Living Messy

Life is a great big canvas. Throw all the paint at it you can.” Danny Kaye
I love this quote!  It speaks to me of  a life lived broadly, with gusto and range, embracing the many and varied colors of human experience.

It also implies that we are the “creator” the artist of our lives and that ultimately, we are responsible for whether the painting is alive, diverse and interesting.

Finally, there is something about the downright MESSINESS that is implied that I absolutely love.   Perhaps that is the nature of what it is to be human.  We are not the clever craftsman, building our lives with careful planning and forethought.

Instead, we need to get our hands around all the paint we can, knowing that what gets created will be often messy, sometimes unclear, frequently chaotic and ultimately ALIVE.

So here’s to the wonderful messiness of the human experience.  Bring it on!

The Longing of Leadership

“If you want to build a ship, don‘t ask people to collect wood or assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the immensity of the sea.”

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I just finished co-leading Retreat One of a new leadership program.  It’s been a little while since I’ve been able to lead and I feel so re-energized and renewed from this time.

It’s a privilege to be able to engage with people at this level of vulnerability, power and transformation.  It was so clear to me that we were not teaching them something new.  Instead, we were giving them tools to move aside the barriers to their own brilliance and leadership.

Isn’t that the heart of transformation?  To move aside, through practice and dedication all the life diminishing practices, habits and beliefs that we have picked up along the way and as a result, allow our light to shine forth brilliantly and clearly.

This is also the heart of Co-Active Leadership.  I believe that there is a leader within each of us.  For some it is more fully expressed.  For others it may be buried deeply.  However the potential is always there, for an individual to rise up and choose to celebrate the gift of life, to begin to be response-able for one’s life and one’s world.

As in the beautiful quote above, once the longing and thirst has been awakened, the rest will come.  This is my life’s purpose. . .to light up that diamond of consciousness in every human I meet, so that it will come to shine and know itself as light.