While everyone else was busy setting goals for the coming year I was swimming upstream through the current of last year's memories not quite ready to set aside 2015. It had started out as an exercise to tick off the goals I had accomplished in 2015 and reset goals for 2016. However, there were surprises waiting for me hidden in the reeds of a stream of memories. When I had set the 2015 goal list I had not accounted for surprises that life would dish out. Like most of you, I had set my goals based on what I knew at that moment in time and without much imagination about possible surprises. All of that retrospective thinking led to me contemplate what I had not known going into the year that had turned out to be life shifting. My brain was in high curiosity mode for a week or two as I swam through the memories identifying the surprises.
There was a plethora of life surprises some of which were bad but turned out to be okay in the end, and others that were all goodness. There was new life, plants that bloomed, work that came and went and came again, and so many more surprises. Last December none of us knew we were going to be welcoming another grandson. We were hopeful there would be more because JMH is so amazingly cute and loveable who wouldn't want more of that. But we didn't know that we would welcome AMH to the world in September. And when my poinsettia stopped blooming last year I was prepared to throw it out by Easter because for the last thirty odd years I have never had a poinsettia make it into another season of bloom. 2015 was the year of the poinsettia that would not give up. A trip to the greenhouse in November where rows of poinsettias were being nurtured into bloom inspired me to try to make that sucker bloom again. I put it right up against a south window, began to fertilize it regularly, and turned the pot every few days. Within a few weeks something that had seemed impossible became probable as the coloured bracts started to form. That poinsettia was symbolic of my year.
It was a don't give up year for the poinsettia and me. Through the year I kept circling back to how to bring my work and my life together into alignment. It seemed impossible because the common advice was to keep your work and life separate. Never mix anything spiritual or political into your business. Yet I was bothered by that premise because I felt we were missing a richness to life. All year I struggled with that and it stood in the way of me writing a business blog that should have been second nature. I was not willing to write a business blog that denied my spirituality and my faith, so that meant no business writing until I could resolve that issue in my little old brain somehow.
In the final days of 2015, while I was busy swimming up the stream of memories and trying to do the annual goal setting I had an epiphany. I watched an interview Oprah did with Wayne Dyer on Super Soul Sunday. In that interview Dr. Dyer quoted Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." That quote totally intrigued me. It was my biggest surprise of the year. The truth of it smacked me right up the side of my head. It has sat with me for days now rumbling around in my mind. I was convinced of the truth in the words and challenged to consider how the surprises of 2015 fit into that paradigm. It truly required a paradigm shift for me. I realized that I had always thought of myself as human first with a spiritual aspect. However if I believed that statement to be true, I was and am a spiritual being first.
So for the coming days I am going to try to understand how to be a spiritual being first so that in 2016 I can live my best possible human life which will include figuring out how to blog about business from a spiritual perspective. I'm excited to encounter the surprises that 2016 will hold for all of us. My prayer for you is that you will be open to the surprises, you will be resilient when the surprises are not good, and that you will joyfully embrace the good surprises! Happy new year....
There was a plethora of life surprises some of which were bad but turned out to be okay in the end, and others that were all goodness. There was new life, plants that bloomed, work that came and went and came again, and so many more surprises. Last December none of us knew we were going to be welcoming another grandson. We were hopeful there would be more because JMH is so amazingly cute and loveable who wouldn't want more of that. But we didn't know that we would welcome AMH to the world in September. And when my poinsettia stopped blooming last year I was prepared to throw it out by Easter because for the last thirty odd years I have never had a poinsettia make it into another season of bloom. 2015 was the year of the poinsettia that would not give up. A trip to the greenhouse in November where rows of poinsettias were being nurtured into bloom inspired me to try to make that sucker bloom again. I put it right up against a south window, began to fertilize it regularly, and turned the pot every few days. Within a few weeks something that had seemed impossible became probable as the coloured bracts started to form. That poinsettia was symbolic of my year.
It was a don't give up year for the poinsettia and me. Through the year I kept circling back to how to bring my work and my life together into alignment. It seemed impossible because the common advice was to keep your work and life separate. Never mix anything spiritual or political into your business. Yet I was bothered by that premise because I felt we were missing a richness to life. All year I struggled with that and it stood in the way of me writing a business blog that should have been second nature. I was not willing to write a business blog that denied my spirituality and my faith, so that meant no business writing until I could resolve that issue in my little old brain somehow.
In the final days of 2015, while I was busy swimming up the stream of memories and trying to do the annual goal setting I had an epiphany. I watched an interview Oprah did with Wayne Dyer on Super Soul Sunday. In that interview Dr. Dyer quoted Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." That quote totally intrigued me. It was my biggest surprise of the year. The truth of it smacked me right up the side of my head. It has sat with me for days now rumbling around in my mind. I was convinced of the truth in the words and challenged to consider how the surprises of 2015 fit into that paradigm. It truly required a paradigm shift for me. I realized that I had always thought of myself as human first with a spiritual aspect. However if I believed that statement to be true, I was and am a spiritual being first.
So for the coming days I am going to try to understand how to be a spiritual being first so that in 2016 I can live my best possible human life which will include figuring out how to blog about business from a spiritual perspective. I'm excited to encounter the surprises that 2016 will hold for all of us. My prayer for you is that you will be open to the surprises, you will be resilient when the surprises are not good, and that you will joyfully embrace the good surprises! Happy new year....
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