by Heather Plett | Jul 7, 2010 | fearless, journey
I made a big scary decision this week about something I’ve been thinking about for a long, long time. (More on that in the weeks to come.) Since then, I have been waffling between excitement and pure unadulterated terror.
I was cycling to work yesterday when one of those terror moments struck. “What do you think you’re doing?” said the voice of fear. “This won’t work, you’re foolish, you’ll fall flat on your face and end up regretting this decision for the rest of your life… blah, blah, blah.” You know the gig – I don’t have to spell it out for you.
But then another voice showed up. A more gentle and yet bold voice. “Remember whose shoulders you’re standing on.”
When I was at ALIA last month, Meg Wheatley asked us a question that has stuck with me since. “What are the fearless things your forbears have done? On whose shoulders are you standing?”
As I pedalled my bike, my fearless forbears lined up in my mind. My Mennonite ancestors who faced martyrdom for their faith and their commitment to pacifism, justice, and community. Those who’d left Russia to come to Canada because they believed in non-resistance and wanted to live in a place where they could claim conscientious objector status in times of war. Those who’d fought the harsh elements to build homes and livelihoods for themselves in Canada. And then my parents who’d uprooted their three small children (I was one year old at the time) to move to a small town where they knew no one but felt a calling to reach out to people there (and I can tell you oodles of stories of the people whose lives they touched).
Suddenly, my decision didn’t feel so risky anymore. “If these people can risk life and livelihood for what they believe in, then I can take a few chances too,” I thought. “They have paved the way for me – cleared some of the rubble from the path long before I even came along so that life could be smoother and more free.”
The fearlessness didn’t end with my forbears. Later that day, I was amazed at how many stories started showing up (randomly, through links forwarded by friends, people’s blog posts, newspaper articles, etc.) about people doing fearless things that surely gave them many, many moments of terror and self doubt. One of my favourites is the story of the family that sold everything to spend three years biking from Alaska to Argentina. Imagine!
And so I ask you today… on whose shoulders are you standing? What brave things have been done in your lineage that make it easier for you to follow your path and face the things that scare you? Or what stories outside of your lineage have inspired you to be a little more fearless?
by Heather Plett | Jul 5, 2010 | Beauty, journey
Sometimes, one doesn’t know what one needs until that elusive thing has been found. And then, when the unrecognizable hunger has been satiated, the soul sings with delight.
That’s how it was yesterday when I arrived at King’s Park on my way to the labyrinth. Even before I reached the labyrinth, I felt the resounding “Yes!” ring through my body. I walked through the flower garden, smelled the roses, heard the twittering of birds, felt the warm sun and the cooling breeze on my face, and knew that I had come to that place where my soul meets God.
This place – the labyrinth and park that surrounds it – has come to mean so much to me. It opens my heart and my mind. It lifts a shadowy veil from my eyes. It helps me see the world anew. It gives me hope and restores my faith.
It is like an anchor – a safe place in the storm.
I have been reading Artful Leadership by Michael Jones of late, and I have been reminded of how crucial silence and solitude are in the work of a leader, artist, or, frankly, anyone who wants to live more deeply and mindfully. We all need to find our places of stillness where our hearts can sing and we are silent enough to hear God speak.
If you haven’t found one of those places lately, what are you waiting for? Go, seek, and find. Rest, be still, wander, breathe deeply, take pictures, write in your journal, pray, listen, whistle – do what you need to do to feel alive and whole.
And then, when you feel that surge of energy and hope in you anew, whisper a prayer of thankfulness for the beauty that surrounds you and the beauty that is in you.
And don’t forget to read between the lines on the petal of an iris – you might be surprised what secrets lie hidden there.
p.s. if you are new here, you might enjoy this little video I made about the labyrinth last year.
by Heather Plett | Jul 2, 2010 | Creativity
Much too late last night, I finished reading Floor Sample, Julia Cameron’s autobiography. Many of you will know Julia Cameron as the author of The Artist’s Way and many other well-loved books on creativity and spirituality.
What struck me, as I closed the book and headed toward dreamland, was how very flawed and human Julia Cameron is. Despite the fact that she is an international guru on creativity and has written umpteen books, plays, film scripts, songs – you name it – she paints a painfully honest picture of herself as a fragile and flawed woman, often on the edge of sanity. She struggled through crippling addiction to alcohol and cocaine, she hopped around the country like a lost gypsy searching for some place that would give her peace, she survived two failed marriages and numerous other ill-fated romances, and in later life she has been dealing with serious mental health issues that have landed her in more than one psych ward.
The remarkable part of her story, though, is that despite the serious roadblocks that could have sidelined her career (or worse – killed her) long ago, she never ceases to believe that she is a writer who has been called to write and share that writing with the world. After hitting rock bottom from alcohol and cocaine addiction, she is mentored toward recovery by people who teach her that she has to admit her weakness and learn to trust God instead of herself. She begins to do so, and discovers that when she puts her life in God’s hands, not only can she stop drinking, but her creativity begins to blossom in a way she never expected it to.
Since then, she has been committed to serving as a conduit for the creativity that flows through her from God. No matter what comes her way – mental illness, relationship failures, etc. – she continues to write and write and write. She never questions that it is her calling and never lets self-doubt get in the way – she simply trusts that this is what she is being called to share with the world.
There are times when surprising art flows through her. Though not musically trained, and convinced that she is “not the musical one in the family”, she begins to hear songs flow through her and she composes them with the help of a small child’s keyboard on which she’s marked Middle C and a numbering system that helps her figure out the notes. (She later – around 50 years of age, I believe – takes piano lessons for the first time.)
I can’t help but wonder how much more creativity would be shared if we all had the same commitment to following our muses no matter what obstacles showed up.
What if we could all put our egos aside and just trust that what is flowing through us has little to do with us and is meant to be shared? What if we no longer trusted those negative voices that tell us we’re not good enough or not wise enough and just created whatever God put on our hearts? What if we believed that our flaws and our failures were merely opportunities for growth and fresh perspectives? What would we be capable of?
by Heather Plett | Jun 30, 2010 | Leadership
This morning I rode my bike to work for the first time in about a week. Soccer schedules and grad dinners and ceremonies kept getting in the way, and so I road the bus for a few days.
Yesterday, on the bus ride to work, I found myself filled with all kinds of sadness and worry – a lousy way to start the day. When I stepped off the bus at the office, I knew exactly what I was missing and why I felt so ill prepared for my work day. I needed movement. I needed fresh air. I needed to pedal my concerns away and spend a half hour in meditative motion before tackling the things that were stressing me out.
This morning, I cycled, and it was good – very good.
I started out this morning feeling stressed out, worried about the annual performance reviews I have to do with my staff this week. It’s no secret that I detest the annual cycle of filling out performance reviews, meeting with each of my staff, going over the same things year after year, and then seeing no significant changes in the staff or in my relationships with them. I’d spent most of yesterday afternoon wrestling with the template and forms I was supposed to use, and I’d finally gone home in defeat. This morning at 8:30 sharp was my first meeting, and I was seriously ill-prepared because I hadn’t gotten my paperwork done.
As I cycled, I tried to give myself the annual pep talk. “Just get through it. Do the stuff you need to do, have the dreaded talk, submit the forms to the HR files, and move on. You can do it! Just like last year and the thirteen years you’ve been a manager before that!”
But despite the pep talk. I was miserable. This wasn’t working. Nobody was gaining anything from this. WHY did I have to “just get through it”?
And then I heard a little voice that sounded a lot like my very own wisdom… “It’s not working, so don’t do it. Scrap the old way. Ignore the HR rules. Do it YOUR way. Make it work for you and your staff.”
What? Do it MY way? Surely this was foolishness! How could I ignore the “right” way to do things? And what could I put in its place?
“Just have a conversation,” wisdom whispered. “Just admit to your staff that you don’t trust the old way of doing things and let them set the tone. Just ask them how things are going and how they’d like to see things go and see what happens when you leave an open space for them to speak.”
It felt like a cop-out – a lazy way out. Just a conversation? No forms, no templates, no agonizing over a prescribed process? Buck the system? Ignore the “right” way to do it?
But… because I’m working harder and harder at trusting the wisdom voice when it pops up, I decided to go for it. At 8:30 this morning, I began the first new version of the “annual conversation” with one of my staff. “The old way’s not working,” I began. “I have very little to say, and no form filled out. I just want to know how you’re doing, how you feel the year has gone, what some of your hopes are for next year, and how I can help you get to where you need to go.”
And then we talked. And talked some more. It was open, it was relaxed – it was truly one of the best conversations I’ve had with this employee in six years. We wrestled with some things, I did some deep listening when he admitted some of his hurts and struggles, I admitted where I could have managed things better, I coached him to see some new paths for some tough relationships, and we never once wrote anything down on a form. It was brilliant, easy, and constructive.
What did I learn today?
- Move! When your body moves, your mind clears and things click into place the way they should. Wisdom likes to show up in an active, engaged body.
- Trust the wisdom that comes from your own experience and your own truth. Don’t let the negative voices over-rule it. (For a truly inspiring post on this, visit Julie Daley.)
- If you need to, overthrow the “rules” and the “right way to do things” and replace it with the way that works for you. In the long run, everyone wins.
- Just because something feels too easy or downright lazy doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do! Sometimes the best results come from the easiest solutions.
- Listen. Don’t fill all the silences with your own words. Just listen deeply and wait for what needs to emerge.
p.s. This is the kind of thing I’ll be writing more of when I launch my new big idea… SOPHIA LEADERSHIP! Watch for it at the end of the summer.
by Heather Plett | Jun 29, 2010 | Creativity, parenting
(Well, at least MY 14 year old girl. I can’t vouch for yours.)
1. Encourage her to begin living out her “I want to be a fashion designer when I grow up” dream a little early by designing her own junior high grad dress.
2. Offer to sew it with her.
3. Don’t change your mind, even when she shows you a sketch of a dress with about a thousand individual petals on the skirt.
4. Encourage her to make bigger petals that will have less chance of leaving your hands irreversibly crippled and your shoulders permanently hunched.
5. Take her shopping for fabric and STILL don’t change your mind even when she picks satin (every sewer’s worst nightmare).
6. Spend endless hours cutting, stitching, ironing, cutting, stitching, ironing… about a hundred petals.
7. Take her shopping again for the accent around the waist and STILL don’t change your mind even when she chooses glitter that you have to stitch in place.
8. Spend a few more endless hours stitching, seam-ripping, cursing, stitching, seam-ripping, cursing the blasted zipper that just won’t go in properly, especially by the sequined waistband.
9. Rue the day you thought an invisible zipper was a wise choice.
10. Finally emerge victorious having conquered the myriad of enemies that took the seemingly innocuous shapes of pink satin, flower petals, silver sequins, “boning” (to keep the top rigid), and an invisible zipper.
11. Dance around the living room with her when she puts it on and both she and the dress look stunning!
12. Take her shopping again and let her pick her shoes.
13. Cringe a little, but smile and pay the bill when she picks the most impossibly high-heeled shoes this side of Sex and the City. Brace yourself (and her) for her father’s less-than-pleased reaction. Justify the purchase by saying “at least it’s only shoes she’s obsessed with and not drugs!”
14. Buy her some fancy jewellery as a surprise, just because you can’t resist helping her complete the picture. (And admit to yourself that this has been more fun for you than you expected.)
15. Keep your promise not to share any photos of The Dress online until after she’s had the Big Reveal to her friends at grad, even though you’re bursting with pride and desperately want to show off all over Twitter, Facebook, and maybe even some random street corner.
16. Consider googling “fashion design competitions for teenagers” because you’re convinced your daughter would SMOKE the competition.
17. Beam with pride all evening at the grad dinner and then the next morning at the school ceremony as you watch her postively glowing when her friends, teachers, friends’ parents, and maybe a few random people on the street ooh and aah over her dress.
