IN THIS ISSUE

The Daffodil Principle

Do What You Love, Love What You Do
 

Joy and Love are some of the main ingredients for a happy fulfilled life.  We need to constantly cultivate these qualities and guard against allowing the negative qualities of worry, fear and anger to get a foothold.   A great way to do this is to enjoy the present moment.   Do work that you love, pursue hobbies that entice you, share interests that inspire you.  Don't wait!  Enjoy life now.  The following articles will inspire you to begin.
                                                                                ...............June

 

 

 

The Daffodil Principle
 Author Unknown

Several times my daughter had telephoned to say, "Mother, you must come to see the daffodils before they are over." I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead "I will come next Tuesday", I promised a little reluctantly on her third call. Next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had promised, and reluctantly I drove there. When I finally walked into Carolyn's house I was welcomed by the joyful sounds of happy children. I delightedly hugged and greeted my grandchildren.

"Forget the daffodils, Carolyn! The road is invisible in these clouds and fog, and there is nothing in the world except you and these children that I want to see badly enough to drive another inch!"

My daughter smiled calmly and said, "We drive in this all the time, Mother."

"Well, you won't get me back on the road until it clears, and then I'm heading for home!" I assured her. "I was hoping you'd take me over to the garage to pick up my car." "How far will we have to drive?" "Oh...just a few blocks," Carolyn said. "But I'll drive. I'm used to this." After several minutes, I had to ask, "Where are we going? This isn't the way to the garage!" "We're going to my garage the long way," Carolyn smiled, "by way of the daffodils."

"Carolyn," I said sternly, "please turn around." "It's all right, Mother, I promise. You will never forgive yourself if you miss this experience." After about twenty minutes, we turned onto a small gravel road and I saw a small church. On the far side of the church, I saw a hand lettered sign with an arrow that read, "Daffodil Garden." We got out of the car, each took a child's hand, and I followed Carolyn down the path. Then, as we turned a corner, I looked up and gasped. Before me lay the most glorious sight. It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it over the mountain peak and it's surrounding slopes. The flowers were planted in majestic, swirling patterns, great ribbons and swaths of deep orange, creamy white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, and saffron and butter yellow. Each different- colored variety was planted in large groups so that it swirled and flowed like its own river with its own unique hue. There were five acres of flowers.

"Who did this?" I asked Carolyn. "Just one woman," Carolyn answered. "She lives on the property. That's her home." Carolyn pointed to a well kept A-frame house, small and modestly sitting in the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the house. On the patio, we saw a poster.

"Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking" was the headline. The first answer was a simple one. "50,000 bulbs," it read.

The second answer was, "One at a time, by one woman. Two hands, two feet, and one brain."

The third answer was, "Began in 1958."

For me, that moment was a life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than forty years before, had begun, one bulb at a time, to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountaintop.

Planting one bulb at a time, year after year, this unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she lived. One day at a time, she had created something of extraordinary magnificence, beauty, and inspiration. The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of the greatest principles of celebration. That is, learning to move toward our goals and desires one step at a time--often just one baby-step at time--and learning to love the doing, learning to use the accumulation of time. When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish magnificent things. We can change the world.

"It makes me sad in a way," I admitted to Carolyn. "What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty-five or forty years ago and had worked away at it 'one bulb at a time' through all those years?

Just think what I might have been able to achieve!"

My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual direct way. "Start tomorrow," she said.

She was right. It's so pointless to think of the lost hours of yesterdays. The way to make learning a lesson of celebration instead of a cause for regret is to only ask, "How can I put this to use today?"

Use the Daffodil Principle. Stop waiting..... Until your car or home is paid off Until you get a new car or home Until your kids leave the house Until you go back to school Until you finish school Until you clean the house Until you organize the garage Until you clean off your desk Until you lose 10 lbs. Until you gain 10 lbs. Until you get married Until you get a divorce Until you have kids Until the kids go to school Until you retire Until summer Until spring Until winter Until fall Until you die....

There is no better time than right now to be happy. Happiness is a journey, not a destination. So work like you don't need money Love like you've never been hurt, and, Dance like no one's watching. If you want to brighten someone's day, pass this on to someone special. I just did!

Wishing you a beautiful, daffodil day!

 

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Do What You Love, Love What You Do

by Richard Hanes
 

Everyone dreams of a life full of love and adventure. But we fill ourselves with reasons not to follow our dreams. Instead of protecting us, they imprison and hold us back. Life will be over before we know it, so now is the time to really live life and love.

In Life Lessons, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler suggest that love is the only gift in life that is not lost and is ultimately the only thing we can really give. Start by loving yourself.

1. Love Yourself. To give love, you must have love. Too often we put conditions on love. Conditions on love weigh it down and keep us from loving completely.

Be Compassionate With Yourself. Don’t judge, criticize or beat yourself up when you make a mistake. Cut yourself some slack.

Nurture Your Soul. Do things that make you feel good about yourself and make you truly glad you did them. Let the love in that’s all around. Schedule and budget for these nurturing activities; pick something that will make you feel great and do it!

Remove Barriers. Let go of conditions you place on giving and receiving love. Give love freely with no thought of receiving love in return. Receive love with no conditions or self-criticism. Remember the Beatles song lyric from The End, “… And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” 2. Love What You Do. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in Flow, the Psychology of Optimal Experience, identifies eight major components of enjoying an activity. His studies on flow suggest an activity is enjoyable when at least one and often all eight components are present.

Completion. We need tasks with sufficient complexity to challenge and stretch us to develop our skills but that won’t overwhelm us.

Concentration. The root of concentrate means to “center”. We need tasks that allow us to wrap our mind around it and be challenged by it. Tasks that are too hard will overwhelm us; tasks that are too easy will bore us.

Clear Goals. Stephen Covey tells us to begin with the end in mind, to know what we’d like to accomplish. A clear goal gives us a specific outcome that our mind can use to discern if we are meeting the test.

Feedback. Feedback allows you to compare your outcome to your goal. It’s a symbolic message that allows you to create order in your consciousness and shift your efforts if your outcome is off course.

Deep, Effortless Involvement. Attending fully to what is happening in the present prevents our mind from filling with extraneous worries, thoughts and distractions. Applying all your relevant skills to meeting challenges focuses your attention completely, so you cease being aware of yourself as separate from your activity. You become one with it; you act spontaneously.

Sense of Control. Developing your skills so you can reduce the margin of error as close to zero as possible and being able to influence a doubtful outcome produces a sense of exercising control in difficult situations.

Self Concern Disappears. Protecting our ego, the image we hold of ourselves as separate from everything else, requires mental energy. Enjoyable activities with clear goals, stable rules and challenges well matched to our skills present no threat to our egos. Immersion in such activity strengthens our sense of being capable.

Altered Sense of Time. Immersion in challenging activity causes how we perceive time to speed up (we look up and 8 hours have passed without noticing) or slow down (like a batter watching a pitch in slow motion). Complete involvement frees us from the tyranny of time and deepens enjoyment. Pick an activity that has these traits and you’ll love what you do.

3. Love in Service to Others. In A Simpler Way, Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers suggest that any self-expression that is not meaningful to others is irrelevant and won’t survive in a systems- seeking world. So expressing what you love in service to others is your task.

Do What You Love. Identify anything that meets some or all of the eight criteria listed above for loving what you do. What would you do if money were not an object? Let your list simmer on the back burner of your subconscious.

Combine Activities You Love. List without judging the things you love to do and how you might combine them. If you love writing, travel and spirituality, you might consider traveling to spiritual sites and writing a travel guide on how to get there and what to do once you’re there. Or consider organizing, marketing and guiding travel tours there. Be creative; use your imagination!

Serve Others. As you imagine possible manifestations of the activities you love, guide your imagination to ways that serve others. Remember, if you’re going to make a living by doing what you love, you’ll need others to pay you! Make your offering something others want or need! Love and treat yourself well, learn what you love to do and do what you love in a ways that serves the needs of others! You’ll be glad you did!

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Copyright 2005, Fruition Coaching. All rights reserved.  Rick Hanes is a life and career coach, writer, outdoorsman, gardener and tireless advocate for living life with purpose and passion. He founded Fruition Coaching in 2004 to lead the fight against leading lives of quiet desperation. Check his website at http://www.fruitioncoaching.com  to contact him about rekindling the fire of your life!

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