Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Greetings from the Great North! Once again, I write
to you from a cabin in Ontario, Canada where my family
spends the better part of summer. After an amazingly
busy travel schedule for the past five months, I am
immensely happy to take a breather and return to the
“other” work I love and have little time for while on
the road, writing and workshop design.
What makes this a time of true renewal, aside from
being surrounded by astounding beauty, is the fact that
my time here is punctuated by days - not weeks, or
months, or seasons, but by one day followed by another.
Each day lays out in a lovely consistency of morning,
mid-morning, noon, late afternoon, early evening, ending
with nightfall - each offering different opportunities
for engaging with the world, with others, or for time
alone. Each day arrives bright, new and unlived – a
white canvas awaiting the etching of my thoughts, words,
and actions, offering fresh opportunity to do and be
what my heart most longs to do and be. And even when I
fail to live by my deepest promptings the day before,
that’s okay, because yesterday is gone and today is new
again. I notice that in the wilderness, time is gentle
and kind and forgiving. It seems to move more slowly and
in cooperation with natural human rhythms so rarely
accommodated in our everyday worldly existence.
But is the world really so different in the city, at
the office, or in our homes? Does time exist differently
here? Not really. The same lovely and predictable length
of a day is available anywhere one may venture on the
planet. The world gives birth to a new day at dawn and
releases it from its arms at night every twenty-four
hours – whether we embrace it or not. The truth is that
time does not cease from rolling out in the same
twenty-four hour cycles in ordinary life, what changes
is us and our relationship to time! Somehow we lose our
grasp of the experience of our days and, instead,
inadvertently tumble into the great wave of time that
seemingly moves us in its powerful and unrelenting
current, carrying us from week to week, month to month
or quarter to quarter. But when we cease living from one
day to the next, I fear we lose our grip on the greatest
power available to us as human beings to live the lives
we most deeply and earnestly desire to live – the power
to make daily conscious choices.
While it may feel that at times we are swept up into
a current of time, days are where we actually live. This
is the rhythm that would most wholesomely give shape to
our lives if we allowed our living to be framed within
each new day given to us. A day is precious because it
is essentially the microcosm of a whole life – each one
offering possibilities and promises that were never seen
before. I believe that to truly embrace the full
possibility of life, we are required to engage in a
robust way the possibility of each new day. In the end,
if we wish to change or better our lives, even in small
ways, our hopes and visions must enter the practice of
our days. A day is a sacred place because it is the
vessel into which we pour our lives. How do we approach
the day not as yet another stretch in a winding and
tiresome road, but as a window, a meadow, or entrance to
a holy temple? Here a few suggestions for reengaging the
possibility of each new day:
1. Take heed of the cumulative effect of day to day
actions and choices!
In my newest workshop, “Rekindle the Flame”, I engage
people in examining how they most want to live their
lives in eight essential domains (e.g., work, home life,
time for oneself, etc.) in comparison to their current
investment of time, energy and devotion in each of those
eight areas. People typically find that there is a great
divide between their desired state of satisfaction in
each area and the reality they are presently living. It
is often unnerving for workshop participants to see this
disconnect, until I have them share their results with
other people at their tables. A great sigh of relief and
a burst of laughter always erupt in the room as
participants take pleasure in knowing that they are not
alone in their lives being somewhat out-of-whack. Ah,
but misery does love company!
At first blush, we’d like to attribute the
disjointedness between our deepest values and priorities
and the reality we are living to our circumstances -
bills coming in the mail, work piling up, family
pressures mounting, relationships growing complicated,
etc. What I have come to realize about the disjointed
aspects of my own life, however, is that it is far less
a matter of “life happening to me” than it is the small,
continuous choices that I make over time that have taken
their toll – choices that are made from one day to the
next.
For example, I didn’t gain five pounds because the
food industry added more sugar to their products – and I
didn’t gain five pounds overnight. I gained five pounds
by deciding to order the key lime pie that day when I
was in Atlanta (because after all, they are famous for
it!), and then I had to have a beer with my Canadian
buddies in Calgary, right? When at a birthday party for
a friend or at a wedding, it would be impolite to pass
on the cake? Oh, I can give you a nice juicy
rationalization for the hundreds (thousands?) of small
bites that accumulated into a five pound weight gain!
To get to the root of each of those areas of our
lives in which we would like to see some small change or
improvement, it would behoove us to begin by looking at
how we are living a typical day - the choices we are
making and not making within each twenty-four hour
period. This prompts a great question for the job seeker
or job developer who is not getting the response or
results they hoped for: What needs to change in my daily
actions or strategies that could bring about better
results? What do I need to keep doing, stop doing and/or
start doing that would bring about the results I desire?
2. Take one step and you are different!
I take great solace in the fact that to live in
closer alignment to our values and priorities, we need
not concern ourselves with overhauling our entire lives
- we can simple begin by approaching the present day
with fresh intent. With even the smallest step, we are
changed, we are different because we are no longer
standing the in the space of yesterday. With seemingly
insignificant and incremental changes we give birth to
something new inside us and we are different! That is
one of the sweet things about time. We are forever being
given new opportunities to be and do what we have never
been or done before. It’s like entering a dark room. If
we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it
doesn’t matter if the room has been dark for a day, a
week, or 10,000 years – we turn on the light and it is
instantly illuminated. The light doesn’t care how long
the dark had inhabited the room! The same is true in
human life - it doesn’t matter how long we’ve been
making the sa me mistake or limiting ourselves, as soon
as we act differently, the light is turned on.
This simple but powerful truth hits me every time I
lapse from working out – usually after a long bout
working on the road. I get to feeling a bit funky and
out of shape and then it occurs to me that I really
should go for an ocean walk or head over to Curves, my
local gym. All it takes to get back into the swing of my
workout is that first circuit around the machines and I
am different. With one visit, I abandon my slothful,
sluggish existence and reenter the world of fitness and
well-being.
The idea of “one step and you are different” is an
important point I make in my job retention workshop
based on “30 Ways to Shine as a New Employee”. I stress
that employees should worry less about “having” the
qualities and attributes of valued employees and concern
themselves more with simply “practicing” the qualities
they desire. For example, the new employee who has
always been terribly shy only needs to muster the
courage to introduce herself to one new co-worker and
she has earned the right to move a step away from the
“shy label” as she has moved a step closer to being
assertive. In the same way, the job seeker who has
slowed down in his job search activities need not
belabor those things that went unaccomplished last week
– the day that he picks up the phone again and knocks on
a few doors sets into motion an effective job search
campaign illuminated by the light of his current
efforts.
I think we would do a lot more self-improving if we
concentrated less on “self-improvement” and focused more
on simply being willing to grow and step into the
direction of our heart’s highest choosing one day at a
time.
3. Think step by step or hour to hour.
Since we cannot rewrite history nor live into the
future, if you think about it, our only real duty is in
how we live within each day…one day at a time. But
perhaps even that is too large a chunk of time for the
human brain. There is a long time between our mornings
and our evenings, and there are many stopping places in
between. Bringing attention to how we live moment to
moment, and hour to hour is really more within our realm
of possibility. I can wake up feeling lazy and drift in
a fog all morning, but I can still resolve to move out
into the light of my productivity by afternoon. And even
at the end of an afternoon when I have failed to get
done what I hoped to accomplish, I can still look
towards evening for a spot of time to use in a way that
will allow me to greet the moon with a grin.
It is so easy to become overwhelmed with the
pressures coming at us from all sides. It takes
discipline to train the mind to direct its attention in
those areas in which we actually have control, to
concentrate on those areas of our lives which are within
our direct influence. Swimming in the wider waters of
concerns where we have no control makes for tired arms
and no real progress. We feel as if we are dogs paddling
through our days. By making choices within our smaller
areas of control, we swim the river of time with sure
and solid strokes, concerning ourselves with the part of
the day we are in, rather than those that are past or
still to come.
Whatever we have chosen to do in any given moment, we
need to give our best to that activity and not waste
time and energy worrying about all the things we are not
doing. Doing one thing at a time and doing it entirely,
can then lead us to the next moment of discernment when
we can make new choices. The great part is that every
time we use one moment well, we have increased our power
to use the next moment better. Everything we do
illumines the next step before us. No action needs to be
thought of as an empty one. As Alice Walker wisely
notes, “Every small, positive change we can make in
ourselves repays us in confidence in the future.”
4. Finish each day and be done with it.
What if at the end of each day, we rested in the
knowledge that we did what we could with the time we
had? Surely the day will have allowed for a few blunders
or a few choice absurdities to creep in. So what? Today
is ending and tomorrow is a new day. As a job developer,
this day to day perspective was essential in preventing
my own sense of burnout. Laying out a list of realistic
and doable actions for that day gave me a sense of
accomplishment – regardless of how other people
responded to my actions that day, I would finish the day
knowing that I did what I knew was in my power to do.
This is an important perspective to keep the job
seeker’s spirits up as well.
The idea of embracing the possibilities of a day is
not just about becoming more effective or less stressed,
but a way of experiencing our lives in a deeper and
truer way – making time and space for the kind of
contentment that Andy Rooney writes about in the
following passage: “For most of life, nothing wonderful
happens. If you don't enjoy getting up and working and
finishing your work and sitting down to a meal with
family or friends, then the chances are you're not going
to be very happy. If someone bases his [or her]
happiness on major events like a great job, huge amounts
of money, a flawlessly happy marriage or a trip to
Paris, that person isn't going to be happy much of the
time. If, on the other hand, happiness depends on a good
breakfast, a good day’s work, flowers in the yard, a
drink or a nap, then we are more likely to live with
quite a bit of happiness.” I am immensely grateful for
the “gift of days” that this summer reprieve allows me.
My wish for all of you is that you find a way to the
shore of each day, not being carried away by the current
of time, but rather carrying time in the freshest and
most life-giving stream of your being.
Wishing you many wonder-filled days of summer,
Denise
© Denise Bissonnette, July 2004 (If not used for
commercial purposes, this article may be reproduced, all
or in part, providing it is credited to "Denise
Bissonnette, Diversity World -
www.diversityworld.com." If included in a
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receiving a copy.)
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