Insightful holidays
The end of the year holidays, for me, offer an almost sacred time for connection and reflection.
Connection to family, to friends, to community, and to one’s own values… as well as reflection on how you can spend the energy you’ve been given in life to help each of these important elements of your life thrive.
To bring understanding and learn the meaning of experience in our lives, ‘experience’ alone is not enough.
You have to ‘earn what you learn’. To grow, we need to draw our awareness to what is, and (most difficult) to then bring ourselves to the acceptance of this. Only then can we manifest our higher intentions.
Only then can we let our actions be values driven.
One of my ‘friends on the shelf’, Nobel Laureate, Hermann Hesse, once said,
‘I have been, and still am, a seeker, but I have ceased to question…; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story isn’t pleasant, it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams… like the lives of all [those] who stop deceiving themselves.’ (1925, Hesse, H. Demain, pg 2)
This past year has been one where I’ve tried, as much as I could, to live with a vivid intent. To employ a more conscious approach to what and how I am working in order to manifest my service to the world.
Architect Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) once said that 'Form follows function’. That the shape of a thing should directly relate to its intended function or purpose. The application of this maxim has significant benefits to helping one thrive in life - but only if we can be brave enough to first look at, and then admit what our intentions (or purposes) are.
The more moments in which we can do this, the more, cumulatively, across our life, we will be able to direct how we want to spend our life’s energy. If we can, as Hesse mentioned, ‘listen to the teachings [our] blood whispers to [us]’, we can see the function (intention) we want to make manifest in the world, and build our actions and behaviour (form) in accord with this.
This work is not easy, but neither is it complex.
And it is possible, if we can make a habit of this, to
‘advance confidently in the direction of [your] dreams and endeavours, to live the life [you’ve] imagined… [to] meet with a success unexpected in common hours…’ (written in 1854) (1967:245 - Walden: The variorum editions)
Thoreau advocated for a life lived consciously. He saw the importance of removing one’s self from the pressures and unconscious expectations of societal life, to find a pace of one’s own. To connect with, like Hesse inferred, with the teachings the blood whispers.
For myself, this will involve time spent in nature, with family, friends, community, and independently.
I’ve a long list of books that I need to explore and reflect on, to find parts of myself that resonate within. A list long enough that I know I won’t fully get through it. And, I’ve an equally long list of family and friends I want to connect with - which I most likely won’t fully be able to meet with either. However I am steadily progressing toward this goal, and benefiting from the solace that this progress provides.
All of you, whether you be a coaching counterpart, or one who has experienced one of my learning designs, deliveries, or facilitations, or even one who has simply read one of my posts, I thank you. You have let me walk a while with you on your individual, insightful, and unique path.
I know I’ve grown from our conversations and the work we did together. I’ve learned considerably, and have used these lessons to help further the impact that my own insightful path can have on the world.
This is the main Impact that Insightful Path yearns to manifest in the world. To help others build the skills for self-leadership, and teach them leadership frameworks which can help them to find their path to thriving in life.
May you have the happiest of holidays, and benefit from the peace that connection and reflection can provide! If you’ve resonated with this post, and our work together, please reach out. Send an email. I’d love to hear from you!
