There’s often doubt. Giving someone the benefit of that doubt enables us to move forward, and that requires us to realise that our doubt might be unfounded. Systems that assume goodwill create possibility, connection and utility far easier than those that don’t.*
Seth Godin

*Seth Godin’s blog: Assume goodwill.

I am not what has happened to me. I am what I choose to become.*
Carl Jung

a story is an account of a character, in a set of circumstances, facing choices, who undergoes change**
Bernadette Jiwa

To explore your life-in-all-its-fullness,
You must commit to a cause –
Whatever you want it to be;
Perhaps you feel you are already doing
the things that matter most –
Family and work and such –
Though, perchance, you are sensing a greater capacity
within your self, and are sensing
an urge to stretch out into this.

The ancient Greeks called this urge entelechy:
the dynamic purpose that drives us towards
realising our essential self^ –
The future is calling and
because of this you must …

*Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds;
**Bernadette Jiwa’s What Great Storytellers Know;
^Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life.

Time is where eternity unfolds. The contemplative has always recognised the morning as the time to welcome the new day with a sense of creative expectation and openhandedness.**
John O’Donohue

When you dance on the edge of infinity,
there’s always enough …
because you aren’t taking opportunity
from anyone else, you’re creating it.^
Seth Godin

Writer-who-draws Austin Kleon divulges how
The day is the only unit of time that I can really get my head around.
Seasons change,
weeks are completely human-made,
but the day has a rhythm.
The sun goes up; the sun goes down.
I can handle that.^^

A life of 80 years may contain
4,174 weeks or
950 months, but has an incredible
29,220 days,
Each potentially involving
eternity and infinity,
Available to us to be creative with
as we dare to imagine;
When we do the right things
at the right time, we produce
beauty, and
happiness follows.

Of course, we can get it all wrong –
I do on too many days:
We know where we are
but are we really sure we’re not lost?*^ –
But another day is not long in coming, and
we can play again.

James Clear asks a good question:
How should you measure your days?^* –
How might we begin our day if we want to measure
creativity or
beauty or
goodness, rather than
hours put in or
emails deleted or
distractions found to pass the time?;
And what is our wisdom from yesterday that
we bring into today, and what are we discovering today that
we will take into tomorrow?

The two ways of seeing are that of the ego and the soul. The ego is the fixed earth’s agent in us; the soul is the heaven’s. The ego is concerned with centres, the soul lives on the margins, circumferences, horizons. Limitlessness is the natural element of the soul, a dread foe of the ego.*^
James Carse

*Dinah Washington sings What a Difference a Day Makes as a musical accompaniment for today’s blog;
**John O’Donohue’s Benedictus;
^Seth Godin’s The Song of Significance;
^^Austin Kleon’s blog: 30-day challenge;
*^James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory;
^*James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter: How to stick to a new habit, how to handle criticism, and 4 types of wealth.

If you’re serious about changing yourself and your life, you must change your environment.*
Ben Hardy

Yearning comes with the territory of living.**
Jean Houston

We look for the ideal environments,
Often unaware that we carry the possibilities of new territories
within us;
We may have to change an environ as a final option, but,
Before we jump,
We may want to play with our talents
and energies and values a little more,
And see what happens –
Yes, where we are has limitations, but
limitation is the beginning of innovation:
waiting for the world to get things
just right
is exhausting and frustrating,
while taking responsibility for what we might be able to
contribute or lead
can be energising and fun.^

*Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
**Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life;
^Seth Godin’s blog: What does the world owe us?

I must know that I am, at least in part, the very thing I am seeking.*
Richard Rohr

Consciousness begins when brains gain the power – the simple power – of telling a story.**
Antonio Damasio

We are more than a bodies with lists –
What we have,
What we want,
What we’ve done,
What we have yet to do,
What we are free from having to do,
The places we have been,
The people we know –
We tell stories, and this makes things
far far more interesting;
Our success in life is not to be found in a list,
But in our ability to create a compelling story.

*Richard Rohr’s Eager to Love;
**Lisa Cron’s Story or Die.

The poet places himself where the future becomes present.*
Lewis Hyde

Who can remind me that the journey is possible, and offers support when I need it? Who are my teachers, my mentors, my sponsors, my awakeners?**
Roger Dilts

Some position themselves for power whilst
others position themselves for service –
The former can lose their power,
The latter will always be powerful.

*Lewis Hyde’s The Gift;
**Stephen Gilligan and Roger Dilts’ The Hero’s Journey.

When the ego steps out of the way, the soul neither wins nor loses. The soul triumphs over nothing and cannot be defeated. Nor does it comfort us in our losses. These are matters of ego and therefore matters of indifference to the soul.*
James Carse

So your threshold is the point at which you’re going to go into new and challenging territory that you’ve never been in before, and there’s no turning back.**
Roger Dilts

Perhaps there are no thresholds,
There are only the paths that leads us through –
Formed by each self’s “innate exuberance,”*
Often self-unnoticed, yet we have each been walking this way
for all our lives.

*James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory;
**Stephen Gilligan and Roger Dilt’s The Hero’s Journey.

The ego is the dualist in us. It is the habit we have of seeing ourselves over and against someone else … As ego, my wealth, intelligence, moral goodness, social class are what they are in contrast to the person next to me.*
James Carse

In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped.*
Lao Tsu

In the gag, the celebrity asks,
“Don’t you know who I am?”,
The person out of whom they are trying to gain some favour replies,
“Why, don’t you remember?”

To remember who we are,
We must forget;
We let go in order to let come –
An ability requiring a lifetime.

*James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory.

We are being rescaled to planetary proportions, as we become fractally resonant and intimate with our own depths.*
Jean Houston

Dare to go a little bit deeper. Life is too short not to.**
Gabe Anderson

Under-explored and
wild with possibility,
Everyone has deeper within them.

*Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life;
**Gabe Anderson’s blog: A Little Bit Deeper.

In medieval monasteries, the art of copying and illuminating libraries of manuscripts, of putting wisdom and prayer to paper, was seen as a spiritual process in itself.*
Kassia St Clair

It’s not that your personality itself becomes stable but rather that your routine environments and social roles lock you into habitual patterns.**
Ben Hardy

Many a working day hold the sort of elements that can be reimagined as spiritual practices;
You continue to do the work, but are also connecting with what is deeply important to you –
Win/win.

The way you speak to someone,
The composition of emails,
How you use the walk between departments,
Reading information,
Making decisions …
Whatever you identify,
It’s worth contemplating how you might use it
to connect to the deepest you.

*Kassia St Clair’s The Secret Lives of Colour;
**Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent.