You never know when a call’s going to come.You never know exactly what direction it’s going to lead you in.
And you never know exactly how it’ll all work.
All of which drives most of us round the bend till we start to get our groove on with the whole ‘letting go’ thing (and even then it can still be a tug-o-war sometimes)…
But one thing you can always count on is the perfect timeliness of every calling.
And ‘timely’ perfectly describes the latest calling of Michael Katz, Chief Penguin at www.BluePenquinDevelopment.com (an esteemed member of our True Callings Associate Faculty team).
Last fall during one of our monthly faculty calls, Michael mentioned feeling something was up, but what he couldn’t yet say.
All he could say was that it had him a little on edge, seemed to have something to do with money, and with making a differencephilanthropicallysomehow.
Earlier this month a couple of very intriguing opportunities and ideas came his way.
And as a guy who gets the value of playful and creative experimentation as well asletting go, Michael’s giving the ideas that most excite him their due, just to see where they might lead.
One in particular is a simple but sassy pay-it-forward-with-a-twist kinda thing Buddhists would call ‘enlightened self-interest’ - an idea that’s quietly building buzz and word-of-mouth participation: www.spendtwentydollars.com
In this quick audio clip Michael explains how this calling came to him (and one of primary reasons it intrigues him…)
And here’s what a member of the True Callings Tribe had to say after checking it out and jumping on board:
Thanks for the “heads up” on the twenty dollar deal. I signed up and enjoyed treating my son’s girlfriend and I to a new restaurant haunt (very healthy options). By the way, I really like Michael Katz. Adjectives that come to mind are innovative, creative, authentic, warm and kind! It’s easy to see why you two are peers!
P.S. If you’d like to hear Michael actively explore and get a more solid feel for WHY this has him so jazzed (great learning!), send us an e-mail and we’ll send you the entire 6+ minute MP3 audio free.
Most folks don’t know our story: how we met, got our start, how we came to do what we do with what can, at times, seem like cock-eyed optimistic enthusiasm and conviction.
Frankly, it had always felt a little too ‘forest for the trees’ to re-tell ourselves well, if you know what we mean.
Which is why, when we received our advance copy of a cool new e-book, ‘Running Down A Dream’ (written by good friend and client, Shawn Shepheard) it felt a little out-of-body.
There it was in black and white - our beginnings - a chapter in his book.
It brought back a flood of memories, and kinda stunned us too: if it hadn’t happened to us, it’d seem a bit surreal. Even a little Hollywood.
But Hollywood it was not.
They were ‘the best of times and the worst of times’, filled with wild, unpredictable and uncontrollable ups and downs: hope and despair, love and loss, joy and heartbreak, endings and beginnings, confusion and (stunning) clarity, faith and terror, tragedy and opportunity.
One moment we’d be laughing and loving, amazed by what we’d found in each other. The next…
Well, you name it: we felt it. Some days, despite the love, we cried ourselves to sleep and woke up to cry some more. Other’s we drifted off with our hearts so full of gladness we felt a little crazy sometimes.
Thing is, it was during that time we learned – up close and really personal - what every single successfully callings-led person comes to live by: the one thing that separates those who are sustainably successful from those who are not, is the decision to learn how to find, focus on and creatively use the opportunity in every crisis.
Now, we ‘knew’ this at the time but didn’t really believe it. Just like we ‘knew’ everything happens for a reason – that there’s a much larger process at work ‘behind the scenes’ guiding and directing us…
But we hadn’t really bought it. Not all the way. At least, not yet.
But looking back on it now, its easy to see that that time served to show us where we thought we believed when we actually didn’t believe: that that time paved the way to now.
Yesterday existed so today could become.
Learning how to find and focus on the right opportune future for you, takes real practice and discernment, and the only way to get really good at both is on the ground in real, raw life.
Boxers have to get in the ring. Cyclists on the bike. Swimmers in the pool. Runners on the track.
How could it be any different for us?
Now, that doesn’t mean there won’t be times you’ll curse crisis. Hate it. Whine about it. Try and squirm out of it.
We sure did. And sometimes still do (remind Lissa to tell the missing key story sometime).
And so at times do those boxers, cyclists, swimmers and runners.
But as hard as it may feel to be living what’s in front of you right now, whatever’s there is there to help you grow your way into your best tomorrow.
Provided you decide to learn how to live it that way today.
With Shawn’s permission, we’re posting that excerpt about our beginnings from his book here - to fill in the ‘here’s why’ blanks, and to let anyone who’s been shaken to the core by recent loss, betrayal or sudden reversals of fortune know…
It really is true. It’s not just a pretty saying.
Everything does happen for a reason. You just have to learn you’ve got good reason to really believe it – just like we did. And still are.
***
Challenging Beliefs: Miracles of Connection
This story is about connection - an immensely strong connection between two people, and their immensely strong connection with a greater power.
When Lissa and Randy first met, Randy was married and Lissa had never been (and had no plans to be). She shook hands at an event she never expected to be at, and realized she’d met someone who was going to change her life. She was shocked, terrified, and had never been more sure of anything in her life.
It was a study group for the book Conversations with God, by Neale Donald Walsch. Randy had joined the group looking for a community of like-minded people. Other than a brother who was on a similar path, but out of town, the people in his day-to-day life couldn’t relate to his new quest for growth, awareness and understanding.
Lissa was feeling a similar call, and joined the group just a few weeks after.
Randy felt something too, when he met Lissa, but he was married and didn’t want to acknowledge the feeling. Things at home were already rocky. His wife, Lynda, was scared of the changes she was seeing in him, and saw the study group as some sort of cult.
Randy was frightened of his immediate sense of connection with Lissa, of how he felt more at home with his study group than with his family. When his wife gave him an ultimatum and demanded that he quit the group, he knew he couldn’t, that this was something he had to do for himself. She asked him to leave the house, to give her space to think.
3 days later, Lynda collapsed from a brain aneurysm. 24 hours later, she was gone.
At precisely the same moments of Lynda’s collapse and her death, Lissa was overcome with two shocking and seemingly inexplicable waves of emotions. She walked through both days hollow and numb, and cried herself to sleep both nights.
At noon the second day she heard from the host of the study group, who emailed everyone with the news. Lissa felt immediate relief, because now she understood the context of her feelings. And then came “Oh, my God panic, because of this strong connection she was now a part of.
It scared the hell out of her. She couldn’t explain it, but somehow it was also reassuring and affirming. Part of her wanted to move closer and part of her wanted to go away.
Randy and Lynda had two teenage daughters, aged 14 and 17. There had been a gulf between them and their dad, because they’d needed to side with their mom. Randy’d been on the outside looking in, and now he was all they had. In the midst of this tragedy, he knew they couldn’t help but wish it were the other way around, that he was gone and their mom was there to look after them.
In the next few weeks, Randy slowly started to reconnect with the study group again. He wanted things to settle down, but something kept pulling him towards Lissa. Eventually they opened the door to talk to each other, and realized they’d both been going through the same thing – the pull, the resistance, the surrender.
A few months later, they made the decision to start seeing each other. Randy’s daughters were very unhappy about it. He had to decide that his happiness was as important as his role as a father, and that his connection with Lissa was something he couldn’t deny or pass up.
Randy and Lissa both felt they were being called together for a purpose, that there was work for them to do together, and that everything was happening for a good reason. Over the year they became closer and closer and began to see their future unfolding, and the things they were going to do together that would make a difference.
Lissa and Randy were married 21 months after Lynda died. From building a strong, loving bond with Randy’s two daughters, transitioning out of corporate careers into a joint life coaching practice (both were laid-off), to manifesting their dream home on a lake in the country, every step of the way’s been guided by their connection, and their connection to a sense of calling and purpose. Just like the earliest days of their relationship.
Every step of the way, they had to open themselves to new possibilities they didn’t understand and couldn’t have planned, challenging what they knew to be true and thought they wanted.
In Lissa and Randy’s own words:
“We’re great, the kids are great, and we do work we love from a place we love. A life of soul-deep fulfillment isn’t one you can plan, but one you find by answering calls even when they feel crazy. Even when times are hard. The challenge is to look squarely at your deepest fears, like what people will think, or what you’re afraid you might loose. Believe, keep your sights set on what’s possible, on what you love, and stay focused on what’s calling you and WHY.”
A really good comic can slice through all kinds of social mores and get right down to the wacky truth of things with a well-worded joke, exceptional timing and canny observation (a la Seinfeld).
Before you know it, they have you busting a gut laughing at something you might simply accept as the status quo and otherwise defend to the death or feel powerless in the face of.
Truth is, few things are better than really good humor for cutting through cock-eyed or catastrophic thinking!
Which is why we love this bit from comedian Louis CK.
While on Conan O’Brien recently he let fly comedically about how the economic downturn might actually be something we need, ‘because everything’s actually amazing right now, but nobody’s happy’.
If you have 4 minutes, give this a watch.
And prepare to snort, chortle and think differently.
P.S. The last 20 seconds of this are a teeny bit crude, so buckle your virtual seat belt…
I’ve come to the realization that it’s actually impossible to plan an authentic life - it’s only possible to be authentic and watch as your authentic life manifests around you.
Susan Piver
from The Hard Questions for an Authentic Life
We had ourselves a very quiet New Years this year. I’m two days past one of the wildest intestinal bugs I’ve ever had, and Randy’s smack dab in the middle of the bug boogaloo right now.
Despite the quivering, quaking queazies, we managed to watch WALL-E (great flick) while cuddling on the couch grateful simply to be together.
Ah well: so much for all those plans for a chipper 8th Wedding Anniversary/New Years Eve…
Now, if that sounded like it might have been cranky or resentful, it wasn’t. Really. Because when I say, ‘so much for our plans’ I’m wearing a bit of a Mona Lisa smile.
See, the last 8-odd years have taught us that goals, objectives and plans - even when they do work out - don’t necessarily turn out to be all (we thought) they’d crack up to be.
Nor does holding to our way of doing things guarantee the results we’re most looking for (Jon Swanson’s brief but brilliant Nice or Necessary post says this best).
But the stuff that ‘just happens’ - that we simply couldn’t conceive, envision or anticipate on our own - when we’re just being us always works out WAY better.
And often a lot quieter, softer and sweeter too (including getting the flu over the holidays).
When you think about it, who really needs flash and fantasy when the solid truth of love and deep friendship (not to mention the anticipation of another new year’s promise) is - all on its own - so much more?
Which kinda begs the question: just what is it we’re after when we’re busy trying to make a moment great instead of just letting ourselves experience and enjoy all the nuances of greatness in the moment itself?
Really. What do you think it is?
P.S. The sweetest of Auld Lang Syne’s to you and yours!
Ever listen to someone who’s completely jazzed about their life talk about it in a way that makes a whole bunch of seemingly ordinary bits and random pieces of living suddenly seem not so random - or so ordinary?
No matter your answer, this wildly fun video by LOST’s creative wunderkind J.J. Abrams demonstrates what we’ve been talking ‘bout for months:
Looking for your True Callings Clues is a little like playing Where’s Waldo:see past the meaningless visual distractions and extraneous clutter, and good old Waldo (aka your True Callings Clues) just pops off the page, obvious and clear.
And once you’ve found him, it’s hard not to see him again, and again, and again…
Listen above to learn more AND hear all the details about our ‘Find The True Callings Clues’ Contest.
Someone’s gonna win big!
As always, we’d love to hear from you: feedback, praise, comments, praise, other points of view, praise… You get the gist. After all, this is a conversation - and what you have to say is half the fun!
Don’t feel like writing (which, by the way, takes just a click of the COMMENTS link below)?
Call our comments line instead, and really talk to us. (214) 615-6505 ext 4678
We had ourselves a very quiet New Years this year. I’m two days past one of the wildest intestinal bugs I’ve ever had, and Randy’s smack dab in the middle of the bug boogaloo right now.
