Life Is

Life is a song – sing it. Life is a game – play it. Life is a challenge – meet it. Life is a dream – realize it. Life is a sacrifice – offer it. Life is love – enjoy it. – Sai Baba Take an evening  stroll. Observe nature’s offerings. Discover what frames the earth’s waterway. Seagulls send messages.  Listen to the calm. The great ball of fire will take time to ease behind the sea. Notice scents of evening in rainbow hues. The sun’s tangerine reflects ideas. You may see an instant of green. Let Gratitude release for another day.

Life's Mosaics

 “Gaining access to that interior life is a kind of . . . archaeology: on the basis of some information and a little bit of guesswork, you journey to a site to see what remains and what’s left behind and you reconstruct the world.” – Toni Morrison 

What matters the most in your life?

Answers to that question alter as you grow and mature with experiences and in thinking about choices. During a lifetime, we return to aspects of life that matter the most.

Think of an incident that shaped the way you view your life?  Was a hidden gift there, or a lesson you’ve carried forward?  

Did you make a choice in the moment that benefitted your future?  Could you have gone a different direction and altered where you reside in life today?

Recall an incident where you felt a real or perceived disadvantage of life.  In reflection, would you change the results?

Consider a choice you did not make or one that was made for you because of procrastination or indecision. How would you rewrite it from a third person perspective?

Do you have unfinished business in an area of life?

How would you define the mosaics of your life?

The Art of Nature

 

In 1902, William James, the father of American psychology, urged the study of transcendent experiences.  James believed experiences we enjoy with a sense of wonder represent reality.  Often this “true reality” eludes us as we stay busy in our day-to-tay lives.  We need to discover our true nature through interactions with the natural world.  He felt these encounters held keys to help us explore the possibilities of human personality.

Fifty years later, Abraham Maslow began his explorations into self-actualization. Maslow focused on peak experiences. He described these as moments of intense joy, wonder, appreciation, or a spiritual relationship.

Maslow felt educators could promote peak experiences by instilling a sense of wonder and appreciation in children.

As a result of opening individuals to a sense of wonder, he believed more creative individuals would abound in sciences and the arts.

The Art of Nature

Each day provides opportunities to witness and appreciate nature’s ways of expressing beauty. Designs and expressions whirl around us in bird song, wing movements, and cloud formations.

The scent of jasmine, a poppy opening, smile from a stranger, or the expression of someone we love vaults us to elation, awe, and wonder.

These elevations to bliss provide personal well-being.

Imagine your life and the world energized by love, respect, and joy. Replacing frustration with wonder comes in small breaths with opened eyes and ears.

Discover an opening never considered before in a flower or yourself.

Search for peak experiences that reveal humanity at its best in optimal flourishing.

Appreciate the variety of nature’s offerings.

Experience the sun and breeze on your skin. Observe with your fingers how a rose unfurls.

Promote your wonder. Find solace in something greater that ever imagined.

Express Friendship

Everyone has a deep friend and something that they love to do, a beloved and a craft. – Rumi 

 

Coleman Banks speaks of friendship, “However it might be in this violent world, I would rather see us walking along inside the mystery of friendship, with its soul fury and its kindness, to sit down together finally at the table that Rumi, and many others, have set.”

Of the things that wisdom provides the greatest is the possession of friendship  - Epicurus

Reach out to a friend today.  

Send a note to someone who has inspired you because of Friendship. Share the story with them.

Write to a friend to resolve concerns. 

 
Reconnect with someone with whom you may have lost connection over the years.  

The Power of Positivity

How do we maintain balance in a world that presses us with what’s broken, what’s dreadful, and what’s wrong?

It takes patience, perspective and perseverance to sort out the news and waltz beyond worry.

Take time to skip looking at the catastrophe network or reading headlines for a day.

Push away from the computer. Leave your cell phone. Find hearts in shadows.

Go out in the morning and Sing!

Immerse yourself in nature.

Take a walk and replace negative thoughts and frustrations with the scents and colors that pass along the way.

Ask questions. What does a peregrine or bee manage an obstacle?

Listen for different sounds.

Observe shapes and textures. 

Imagine clouds with anxiety. Will the release of rain help?

Marvel at the ways the sea rants in ripples.

Distractions move the mind back to the present moment.

Rocks let the sea and sky pass over, under, around, and through.

Let nature’s wisdom seep into your thoughts and actions.

See smiles in petals.

Breathe in the majesty.

Find Power in Positivity.

Life's Triads

There’s a notion that good and not-so- good events evolve in threes. If two similar situations occur, a third completes the struggles or successes. After the triangle’s edges connect, feelings follow of relief or gratitude.

My search rushes to complete the triad in times of “not-sos.” After two events happen to friends in a span of three days, I sift through the August week to find that third leg.

Just sliding in a mishap does not close the gap. The solution will not satisfy if I try to manufacture something to set up a wobbly, far-fetched leg that completes the action.

Relenting to my morning run, the breeze focuses my breath. Under the curb at the sidewalk, a seagull spreads all its feathers. “It’s just sleeping,” my father used to say, to protect me.

Now the monarch butterflies zig and flip outside my window. Just out of the chrysalis, they dry their newly-found wings, my first side of the next triad to measure the day’s good. 

 

Creativity: Never Worry. Wonder. Wander

John Lennon said he wrote the song, “Because” by playing Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” backwards.

Questions to ignite team creativity discover ways to attach/combine other objects to an item to give it a new use.

How does the shape of the item resemble other common shapes? The exercise encourages team members to free their minds so they might run into an amazement.

The University of Nevada Innevation Center, intentionally spells innevation to take the “no” out of innovation.

The interdisciplinary approach at the University of Oregon melds different backgrounds. At the College of Design, students learn about materials, the manufacturing process, design influences, and entrepreneurship. They discover how creativity is enhanced by acquiring interdisciplinary knowledge, making connections that are not obvious, and by applying these strategies to navigate around constraints. 

Professors in product design say, “If the round hole is bigger, the square peg might fit. We want to develop people who are inspired by constraints.”

Consider a creative strategy for today.

What could you do in reverse to develop a novelty or new product?

Invert an approach to study new ways of doing things.

Is there an idea to turn upside-down or inside-out to awaken a new perspective?

Ask how nature might solve it?

Approach the day in myriad ways.

Playfulness and humor become the starting points to launch creativity.