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Inspire

It’s A Matter Of Trust

Thursday, 9 May 2013
Inspire, Musing
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Trust is about an expectation for the future – a deduction on how someone will behave.  Trust is a belief that something will be secure and true to what is known.

To be trustworthy is to be genuine and not counterfeit. It means fidelity between action and word. Projecting trustworthiness provides comfort and inspires confidence to those around you. Having trust placed in you is a statement of hope and placing trust in others is a commitment to be vulnerable.

We trust because it is a gateway to belong. It provides a coupling mechanism between people. It’s not a suspension of doubt; it’s about giving up all doubt in order to allow growth.

We need trust because having it empowers us to shape our futures and move towards becoming the person we are meant to be.

I remember hearing a talk given by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins about what he saw as the key trait of the human species: Foresight. He declared it the ability to dream and to picture an unrealised future yet still being able to live in the now according to it.

In the context of a world with countless moving parts, all allowing limitless connections and relationships to exist, the only way we can move forward with decisive action and impact is that we extend, and are extended, trust.

When you think about it – it’s quite the extraordinary capacity that we all share.

Being as powerful and as precious as it is, one would hope that we’re each as generous with it as we are faithful when we receive it.

Take Heart

Monday, 6 May 2013
Inspire, Musing, Success
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For the most part, Go Start (Living) focuses on what decisions we can make to live a thriving life and those choices that can bring us closer to the quality of person we’re born to be. (It’s all in the name!)

But on the way towards living this out, sometimes our dreams are defied by a different reality that stops us in our tracks.

A lot of the time it’s a reality we don’t see coming.

For all the positive talk and action we can (and should) make, we also have to acknowledge that not all of our dreams will work out as we hope and that we’re going to take some knocks. Sometimes, those dreams may even get a hammering.

That experience is a disheartening one to say the least. It’s the feeling where your stomach drops out and you realise that you’ve lost before the game is even over. Even those that have superbly conditioned themselves with more than enough resiliency can feel the dark shadow of disappointment. Such can be the lottery of life.

When it’s your own dream, that shadow is a very lonely place.

The pathway to recovery from such things can be quick or it can be long. It seems that just as the dream is unique to the dreamer, pulling ourselves back up is as equally a unique and deep experience (one that can be a lot like the process of dealing with grief).

However, there in the gloom of disappointment is a silver lining and it’s found in the merit of engaging the pain rather than recoiling from it. The knowledge that we can recover is often all we need to begin.

While we may never shake the complete imprint that a major setback imparts on us, something worth taking heart in is that when success is about how you choose to engage life, and not just what you get out of it, no failure is fatal to the human spirit.

Simpatico

Wednesday, 20 March 2013
Inspire, Musing

Following our dreams is all very well and good (even essential to lead a thriving life), but we shouldn’t forget that we’ll be better off in the end if we learn a way to prosper alongside others who are also trying to do the same. Often we’re a little too inclined towards thinking on a singular level, losing sight of the reality that journeying with others is as important to a thriving life as personal ambition is.

This means that sometimes that the best thing to do is to put down what we’re doing so we can roll up our sleeves for the benefit of someone else’s cause. I am repeatedly surprised (and refreshed) that once the goal is not to move whatever I’m working on forward, but instead to enjoy the honest graft of serving others, that there’s another source of energy and life to be had. There is something magical about chipping in what you can with the simple aim of helping someone else get ahead. Even more so when that other person themselves is focused on a generative project for a broader benefit beyond individual ambition.

Working along side each other in harmony, building great chemistry is perhaps the greatest simple pleasures there is. Simpatico!

Straight Right

Monday, 18 March 2013
Challenge, Inspire, Musing, Where to begin

After thousands of attempts over the past 6 months, I have started to master one of the fundamental forms in boxing – the straight right. Along with your jab, it’s the first punch you learn. Together they form the “1, 2” combination – another building block in the sport.

A small milestone, but it is progress.

Countless ounces of sweat poured out to execute the most basic of techniques. To throw the punch well and to deliver the most power, it demands that your lower and upper body work in tandem to allow for the maximum amount of energy to be harnessed from you feet and legs, transferred through your hips, to finally extend out of your hand to the target.

It’s an amazing feeling to have your body in harmony like this.

The bigger and more exciting challenge in front of all us is to transfer the same idea achieving a harmony of effort to how we bring our ideas and dreams to life. Imagine if you could somehow deliver the same enthusiasm and energy you conjure at the idea phase right throughout the process until you’ve landed it for the world to enjoy with you!

It’s pretty special to achieve, as it’s not easy. But take hear because with consistent application, an understanding of how to play to your strengths, and a lot of perspiration, it is possible for you. That is, so long as your willing to go for as long as it takes to perfect the basics first.

Stretch Yourself

Tuesday, 12 March 2013
Challenge, Inspire, Where to begin

I was gifted muscles that are like old chewing gum.
I think I got them from my dad.
These muscles require a lot – a lot – of coaxing to bring them to life. Even being reasonably athletic and fit has not exempted me from having to habitually lengthen and manipulate masses of flesh and bone. Stretching out limbs is therefore a constant discipline for me.
Even when I do stretch, following a good regular routine, I’m still required to keep at it should I stop only to have them quickly revert back to masticated gum.

It is my daily practice of easing tension and pushing through pain.

The big gain is not just greater dexterity however. My physical wellbeing flows into that of my psychological, emotional and spiritual.

Without attending to all, ensuring that they function as designed and are unhindered, I will decay.

Without disciplined care of each facet of my makeup, the mind clouds, emotions dull and my awareness of the miraculous atrophies.

Not only will my body feel tired, chewed up and spent, but so will the rest of me.

Stretching all of ourselves, ensuring life flows into every fibre of our being, is as much a way of life as it is a discipline. To be on the journey to a fully thriving life is to make this way of existence our own. We’re all different, each with distinct tension points to focus on, but we’re also all the same in that the more we work on expanding our innate capacity for life, the closer we move to our full potential.