Are you playing a part in your own life?

Filed Under Guest Writer, Idea Bank, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog, leadership | 4 Comments

How many of you identify yourself through a role you play? (whether as someone’s parent or through your job/career).  There is a small but important distinction between quantifying what you do for a living and what you feel your identity is. For example: with its being the season for graduations, as a mother, I see many of my peers who find themselves without their moorings once their children graduate high school. Their entire life and center has been defined as being adjacent and supportive of someone else. I love my daughters more than I can articulate, but you can be a supportive parent without subsuming/conflating your worth into the whole of another’s existence.

There are others who may be graduating from college right now with a degree for a discipline of study that they hate. Perhaps the family pinned their hopes on having someone in the family with a law degree and you may have yearned to pursue botany? Yet here you sit with a freshly minted piece of parchment (and the debt that goes with it), ready to start your life, living for someone else.

Until you learn to name your ghosts and to baptize your hopes, you have not yet been born, you are still the creation of others. Marie Cardinal

Starting off your life’s journey saddled with thousands of dollars of debt, staring down endless years of professional torture, seen in black and white terms, is not something most people would choose willingly, and yet when we live our lives, it’s more difficult to recognize in practice. Our roles are established early, whether through birth order, our resemblance to a relative, our parents’ marriage or lack of a spouse…  The list is literally endless and there are also limitless iterations of models into which an individual may find him or herself.

That being said, we must do the heavy lifting to divest ourselves of others’ expectations and assumptions of us if we are to become an authentic person. This is really difficult to do and usually painful at first. Honestly, I can’t tell you how or where it starts. I was asked that question directly in a meeting earlier this week and I had to admit ignorance of myself.

In terms of self-awareness, I can’t tell you what comes first (using the chicken/egg analogy), awareness of self or the knowledge that there’s a “better way.” The best advice I can give to you is that if you are feeling anything other than excitement and joy about your life or future, pause and ask yourself, “What do I want?” and “Why am I unhappy?”

Ask yourself while driving down the road; while mowing the lawn; doing the dishes; riding on the subway. Then listen for the answer(s). Once you have an inkling that you want something different, now you are ready to throw your life into a season of chaos.

The good news? It’s worth it.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. Carl Jung

Jung’s quote, for me, means that we don’t think our way out of pain, we play our way out of pain. Secondly, and most important, WE are the object we love. In order to change our lives for the better, we must believe that we deserve it. We must understand that living a complete and vibrant life is a necessity. So many of us postpone fulfillment of our potential or dreams because we think that it’s a luxury, or it’s something that we can concentrate on after 1. the kids graduate 2. we get a better job 3. a spouse. …. blah, blah, blah.  It’s not.

By ‘play,’ I understand that to mean that we make of our challenges a game. What ifs and experiments are how we learn. It’s how we learned as children. How many of us looked at a bicycle and drew out the angles of declination, the formula for velocity, mass and inertia before hopping on the banana seat and tearing off around the corner? Maybe one. Possibly two of you.  More than likely, none. You got hopped up on sugar, slung your leg over the bar and started pedaling, crashing along the way and ripping the knees out of a few pair of jeans. Same difference here.

To destroy is always the first step in any creation. E.E. Cummings

This is the chaos part. Take a big, deep breath and pick a figurative cement piling in the foundation of your life. Then pick up a sledgehammer and start swinging. What goes first? Is it a habit? Is it a job? Is it the people you choose to surround yourself with? Trust your gut and go with the one you know you can commit to and complete. This act will begin the metamorphosis that will result in the evolution of you as an authentic, vibrant being. By the way, you’re never done. You are now, in the words of  filmmaker Melissa Pierce, in a state of perpetual beta.

Acceptance of this fact will paradoxically allow you to relax and really enjoy your life – even the scary parts.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. George Bernard Shaw

While you’re hip deep in life rubble, take time to mentally draft the blueprint of what you desire for yourself. Through your imagination, you are the architect of your life. Within this framework, you can plug yourself in to various scenarios: Self as pilot; Self as chef; Self as physicist. We’ve talked in previous blogposts about the usefulness of journals to distill what you love. Other posts have talked about the way our hobbies or natural skills can offer clues as to where our heart lies.

For me, the litmus test was always the concept of time. If I could immerse myself in a task and lose track of time (or the need to eat), that was a big neon sign saying, “This is Who you are.”

It’s very simple, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.- George Bernard Shaw

For what it’s worth, although I truly believe that once you clue in to the fact that you are an evolving being, you will never be “done,” I can also say that (based on my own experiences) “segue portions” of my life occur in two year increments. There’s only so much tensile strength our souls can process within the carbon based restrictions we’re working with on this plane. The soul is infinite; however, the construct into which it is placed has a lot of variables (ie. other people, your own ability to process, the price of tea in China). That’s why we get a lifetime to practice.

When was a time that you felt your life change? Why? How did it turn out?

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Molly Cantrell-Kraig is a woman with drive. Possessing an innate sense of purpose and a pragmatic, solution-based approach to empowering people, she fused these two traits in order to establish Women With Drive Foundation. Based upon its founder’s personal history, Women With Drive Foundation is a means through which Cantrell-Kraig may effect change on both a micro and macro level. By providing women with something as essential as personal transportation in order to transition them from poverty to prosperity, she, through Women With Drive Foundation, seeks to empower women to help them help themselves. Through this action, the individual applicant benefits, as does society as a whole. Follow Molly on twitter as @mckra1g or @WWDr1ve (Women With Drive)

Success: do you have it in you?

Filed Under Connecting Dots, Guest Writer, Idea Bank, Motivation/Inspiration, Outside the Box, Successful Blog, leadership | 3 Comments

Freedom is an inner (as well as a physical) state of being. – @RabbiShaiSpecht

In a previous blogpost, I talked about what inspires me to write. Sometimes, it’s a quote; sometimes it’s my children; other times, it’s people who populate my social networks and in the case of this week, inspiration came in the form of the above tweet.

So many people focus on freedom as being an external factor: the ability to earn a lot of money; the latitude to travel or the ability to pursue a particular career. While there are those who appear to have achieved a level of success any or all of those categories, true freedom actually starts within before it is fully manifested externally.

It is within that we release our fears, our prejudices and our internal beliefs that form our barriers to success and independence. Once we are able to identify our specific barriers, then we have the opportunity to transcend and overcome them.

As human beings we all want to be happy and free from misery.  We have learned that the key to happiness is inner peace. The greatest obstacles to inner peace are disturbing emotions such as anger, attachment, fear and suspicion, while love and compassion and a sense of universal responsibility are the sources of peace and happiness. – Dalai Lama

For most, the fear of failure is the biggest barrier to reaching independence. We may be afraid that we won’t succeed in achieving our goals and so we never try. Closely related, paradoxically, is fear of success. For many, it’s almost worse to succeed. For it’s when we succeed that people count on us. Expectations are created. We fear that we cannot sustain a certain level of success and so we prefer not to try.

In terms of prejudices, some cling to thoughts like “rich people are snobs.” Demonizing people who have what we secretly fear to achieve is a derivation on the Aesop’s fable of the fox and the sour grapes. We deride what we cannot achieve (or perceive that we are unable of achieving).

Attachments come in the form of relationships (either ones we wish to have or ones we wish we could escape). Attachments also manifest as a preferred outcome to any given situation. What’s helpful to realize through all of this is that fear forms the root of all assaults against independence. Fear manifests as anger, a wish to control, suspicion and all other sorts of emotions that restrict our freedom.

A good way to determine what your particular fear centers are and how they rank in order of severity is to list your goals in the affirmative and see which ones really rankle you. For example, take out a sheet of paper and write out positive statements as if you had already achieved them:

1. “I enjoy my job.”
2. “What I do makes a difference.”
3. “I make enough money to satisfy my desires.”

Take note of your gut reaction to these (and other, similar) statements. When you hear your inner voice say, “Yeah, right!” in response, that’s a hint, indicating barriers to those particular gaps in your journey to independence.

Keep this list handy. Next week, we’ll tackle it head on, and work to address the cause(s). As always, please feel free to share any feedback in the comments below. Do you already notice a barrier that you’ve seen represented in your life? How did you overcome it?

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Molly Cantrell-Kraig is a woman with drive. Possessing an innate sense of purpose and a pragmatic, solution-based approach to empowering people, she fused these two traits in order to establish Women With Drive Foundation. Based upon its founder’s personal history, Women With Drive Foundation is a means through which Cantrell-Kraig may effect change on both a micro and macro level. By providing women with something as essential as personal transportation in order to transition them from poverty to prosperity, she, through Women With Drive Foundation, seeks to empower women to help them help themselves. Through this action, the individual applicant benefits, as does society as a whole. Follow Molly on twitter as @mckra1g or @WWDr1ve (Women With Drive)

How do you harness fear?

Filed Under Connecting Dots, Guest Writer, Idea Bank, Inside-Out Thinking, Motivation/Inspiration, Outside the Box, Strategy, Successful Blog, Survival Kit, The Big Idea, leadership | 8 Comments

Alone. That’s a state of being we must learn to identify, accept – even embrace if we are to move forward as individuals. If you’ve been reading my previous blog entries in this series, my comprehension and interpretation of paradox is a common thread that runs through most of them. In order to be a strong partner; one must be able to function alone.

In order to contribute unselfishly and totally to a team or an effort, one must do the work to identify one’s strengths apart from the group. There’s only one way to fully and thoroughly develop one’s autonomy – to be brought to the point where one is separated from all other illusions of community.

That said, none of us is ever really separate. Life really is like Obi Wan says: we are a collective Force. Alter one, affect the whole. However, each of us has the capacity to opt out of the stream of The Whole and to do some individual work in order to become a stronger component of it.

This matter of altering the plane under which one operates is optional. Lots of people elect to operate within the confines of security; the Known. Theirs is an existence that recalls to me the world of The Matrix. A churning pool of folks who eat noodles and pay their taxes. …Which is good, fine and “normal.”

But within this collective are those for whom this level of existence isn’t enough. But how does one break free? How does one become ‘independent?’

These are the sorts of theoretical mental calisthenics that keep me awake at night (and fuel coffee shop discussions – perhaps the two are related <g>).

“Although to be driven back upon oneself is an uneasy affair at best, rather like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials, it seems to me now the one condition necessary to the beginnings of real self-respect.”-Joan Didion

One must go within to change what is without. Much as a seed has all the genetic wisdom contained within itself to become the mighty tree, you have within yourself everything you need to reach your goals. To reach your goals is hard work. Messy work. Usually painful work. But in order to live the authentic life, it is mandatory work.

We learn about ourselves in number of ways. Our first clue is our surroundings and our friends. We draw unto ourselves that which we believe we deserve; that which reflects who we perceive ourselves to be. Our friends are also an indications of our self esteem – in what relation do we place ourselves with our friends? Are we the ringleader? The learner? Until we can recognize not only where we’ve placed ourselves but our intent in so doing, we’re kinda just floating along, cosmically-wise.

Until we can live with ourselves, AS ourselves, we do not have the foundations of self-respect.

…A man goes far to find out what he is–
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.”
-excerpt from the poem In a Dark Time, Theodore Roethke

Here we return to paradox: death of the self begets freedom through itself and God (which can be interpreted by some as Source). But if you’ll notice, the author is able to recognize fear in this process. He notices and discards/rejects it in order to articulate his freedom.

If you’ve ever worked with metal, you know that heat purifies. It burns away dross and leaves the essential elements. Heat, in our lives can be literal, but most of the time, it’s figurative. I heard the quote, “if you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen” from early childhood. By way of comparison, in this particular instance of Roethke’s poem, fear is ‘the heat.’

When it comes to the purifying nature of fear, I don’t know of a better example of a linear, step-by-step explanation of how fear can be harnessed and overcome than the following excerpt from Frank Herbert’s 1965 speculative fiction book, Dune:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” - Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

So you’ve gone through the fire. You’ve faced your yourself and your fears. Now you can, with a clear-eyed perspective, take responsibility for your life and move forward. What’s neat is how your perspective has shifted. If you’ve been paying attention throughout your journey, you’ll note that your path has incorporated all of the elements you wanted to avoid in your life, but, like the elements of the seed, were necessary to your growth.

“…but Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man That he didn’t, didn’t already have.” – America

By striking out on your path alone (but still in concert with others), you have developed your individuality. You are stronger than you were before your journey. Just like Dorothy (whose courage was manifested as a lion; bravery as a tin man and heart as a scarecrow), you have within you the keys to your own freedom. The power is within you, and has been all along.

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