Risking Greatness

I find it hard to believe that it has now been almost 15 years since I was regularly speaking about spiritual intention, a topic for which I still hold passion.  I revealed seven steps to living with intention in my speeches.  One of them was to "risk greatness."  This step described how when we are listening to our inner spiritual guidance system, we will often be guided to do things that don't make sense and which the world around us may judge to be nonsense or crazy.  Yet, when we are guided, we must have the courage to follow through.

Those who have been great in whatever their field happens to be have broken through barriers that others in their professions or their contemporary worlds have judged as crazy. As Monet was giving birth to Impressionist art, he was belittled and taunted as someone who could not paint. Mozart was accused of being mad.

Even famous athletes, who have broken ground in style and performance, have been the object of comedic jabbing.  Dick Fosbury, the 1960s American Olympic high jumper had a unique style of flopping himself over the bar. He broke ground on what is now common in the sport. People of his era thought that Roger Bannister who disintegrate if he broke the four-minute mile, but then within days a number of others passed that daunting milestone.

If we practice whatever is to be our greatness in our own unique way, we risk having people point at us. But, the real risk is to hold back on being as great as the Universe would have us be.  Such risks show up everywhere in our lives, and maybe as often as not, we may be the only ones to know.  Do we hold back on asking a question that may lead to a breakthrough question because it seems like a "stupid question?" Do we stay chained to a job that is limiting our growth just because it is secure? On a splendid spring day, like several we've had recently, do with bridle the urge to jump up and click our heels with the joy of the season? What countless ways do we hold ourselves back?

When we are truly aligned and willing to bring our full courage to bear on whatever is in front of us, we unleash the forces of the Universe in support of us.  I recall when I was writing The Game Called Life. The economy was shaky, and several people had cancelled long scheduled work.  I should have been out drumming up speaking engagements and consulting gigs, but I didn't.  What I knew in my heart was that I had another book to write.  Almost as quickly as I said I was going to do it, the words began to move through me like a wild winter storm across the plains. My hands moved across the keyboard so long and so fast that my wrists ached. The book was finished in five days and, unlike my earlier books, it required little rewrite and editing.

The day after I finished the book, I went to the mailbox, and a check from former coaching clients awaited me. It was around Thanksgiving, and they had been thankful for the work we had done that year.  They sent a thank-you check.  To this day, I recall feeling like the Universe was thanking me for taking time to do what I was called to do rather than what I "should" be doing.

I've been getting clarity about the direction in which I need to be taking my life.  I am about to make a major leap, but it feels to me like the real risk isn't going in the new direction but instead the risk is in not doing it. Over the last few days as I became clearer, people have been coming out of the woodwork to help.  One person, who would have no idea what I was up to, texted me a couple days ago and wanted to have coffee.  When we met, he pointed me to a potential door.

I was channel surfing late at night recently and caught the end of the 1993 film "Grumpy Old Men," a Jack Lemmon-Walter Matthau comedy in which two octogenarians compete for the affections of a slightly younger widow, played by Ann Margaret.  I have seen the movie many times and always love it.  It just so happened this time that as I paused my channel surfing, I caught Jack Lemmon's character say, "The only things in life you regret are the risks you didn't take."

I will have no regrets for not taking risk. Instead, I will risk greatness in whatever small or great way lies on my path.

Living Like It Was My Last Day--Part II

Back in November, I published a post about living each day like it was my last. (11/28/13)  That was really about doing things on my "bucket list"--those things I've known for a long time that I wanted to do before I died.  Earlier this week (3/11) I wrote about not putting off those things that we yearn to do.  I firmly believe in the importance of doing those things in life, and I regret that time seems to pass so quickly that whole years pass in a blink without more of them happening.

Last night's movie viewing started me thinking about living each day like it was my last in a different way.  If this happened to be the last day of my life, what regrets would I want to fix?  Who would I want to forgive? What frayed relationships would I want to mend? To whom would I want to say "I love you?"  To whom would I want to thank or express gratitude?  This train of thought opens a whole new set of possibilities of living without regret. 

I've often wondered why it is that people who haven't spoken to each other for decades wait until their final days of life to mend fences and express regrets.  Of how many hours or days of joy have they robbed themselves?  Why is it that all those years during which the pride was so hard to swallow, but when the end is near, those are the people that they want to see, to touch, and to love again?

I have someone who was very special to me for the first 20 years of my life.  I have only seen her incidentally two or three times since then.  We started talking by phone again 10 years or so ago.  I would really love to see her again.  I would crawl on my hands and knees halfway across the country to see her again, but when I've asked she says, "No."  While I know I am responsible for the frayed relationship in the first place, I ache that my olive branches have been spurned.  She is much older than I, and each time we speak I hope that she doesn't die before I see her. 

As I reflect upon it, there are people that have been special to me and with whom I don't have frayed relationships, but as we've moved around the country, I've just lost touch.  If this were the last day of my life, I'd like to have one last conversation, a good laugh, and one final hug. In these days of the Internet and Skype, there is no reason for me not to have that conversation and laugh, although the hug will be a bit more challenging.  Facebook has given us the illusion that if we connect as "friends," we are really connected, but Facebook knows nothing about an afternoon laughing and spinning stories together over coffee.

In the last 15 hours or so since I've been thinking about this other side of the "last day," I've also thought about unspoken or under-spoken gratitude.  It is funny how people have just popped into my mind that I haven't thought about for decades.  I don't know why, but my high school government teacher has just been hovering there.  I would love to thank her for the passion she instilled in me for government watching.  I went on to major in political science, and politics-watching has been my favorite indoor sport for all of my adulthood...and probably before.  I remember impassioned debates with my father, lingering at the dinner table, when I was still in school.  I don't know if she's even still alive, but I think it is time to reach out. 

I think, too, about nameless people to whom I will be eternally grateful, like that college advisor that suggested that he thought I might find another career more satisfying than accounting, a potential job I'd selected because I thought it would always be secure.  After all, we always need accountants, no matter what the economy is.  EEK!  While I completely value those who do this work, it is mostly so I don't have to do it.  I am sure I would have slit my wrists in a few short months.

Writing this blog seems to have the effect of causing me to start a lot of lists, and while I don't always make it through all of them, the intention gets me started.  Sometimes I do make it through the whole list after a few months: this list seems too important not to write.