’s Grit;
**Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic.

Often the very quality we think we lack is really our most potent potential.*
Jean Houston

It just barely works … The secret of successful product development isn’t an innovation that bursts forth as a polished and finished product. Instead, it’s sticking with something that is almost useless, nurturing and sharing and improving until we can’t imagine living without it.**
Seth Godin

We are each called,
Some hear this sooner than others, as Viktor Frankl
makes us aware:
It is life itself that asks questions of man …
he should recognise that he is questioned,
questioned by life; he has to respond by being
responsible; and can answer to life only by
answering for his life.^

Towards this, Frankl offers a formula for
a life of meaning, here articulated by Donald Miller:
1. Take action creating a work or performing a deed.
2. Experience something or encounter someone that
you find captivating and that pulls you out of yourself.
3. Have an optimistic attitude toward the inevitable
challenges and suffering you will face in life.^^

These somewhat echo the hero’s journey:
1. The call to adventure.
2. Finding the guide.
3. Be prepared for the challenges.

We may have all our talents and abilities in our ordinary world life,
But the story that lies beneath its surface will ask that we
learn and attempt new ways to use these, so
when we begin tapping into our “potent potential” it
may not look like much at all –
But, as for the product so for our lives:
If we work at what we come to understand as
our responsibility,
It will become everything.

*Jean Houston’s The Wizard of Us;
**Seth Godin’s blog: It just barely works;
^Viktor Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul;
^^Donald Miller’s Hero On a Mission.

In a word, one ought to turn the most extreme possibility within oneself into the measure for one’s life, for our life is vast and can accommodate as much future as we are able to carry.*
Rainer Maria Rilke

Life is the ongoing process of self-making. It is that which continuously changes itself in order to continue being itself.**
David Rome

Rainer Maria Rilke’s “extreme possibility” sounds
very much like Jean Houston’s “quantum partners” and
Alex McManus’ MaximumU;
Once we know what we are capable of it’s difficult to unknow:
We do not just dwell in the universe –
the universe dwells inside us.^ –
Indeed it seems that we lose ourselves if we do not
continue to change, not only that, but we are making
life harder for ourselves:
It is easier to try to be better than you are
than to be who you are.^^

To be better is more than to be increasingly productive,
Although I believe we shall be, but it’s about
exploring possibilities of being and connecting,
For ourselves and with others – “daring speculation,” as
Albert Einstein named the process:
I think that only daring speculation can lead us further
and not accumulation of facts.^

As for science, so for us:
After all, we are science;
We may not want to see our lives as being in
pencil, because we are still rubbing out and
redrawing.

*Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters on Life;
**David Rome’s Your Body Knows the Answer;
^Jean Houston’s The Wizard of Us;
^^Marion Woodman, from Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals.

We live our lives so poorly because we arrive in the present always unprepared, incapable and too distracted for everything?*
Rainer Maria Rilke

*Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters on Life.

We should cherish what we have, we shouldn’t cast it aside in favour of an unobtainable perfection.*
Susan Cain

Inside of us, the child is still running enthusiastically towards a horizon it once glimpsed. Our future life depends on finding this original directional movement in our lives, no matter how far we feel we are in middle age.**
David Whyte

What we have is more valuable than anything else,
It will shape our future when we make some time to uncover who we are and
what we possess – what Jean Houston names our Quantum Partners and
Alex McManus labels our MaximumU,
our personal archetype of fuller possibility:
This is you, with your passion, talents, and energy released;
Age does not matter,
Only the willingness and commitment to discover
and experiment.

Do you feel the passion within, urging you to live the greater story of your life?^

What if you were to gift yourself fifteen to thirty minutes each day for the
next year to take this journey?:
At the moment you can’t imagine what will be revealed,
But I have an inkling, and it’s
transcending.

*Susan Cain’s Bittersweet;
**David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea;
^Jean Houston’s The Wizard of Us.

In some sense man is a microcosm of the universe; therefore what man is, is a clue to the universe.*
David Bohm

A story isn’t about what happens in the world. A story is about what happens in the protagonist.**
Lisa Cron

Until we have a story for the amazing stuff outside of us and
within us, it’s unlikely these wonders will inhabit us in
a life-altering way,
And stories form around our emotional
engagement with whatever phenomenon we’re encountering, so it’s
worthwhile turning towards and noticing what’s happening
in our bodies as well as our heads.

*Jean Houston’s The Wizard of Us;
**Lisa Cron’s Story or Die.

And there’s our tragedy, that we have to resolve all mystery. We can’t let it be. We can’t rejoice in it. We can’t celebrate it. We can’t affirm it as an aspect of our lives. Because, after all, mystery is an aspect of our lives.*
Robert Coles

The self is the ultimate mystery, because no matter where you grab hold, it shifts, expands, evolves, evaporates, and leaks off into the shadows down below and light up above. If myth accomplishes only one thing, it is to expose human beings as multidimensional creatures.**
Deepak Chopra

I ask people to take a journey into
who they are but do not know, appreciating that to do this
only increases their mystery;
None of us is optimising our life –
Although it may seem so on the outside where we’re stretched, short of time, and
ready to snap –
Beneath the surface there are depths and widths to call upon,
A vastness to both discover and develop.

I recently asked a group of educators on their awayday to create
a doodle-image of themselves, and then, for the following week,
To develop this image each day with a text stating
something they are good at;
I am intrigued, then, to find this is Jean Houston’s advice in
her already excellent book The Wizard of Us
(I’m only on page 23 and am loving it),
So I leave this with you,
To create a doodle-image of yourself
(my own is in today’s doodle), and then
develop it over the next week –
Head, head and shoulders, front-on, side-on, full length –
Including a text declaring something that you’re good at –
If I can help, let me know
(that’s why I’m here).

*Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise;
**Jean Houston’s The Wizard of Us.

The mysticism of our seeing and knowing is precisely what our nafs tries to hide from us. Our nafs wants its world to stay fixed, opaque, hostile to deeper vision. At the same time, and paradoxically, the nafs is a creation of our mystical longing for oneness – or as we usually experience it, familiarity.*
James Carse

Every little action toward our Future Self is you more fully being your Future Self now.**
Ben Hardy

The Sufi nafs is the self –
I often speak of the Self as being false or True, whilst
Sufism considers its existence along a continuum of seven stages;^
That we each can grow and become is both exciting
and troublesome,
For whether we believe in god or not, we are both
on the hook and effort is required
for expanding our talent and character:
This possibility overlaps with our mythic life,
The greater story we at times find that
we are longing for:
The old way of doing things are
no longer working. We are now seeking
the emergence of
the deeper story. We are seeking
our mythic lives.^^

*James Carse’s Breakfast At the Victory;
**Ben Hardy’s Be Your Future Self Now;
^Inciting, self-accusing, at peace, inspired, pleased, pleasing, and pure;
^^Jean Houston’s The Wizard of Us.

But if the patient should object that she does not know the meaning of her life, that the unique potentialities of her existence are not known to her, then we can only reply that her primary task is just this: to find her way to her own proper task, to advance towards the uniqueness and singularity of her own meaning in life.*
Viktor Frankl

Attention without feeling is only a report.**
Mary Oliver

Our unique and singular meaning comes to us en route,
As we pay attention to
why this excites us, but not that, why
we are prepared to persevere, even fail, at
that, but not this;
Often requiring that we move from
the familiar to unfamiliar, even the unknown,
There will. be much to be attentive to:
In the new person we encounter, the fresh ideas
in what we read or listen to, the different
experiences we engage in, the new places we
travel to –
We cannot expect to discover the soul-deep meaning
available to all of us by
circling within the familiar.

Life is created by the onwards rush of life over the curved wing of the soul.^

*Viktor Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul; italics to indicate a gender change;
**Maria Popova’s The Marginalian: The Art of Divination: D.H. Lawrence on the Power of Pure Attention;
^Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways.

Silence is audible to all men … She is when we hear inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly.*
Henry David Thoreau

By the pressure of reality, I mean the pressure of an external event on the consciousness to the exclusion of any power of contemplation.**
Wallace Stevens

Here are three powers that can developed and employed by anyone:
Silence, solitude, and slowness –
Allowing for reflection and imagination to be brought to
The increasingly forceful pressure of reality we find ourselves facing:
personal identity, workplace
challenges, relational issues, cyber
crime, climate
concerns, loss of
meaning, political forces, world
events, and everything in between.

*Lewis Hyde’s Common As Air;
**Wallace Stevens’s The Necessary Angel.