When you get to be older, and the concerns of the day have all been attended to, and you turn to the inner life – well, if you don’t know where it is or what it is, you’ll be sorry.*
Joseph Campbell

If you’re unwilling to interact with uncertainty, then you’ve greatly limited who you are and what you’ve become. You’ve limited your ability to make choices, because all choices involve uncertainty and risk.**
Ben Hardy

When the busyness is over and there’s
time to think about where you find yourself in life,
It’s not too late find your inner life you’re unsure, to
explore what is wanting to grow there.
Mary Ruth Broz and Barbara Flynn describe the
Vision Quest of Native Americans:
a process that encourages people to pause and
create some sacred time and space
in order to reconnect to a
deeper part of themselves and help
unfurl a vision for their lives.^
This quest involves leaving the familiar, moving to
a remote place and forming
a circle of stones within which they remain for
three days, whilst invoking
the Great Spirit.
One quest expression might be to engage in
dreamwhispering in a focused and immersive way:
Three days to find your inner life
and quest.
Drop me a line to
find out more.

*Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers’ The Power of Myth;
**Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
^Mary Ruth Broz and Barbara Flynn’s Midwives of An Unnamed Future.

Do we also recognise that we already have within us everything we need for our own becoming.*
Mary Ruth Broz and Barbara Flynn

Karen Armstrong

Abundance is a state of mind, of
heart, and of
will, before it is a list
of possessions –
A great openness to the more we
find all around us
and within us.

*Mary Ruth Broz and Barbara Flynn’s Midwives of an Unnamed Future;
**Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth.

1. The Untruth of Fragility: Who doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
2. The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings.
3. The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.*
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt

Any human action or experience loses meaning when disconnected to future outcomes or consequences. Nothing exists in a vacuum.**
Ben Hardy

1. The Untruth of Comfort: Allow nothing in your life that makes you uncomfortable.
2. The Untruth of Specialness: There is a universe waiting for you to be at its centre.
3. The Untruth of Self Care: Always look after Number One.
4. The Untruth of Control: You can do anything you want.
5. The Untruth of Death: Ignore your mortality and live as though you’ll never die.

You may have spotted what I’ve done.
These are the the five elemental truths I’ve referred to
for some fourteen years now, but flipped here.
If I believe these untruths then I’m going to be poorly prepared for a world in which
life is hard, I’m not as special as I think, my life is not about me, I am not in control, and
I am going to die.
Better to develop my future self sooner rather than later:
Through humility leading me to the truth of who I am that can be grown,
Through gratitude leading me to the truth that I have much to give,
Through faithfulness leading me to the truth that I can learn much from others and
invent many ways of giving expression to who I am and what I have.
As for the writer so for the future self:
Being a writer is an act of perpetual self-authorisation.
No matter who you are.
Only you can authorise yourself.
You do that by writing well, by constant discovery.^

*Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s The Coddling of the American Mind;
**Ben Hardy’s Be Your Future Self Now;
^Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing.

Writ large, sociality is both a modest and an honest social bond.*
Richard Sennett

Don’t fight with people, study them.**
Austin Kleon

I was asked to sit in on an important meeting as
a listener and doodler.
The room was filled with stories, both personal and group
It highlighted for me how are greatest hope is yet found in
our capability to create new stories for solving our problems:
My own sense … is that there is something
deeply built into us that needs story itself.
Story is such a source of nurture that
we cannot become really true human beings
for ourselves and
for each other without story –
and without finding ways in which
to tell it, create it, encourage younger people
to create their own story.^

*Richard Sennett’s Building and Dwelling;
**Austin Kleon’s blog: A gratitude zine;
^Vincent Harding, from Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise.

Elevate from needing to wanting to knowing.*
Ben Hardy

You may think you have to wait for someone else
to give you what you need, or
you may now believe it necessary to go out and get it yourself, but
what if it’s already in you, and
a little bit of self investment will find it?

*Ben Hardy’s Be Your Future Self Now.

MERAKI adj. Pouring yourself wholeheartedly in to something, such as cooking, and doing so with soul, creativity, and love.*
Ella Frances Sanders

Whatever the pain you can’t get rid of, make it your creative thing – or find someone who makes it for you.**
Susan Cain

Perhaps there is purpose
in the pain you carry, a
burning that may become a fire:
Nothing happens until someone feels something.^

*Ella Frances Sanders’ Lost in Translation;
**Susan Cain’s Bittersweet;
^gapingvoid’s blog: The Secret Key to Greatness.

There are no ordinary people.*
C. S. Lewis

We are all extremely ignorant and limited in our current perspectives, and our Future Selves will see things from a more elevated state.**
Ben Hardy

Each of us is
more than we are, and,
Often,
More than we know.
All around us lies
everything we need to grow when we
enter through humility.

*Ben Hardy’s Be Your Future Self Now.

It’s your choice the extent to which you’ll invest in loss and learning.*
Ben Hardy

the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it**
Jesus of Nazareth

When our now becomes
habitual, then
we need to introduce some future to
stir things up;
Of course, that means we become
learners again and we’ll
make mistakes, but if we can handle being seen as a beginner,
An incompétent(e),
It’s the kind of investment that will lead us to
the more lively life.

*Ben Hardy’s Be Your Future Self Now;
**Matthew 13:46)

Story is a metaphor for life, and to be alive is to be in perpetual conflict.*
Robert McKee

We are kept from our goals not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal.**
Robert Brault

Gift and wound,
We find both within the meaningful life,
And if the wound is finally healed,
Perhaps we will lose the gift
we seek to bring to others:
But true healing and transformation
come from being able to sponsor the wound,
sponsor the demon,
sponsor the shadow …
receiving and accepting what’s there,
but holding it within a bigger framework …
in a way that allows other possibilities to emerge.^

*Robert McKee‘s newsletter: The World According to Writers;
**Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
^Stephen Gilligan and Robert Dilts’ The Hero’s Journey.

Now is the time to free the heart,
Let all intentions and worries stop,
Free the joy inside the self,
Awaken to the wonder of your life.*
John O’Donohue

Pursue clarity instead. 
In the pursuit of clarity, style reveals itself. 
Your clarity will differ from anyone else’s without
your intention to make it differ.*
Verlyn Klinkenborg

To be unclear is to sleep,
Unable to take or make the opportunities that allow us
to bring our boutique contribution into the world
for others.
It’s why taking some time to discover what
lies within
ushers in the day, and with it
direction and alacrity.^

*John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: For an Occasion of Celebration;
**Verlyn Klikenborg’s Several short sentences about writing;
^Drop me a line to find out more about dreamwhispering.