Centered Living.

Arthur Boers in his book “Living Into Focus” (which we highly recommend) writes:
“Study after study shows that numerous daily realities contribute to declining happiness and growing depression:
-Commuting
-Watching television
-Spending time online
-Being cut off from nature
-Not having enough friendship
-Living out of sync with natural and biological rhythms
-Insufficient sleep
-Feeling distracted

No wonder so many people pursue better living through pharmaceuticals. Something’s not working. Labor-saving devices make us busier. The faster computers go, the more time we give to them. As highways and cars improve, we drive farther and vehicles become increasingly expensive. Email speeds communications but eats up greater amounts of time. With the ongoing invention of essential devices (even energy-efficient ones), we consume growing quantities of power. . . . . . Many of us sense that there’s something fundamentally awry with our pace of life. We impotently go through days filled with situations and circumstances and demands that feel as though they’re taking us off course, leaving us unbalanced, throwing our lives off kilter.”

In this fast paced, distracted world that we live in, how do we intentionally slow it down to be more present and fill our lives with things that replenish us? What are the activities and places that center, balance, focus, and orient your life? In the LifePlan process we guide a client to name their replenishment cycle, or the things that they need in a rhythmic way to be whole physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.

May we always have the courage and will to fight against a life that is disconnected, disembodied, and disoriented. 

What does death tell us about life?

Last weekend the New York Times published an article that struck a chord in their readers. You can experience that chord if you read some of the 1600 comments at the end of the article.
George Bell was a 72-year-old man who died alone in his Queens apartment, unknowingly, to the rest of the bustling city around him. Each year 50,000 people die in New York and most have family or friends around them to bury them and grieve the loss of their life.

"A much tinier number die alone in unwatched struggles. No one collects their bodies. No one mourns the conclusion of a life. They are just a name added to the death tables. In the year 2014, George Bell, age 72, was among those names.
George Bell — a simple name, two syllables, the minimum. There were no obvious answers as to who he was or what shape his life had taken. What worries weighed on him. Whom he loved and who loved him. Like most New Yorkers, he lived in the corners, under the pale light of obscurity."

The writer suggests that Bell died a lonely death and the readers challenge the assumption that to die alone means you were lonely. The tension raises a question in all of us of what defines a life well lived? George died alone with no family, no one to celebrate his life and an estate worth over half of a million dollars.

We each have to answer for ourselves what we hope life will look like in our latter years, assuming we get there. What will our death communicate about who we are and whom we love? What will the map of our lives reveal?
Read the fascinating article in its entirety here:

Beginnings.

One thing that facilitating LifePlans has taught me over and over is that if we resist movement in our stories we become stuck.  I know.  It seems really obvious.  But it's funny how often we stand still out of fear and then wonder why life feels so unclear.  Sometimes we just need to take a step in some direction and then evaluate if it seems right or of we need to adjust.  There is no shame in making adjustments.  I love what John O'Donahue says about beginnings:

"Sometimes the greatest challenge is to actually begin; there is something deep in us that conspires with what wants to remain within safe boundaries and stay the same. Years ago my neighbor here set out to build his new home. He had just stripped the sod off the field to begin digging out the foundation when an old man from the village happened to come by. He blessed the work and said, "You have the worst of it behind you now." My neighbor laughed and said, "But I have only just begun." The old man said, "That's what I mean. You have begun; and to make a real beginning is the most difficult act." There is an old Irish proverb that says, "Tus maith leath na hoibre." "A good beginning is half the work." There seems to be a wisdom here, when one considers all the considerations, hesitation, and uncertainty that can claim our hearts for such a long time before the actual act of beginning happens. Sometimes a period of preparation is necessary, where the idea of the beginning can gestate and refine itself; yet quite often we unnecessarily postpone and equivocate when we should simply take the risk and leap into a new beginning."  (John O'Donahue, To Bless the Space Between Us)