Awaken Your Aspirations

📷: Sun Voyager - Reykjavik, Iceland

Courage is not about being fearless, it’s about letting fear transform you so you come into right relationship with uncertainty, make peace with impermananence and wake up to who you really are. ~Dr. Lissa Rankin

Too often we are afraid to slow down because of what we would experience in unhurried and unguarded moments. Yet when we take time to pause, we see and feel what we miss in our normal mode of “always being in motion.”

Experiencing Iceland via Wild Wisdom Journeys allowed a client to see and feel what she was missing in her fast forward pursuits. Pausing to look at this photo of the Sun Voyager and other images of Iceland, she became more present. During this virtual travel experience she felt herself shift into a state of “Awe.”

Different perspectives and deeper understandings opened the door to her becoming unstuck in persistent behaviors that don’t sereve or honor who she is. This release freed her to easily identify next steps. As we began to unpack the revelations of her journey, she started to reclaim her Inner Peace.

Her epipanies and transformational insights unearthed buried aspirations that once awakened clarified her best next steps. And in her words, she is now on a path to her “Personal AWE.”

The photo below reflects what experiencing “Personal AWE” looked like on my Wild Wisdom Journeys in Iceland—source of the transformational virtual travel adventure I’ve created to facilitate simple elegant solutions for leaders, like the client who gave me permission to share here the significance of her virtual Wild Wisdom Journeys experience.

📷: Skogafoss - Iceland

The Intelligence of Wisdom

The Invisible Made Visible

Make visible what, without you, perhaps might never have been seen.

~Robert Bresson

Ancestral Wisdom

Across the Cultural Ages of Time and Space

Ethnias, a large nural by graffiti artist Eduardo Kobra at Porto Maravilha, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

“Remember that LOVE is what brought you here.”

(James Baldwin, Author - Beale Street)

And if you’ve trusted LOVE before, now trust LOVE all the way.

Why Words Fails Us

No one sees what you see, even if they see it too.

~Unknown

Give Yourself Permission

Decide

So, do it. Decide.
Is this the life
you want to live?
Is this the person
you want to love?
Is this the best you can be?
Can you be stronger?
Kinder? More Compassionate?
Decide.
Breathe in. 
Breathe out
and decide.

~Meredith Grey

Resilence in the Rubble

When So Much Seems Lost

You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.

On a memorable trip to Nepal I witnessed the results of resilience in the people of this small country with 8 of the 14 highest peaks on Planet Earth. Their resilience seems to be grounded in their way of responding to changes in their natural environment rather than just reacting.

In 2015 a deadly earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 stuck Nepal, killing nearly 9,000 people and injuring almost 22,000 in Nepal. This earthquake triggered an avalanche on Mount Everest, killing 21 and making April 25, 2015 the deadliest day on the mountain in history.

Hundreds of thousands of Nepalese suddenly were homeless. Entire villiages were flattened. Centuries-old buildings were destroyed at UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

In response to this devastating destruction Nepalese leaders wisely tapped into the natural strength of a people whose nation includes 25 different ethnic groups. That strength is their Resilience.

Past and current generations of Nepalese view the earth as a place where nothing is permanent. In the aftermath of the quake Nepalese resilience expressed itself in rebuilding, repairing and restoring what had been destroyed or damaged.

Wisely, leaders tapped into this strength of the Nepalese people to coalesce their individual and collective efforts into a national focus and way of engaging: “Resilience in the Rubble.”

3 years later the Nepalese continue to labor diligently in the repair and restoration of brick and wooden homes, temples, palaces and other buildings. For them “Resilience in the Rubble” is more than a shared endeavor. The Nepalese embody resilience as a natural way of being — fortifying them for more hard work still to be done.

The quiet diligence evident in this inclusive culture shows us that human resilience can lead to positive responses when we experience sudden, exceedingly destructive, and tragic events along with formidable disruptive challenges. The question is…

In the midst of devastation what gives you the strength to be resilient — responding instead of just reacting — in life, leadership and business?

Escape the Madness

Mindful Practices for Insane Times

Finding a Way Forward

In these volatile, reactive, troubling and dangerous times, we are assaulted daily by the latest unholy madness.

As a society, our interactions with each other in business, government, culture and life are profoundly unhealthy. Fear, hatred and hostility run rampant and out of control. At the core of this insanity sits a degree of self-loathing that turned outward resents and despises ‘the other’. It maniacally insists on unjustifiable separation—creating extreme harm and a cancerous denigration of our humanity.

Like a plague, egregious, insidious and fatal horrors keep us from finding a way forward out of this horrific mess . Yet... there is a way forward.

A way forward begins with you engaging in practices of inner peace.

Imagine what could be different when with practices of inner peace, our nervous systems calm down, and—Being Human—we intentionally engage in random and frequent acts of kindness, generosity, and inclusiveness. With commitment, resilience, and endurance we could consciously create together a world and a future that we and our descendants really want to live in.

That is the Big WHY behind these 1-minute inner peace practices. They help my coaching clients—intensely busy business women, nonprofit leaders and global change-makers—turn tough choices into smart decisions and complex challenges into simple elegant solutions without forfeiting who they are or what they value.


Allow these 1-minute practices to help you see a way forward and move with clarity of intention and impact to higher ground.

Engage in Conscious Leadership

Escape the Madness: 10 One-Minute Inner Peace Practices to keep you sane, confident & on track

By Sylvia Warren

Buy on Amazon

Lead with Your Aspirations

In these inhumane, dangerous, and soul-sick troubling times it is not unusual to feel adrift in a wasteland of horrifying events. Ignorance runs amok and too many people have traded in their humanity for mean, cruel and despicable actions against folks who are different from them in some minor, yet not significant, visible way.

In the midst of this criminal madness we need to focus more than ever on our aspirations for a present and future that lead to the elevation of our humanness, society. connections to Planet Earth and impact in the world.

Where do we begin?

With a candid look at and reconnection with our deepest longings, which in the midst of this madness we have left unattended. Rather than abandon these deep-seated longings, let's name them and allow them to create compelling contexts for us being our highest and best selves.  

So take a moment. Jot down 25 aspirations you deeply desire to experience in business, leadership and life. Notice how your deepest longings reveal to you new possibilities and expansive areas of abundance.

Then pay attention to how your aspirations compel you to take inspired action. Doing so, you will find yourself turning a corner that brings what you want to experience —your deepest longings—into current reality. 

ATTENTION: Do not leave your longings unattended. ~Unknown

Welcome Uncertainty

We create more space for thinking with uncertainty. ~Judith Glaser

Did you know that uncertainty arouses our brains? It stimulates our brains to search for existing patterns and not finding them leads to the creation of new neurological pathways. Without big and small uncertainties — unusual, ambiguous, interesting differences in stimuli — ours brain would not open up and expand our capacity to think in new useful and innovative ways. 

When we shift our frame of reference from ‘fear’ of uncertainty to ‘welcoming’ uncertainty, we create space for the growth of more brain power. This enables us to navigate uncertainty with less trepidation, see new possibilities, and explore fresh opportunities that would otherwise escape our notice.

Life is change. Growth is optional. ~Karen Kaiser Clark

The Conversation is the Relationship

Intention & Impact

If we can’t feel safe enough to have difficult conversations in an open and honest way, we will never get to a place where we can transform our culture. -Judith Glaser | Conversational Intelligence

What conversation have you been avoiding?

You've probably spend a fair amount of time focused on the problems of this difficult conversation. Since that drains your energy and rarely works well, experiment with shifting your focus. Consider what's possible by asking yourself:

• In what ways could that difficult conversation support the relationship?
• What would be different if you listened to connect, rather than primarily to understand?
• What conscious intention and impact could you bring to that conversation to facilitate mutually desirable outcomes? 

Full Moon Blessing

Eclipse in Aquarius

"Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions." ~Hafiz

Photo by Caique Silva on Unsplash

Quote by: Joe Martino

Photo by Caique Silva on Unsplash