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| | | | | ISSN
1943-8133
Volume 2009-04, Issue 1
April 13,
2009
We are pleased to have
you on our mailing list. Manage your subscription at the end of the
newsletter. | |
| | | |  | Greetings,
Happy Spring!
Despite recent snows in the U.S. Northeast, Midwest and Rockies (where
we’re not really
surprised), it is trying to be Spring again in the northern
hemisphere. It is a time of renewal; one that reminds us to
focus on hope and optimism. For anyone thinking about what
legacy their life and work (or future work) represents, these are
necessary ingredients to spur us to action.
There is also plenty that needs to be done, which can be incredibly
motivating when it is not overwhelming. This issue includes
some resources how to deal with that overwhelm.
This
time of year is also a celebration of our beautiful planet
Earth. My personal legacy includes a focus on protection and
preservation of wild and natural areas, terrestrial and aquatic, and in
future issues I’ll include some stories about that.
But April brings with it some interesting celebrations and historical
events that may stimulate your th inking
about what needs to be done, and what may interest you enough to take
action.
It’s beautiful here this time
of year in my Florida Keys home, and yet even in an area as pristine as
a national marine sanctuary we have our challenges – with
over-development and water quality issues, and too much reliance on
fossil fuels (in the Sunshine State of all places).
There’s good work to be contributed even in paradise
…
Cheers,
Dolly
PS – If you’d like to
consider your own legacy further, take our Legacy
Story Quiz.
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| | | |  | "Never
forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren't
any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you
wouldn't be here in the first place."
-
R. Buckminster Fuller
"The
heart is the chief feature of a functioning mind."
-
Frank Lloyd Wright
"We
are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act,
but a habit."
-
Aristotle
Back to Top
| | | |  | Heart 2.0 In An Era of Greater
Chaos
Some time ago, we
entered a new era of “accelerating
acceleration.” It is an era that allows humans to
provide a higher standard of living for everyone on the planet than
ever before. It is also a time when things are being shaken up for
purposes of being reordered – a time of greater
chaos. It’s happening on a global stage: witness
the world economy which isn’t so much of a disaster as it is
a revelation of what’s real, and what wasn’t
working. That gives us clear indications of what needs to be
done differently.
This shake up is
also happening on an individual basis. Considering that the
world stage is too big for any one of us to handle, the question
becomes what to focus on and what to do.
This
brings us to the topic of stress. I want to address this
topic because I see around me lately much greater incidence of its
effects – in the forms of injuries, illnesses and
‘accidents.’ (I’m one who
doesn’t believe in accidents or coincidences –
things happen for reasons, which we can look for, examine and utilize
to make progress in life). Just staying in focus, let alone
making changes, doing things differently or taking new directions,
requires mastery of stress and coping resources.
I
have made requests of countless people lately to turn off the
“news.” When it actually is new, it gets
repeated over and over so you don’t get much more than the
initial sound bite. And any good news immediately gets turned
into all the bad things that could
have happened instead or related disasters around the world or
throughout history. Check the top of the hour report on the
radio once or twice a day, scan the newspaper or watch a few minutes of
television news if you must, but by all means don’t leave the
TV or radio on all day on one of those all-news channels that rarely if
ever has anything to say about the good in the world or what went right
today.
If
the stress of your own personal situation is not enough, taking on all
the negativity that is being spewed out on the public airwaves can be
damaging mojo. “They” say it makes people
feel better to know that things are worse off somewhere else.
I don’t know about you, but hearing about others’
misfortunes has never made me feel better. And in this
energetic universe, it is difficult to avoid being adversely affected
by the mere daily transmission of it all, whether you put your focus on
it or not.
What seems to be resulting from all
this negative noise, is that I see people literally tripping over their
own good sense. People around me have injured joints, suffered house
fires, scratched their eyes, gotten serious head colds, experienced
back or arm pain. I recently checked on someone I know well
and inquired how she was doing. “Great,”
she told me. “Good,” I said.
“Keep it that way. Take good care of
yourself,” explaining that I saw the current negative
atmosphere really having an impact on people.
The
next morning I got an email from her telling me that overnight she had
gotten up and fallen over a new barricade she’d erected to
segregate a new dog in a particular room in the house. As she
told the story she said, “I knew the barrier was there, and
as I approached it I said to myself, ‘I should turn on the
light switch.’ ” And in the time it took her to
override that thought, she took her next step and landed on the floor
– with a knee and rib injuries (fortunately no
fractures)!
It’s time to
slow down. As in mountain climbing, keep moving, but make
sure you have a good foothold before you take the next step.
In response to the pressure of negativity, too many of us are stepping
forward too quickly on shaky ground.
I’ve
written a longer article, called The Science of Performance, on the
physiological effects of stress and the related subjects of emotional
and heart intelligence. Understanding those effects, and
mastering multiple intelligences as coping resources can be incredibly
helpful. You can develop support that allows you to keep
going despite the stressors in your life. You can access that
article here.
In
addition, there are other practices that can be helpful:
1.
HALT.
That’s right, just stop. Take a deep breath and
notice where your feet are (that’s where you are).
Right here, right now, not in the past or in the future, but in this
moment. Now scan for the basics of how you’re
doing. Are you hungry, angry, lonely or tired?
Attend to those basics – whatever else you’re doing
can likely wait (and may be adversely impacted if you continue with it
in one of those states).
2.
Identify Your
Needs And Get Them Met. Beyond the basics, we all have
other needs, whether we want to admit having them or not, and our needs are
different from those of others. Often, they are things left
from childhood that we somehow never got enough of. As adults,
it’s our job to identify and fully address them. They are the
potholes on the road of life: when filled, the road is a lot smoother.
3.
Get Complete
With Your Past. If you have unresolved issues
from the past, they may continue to control or direct your present
choices and patterns you create in the future. Identify them
and get them handled. Work with an appropriate therapist if
need be. Yeah, looking at this stuff may be a pain, but
you’ll feel and be better for it. It’s
time to get over it and feel strong.
4.
Say
“No.” A rule I like a
lot: if it’s not a “definite
yes,” it’s a no. If you can’t
say no, practice saying nothing at first – to keep you from
saying yes and getting involved in something before you have a chance
to think about it. Find ways to avoid saying yes, like
“Thanks for the opportunity, but I’ll need to check
my schedule and get back with you” that buy you time to
follow up and say no. That way you don’t spend your
precious life energy on something you are not really jazzed about.
5.
Design 10 Daily,
Delicious Habits that are good for you and do them every day.
They can be as simple as playing soothing music on your way to work, or
taking an afternoon tea break to put your feet up. Make them
easy and delightful so you want to do them. Do them every
day, so if you have to miss a day, you pick up the next day.
Okay, I hear you, if you cannot come up with 10, then do 5!
6.
Stop Tolerating
and Complete Incompletions. Just
“putting up with” steals your life
energy. Having unfinished business or projects does, too.
It’s like having a hole in your cup of life: the universe can
be pouring its abundance into your cup, but the holes created by
tolerations and incompletions will allow it to drain out so your cup is
never full … let
alone overflowing. Don’t you want to
be someone who can truly say “my cup runneth over”
with things you feel good about?
7.
Simplify Your
Life. Use the 4,000 year old art of Feng Shui
rule of thumb: if it’s not beautiful or useful, put it back
out into circulation so someone for whom it will be beautiful or useful
can find it. Clear out your space. Clutter has
energy (like a toleration or incompletion) and robs you of
yours. Spend less (better yet, no) time with toxic
people. How do you know if they are toxic for you?
Do you feel uncomfortable or uneasy around them?
That’s an initial clue for you to look deeper at whether you
want to spend time with them; limit it if you think you must.
No need to explain it to them, just take care of you. Limit
the number or length of extra activities, too, so you get enough rest
and rejuvenation time.
8.
Decide
what’s “enough.”
What makes each of us feel abundant and powerful is
different. More isn’t necessarily better, it can
add considerable burdens. Identify what’s really important to
you. Do you
really need “that” (is it a definite yes!?) or will
it just turn to a form of clutter or something you have to clear out at
some point? Mass market advertising that’s not
really service minded or seeking to add real value (rather that merely
seeks to part you from your money) will try to persuade you that you
need things you don’t or that if others have it you should,
too. Recognize that brainwashing for what it is and drown it
out.
9. Create a Daily Ritual to
Connect to the Universe. Practice
stillness. Create your own rituals for self-renewal.
Visualize your day the way you want it to be. Journal about
it. Connect with the concept of something greater than
yourself and your immediate situation – it is a vast universe
full of amazing resources. Read something
enlightening. Talk with the power you conceive God to be, if
you have such a relationship, in positive terms. Make a list
of what you’re grateful for. Light a candle and say a prayer
– the easiest and shortest one may just be “thank
you.” Ask for guidance and a sign to know
it’s been given to you. Create a special ritual for yourself
to practice everyday, to support you in remembering what’s
important for you to get the most out of each day.
10.
Get to Know Your
Heart. Your heart has its own independent
intelligence, even if your brain (and many institutes of higher
learning) try to convince you that logic and rational/linear thinking
are the only relevant ways to make decisions. Where do you
think creativity, innovation and intuition come from? Okay,
maybe the too-little-exercised right side of your brain, but remember
that the brain is not totally in control. Yes, it sends
impulses to the heart, but the heart doesn’t always respond
– and the heart independently communicates with the rest of
the body and even electromagnetically outside your body for several
feet. A longer article I wrote says more about this, or see
this one on the Resonant Heart.
Learn
the “Freeze-Frame” technique* to help you
strengthen your heart intelligence – here are the simple
steps that can be done in as little as a few minutes:
- Get
in a comfortable position and close your eyes. Recognize a
stressful feeling, situation that is bothering you or question you have.
- Make
a sincere effort to shift your focus from mind or current emotions to
the area around your heart. Sense it beating if you can, notice
it’s rhythm.
- Recall
a positive feeling. This is not mere visualization
– don’t just imagine a time when you felt good,
actually put yourself in it and re-experience the feeling.
Spend some time experiencing it until you can feel a shift in your body.
- Using
intuition, common sense and sincerity, ask your heart for an answer.
- Listen
to what you hear, notice what comes up or shows up.
Consider
that what may seem like a coincidence is really important information
you received because you were open to it. Synchronicity,
serendipity and synergy are real forces even if they don’t
have a logical explanation. This focus is a definite upgrade
to Heart 2.0 – an operating system that does much more than
pump blood.
Listen to your heart, and take
good care of you while you explore your uniqueness and discover the
important work that you came to earth to do. Come out of the
chaotic shake-up ready to do the right things for the right
reasons. That may well be the real reason you’re
here in the first place.
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| | | |  | This
coming April 22 is Earth Day, which is celebrated in the U.S. and now around
the world. Gaylord Nelson, Wisconsin’s
35th Governor and that state’s U.S. Senator from 1963-1981,
first conceived the idea in 1962 and it evolved over a period of
years. He was concerned that the state of the environment was
a non-issue in U.S. politics and needed more visibility.
Working with then Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Nelson proposed and
was able to persuade President John Kennedy to schedule a five-day,
eleven-state ‘national conservation tour’ in
September 1963.
At that same time, we saw the
publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, in
1962. A bird-watching environmental advocate, Carson wrote about her
fear that fewer species of birds would be singing each spring if the
indiscriminate use of pestici des
was not eliminated.
Earth
Day didn’t take hold, however, until after Cleveland's
Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969, in the midst of my junior high
school years as a farm girl in Ohio. A legacy of the
industrial age, for sure – which begs the question about
being conscious of the kind of legacy we each want to create.
Industrial sludge had all but killed the river and that event seems to
have been the tipping point that finally raised a critical level of
awareness. (More photos documenting that legacy: http://article-url.com/cuyahoga_fires)
Concurrently,
John McConnell, of Davis City, Iowa founded International Earth Day in
September, 1969 as his effort to create awareness of our responsibility
to care for the planet. His Earth Day Proclamation was signed
by UN Secretary General U Thant on March 21, 1971, and that event is
now celebrated every year on the Vernal Equinox.
On
April 22, 1970, this growing list of efforts allowed the first
“Earth Day protest” to be held. Protests
were in vogue in those years – on that day it is estimated
that 20 million Americans took to the streets to support the
environment, protest harmful environmental practices and give a voice
to concerns about the damaging things we are putting in the air, water
and earth.
This environmental legacy is a chain
of events, and people who individually, in different ways, took on the
underlying concerns as their own individual projects … which
became their personal legacies. Their separate efforts
contributed to a groundswell, a growing momentum and a synergy that
literally created the environmental movement as we know it today.
As
for the Cuyahoga River:
“Today,
the lower half of the river is no longer the incendiary sewer of the
dark days before the Clean Water Act. Thanks to wastewater treatment
improvements by industry and municipalities, the river meets nearly all
chemical water quality standards and entertainment spots and bike
trails hug its banks. It still is far from healthy,
however.” (Reported in http://article-url.com/cuyahoga)
That
is just an illustration that there is more to be done. Is
there a legacy project in this area for you? Maybe joining an
Earth Day activity this year will give you an opportunity to further
consider it.
-----------------------
If
you have or know about a legacy story we should feature, please email
me with the background information, including any links to online sites
where they were featured. We’d love to consider
including them in our growing list of examples of great personal
legacies, consciously created.
And –
take our Legacy
Story Quiz
and share your thoughts! We may use them in a future story.
Back to Top
| | | |  | *Reference
to the Freeze Frame technique from: Doc Childre & Howard
Martin, The
HeartMath Solution, (Harper San Francisco, 1999).
Back to
Top
|  |  Dolly
M. Garlo, RN, JD, PCC is the founder and president of Thrive!! Inc. and
Creating Legacy. It is a company devoted to empowering business owners
and entrepreneurially minded professionals make their positive impact
in the world – with joy and meaning.
For
30 + years
Dolly has supported clients in many different arenas –
healthcare, law and business. While she’s currently best
known
for her expertise in business development and professional career
transition, her clients, members of Generation G (for generosity!)
share that her biggest impact comes from her philosophy.
That
philosophy is to design your work and create an exceptional life by
making sure that all your actions reflect your personal integrity and
values, greatest level of wellness, highest and best contribution, and
individual sense of abundance – for which you can feel
exceedingly grateful. These, Dolly says, are the keys to true, lasting
satisfaction and happiness from which you can also “make a
positive difference that lasts for generations.”
You
can learn more about Dolly and her programs, presentations and products
at CreatingLegacy.com and AllThrive.com.
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| | | |  | Stressful Times Call For
Reflection and Considered Action
Coping & Stress
Profile®
Want to pinpoint
the stressors in your life so you can do something about
them? The Coping
& Stress Profile®
is a great tool for personal or business use. It provides valuable
feedback on stress and coping in four interconnected areas of life:
Personal, Work, Couple, and Family. This customized assessment profile
provides critical insights on the stress areas in your life, how they
impact one another, and identifies your coping resources to gain access
to greater satisfaction. See more about the profile here.
Creating Legacy Kit
Pick
up a copy at www.CreatingLegacy.com
to help you contemplate, define and plan your own personal legacy. This
fr.ee resource includes a downloadable mp3 audio discussing more about
how you, too, can make a positive difference that lasts. It also
includes our Life And Work After Career guide - a comprehensive
workbook that will give you a holistic view of your own life and what
is important to you. With our compliments!
DiSCover Your Natural Style!
DiSC®
Dimensions of Behavior Personal Profile System®
So
who are you? What about your partner or members of your team or
group? Want to interact with them more effectively?
You have a natural style and this 20 minute online assessment is
designed to assist you to better understand yourself and others,
through a focus on behavioral preferences and the environment most
conducive to success. The resulting individually customized profile
provides a General Characteristics report; and six optional
sub-reports, providing more in depth guidance in specific areas, are
also available. Access the profile materials here.
Back to Top
| | | |  | You
may absolutely share this newsletter with people you think may
enjoy it. When doing so, please forward it in its entirety, including
our contact and copyright information.
Thanks and enjoy! The Legacy Journal newsletter is written by Dolly M.
Garlo:
http://www.CreatingLegacy.com.
If you have any questions or comments, please send them to: Dolly@CreatingLegacy.com. |
| ©2008-present
by Thrive!! Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
| | | | | |
