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 Vision: What Really
Matters to You- Part 3 By Stephen Joyce of Zenergy PD Choose life Only that and always To let life leak out, to let it wear away by the mere passage of time, to withhold giving it and spreading it Is to choose Nothing. Sister Helen Kelley Have you ever been asked a question of the kind that stops you in your tracks? One that forces you to reassess your life? “What really matters to you?” A question like this compels you to explore what you are living your life for. Answering this question can transform your life. The answer will also bring you closer to having a vision for your life. Sister Helen Kelley’s answer to the big vision question suggests that we choose life. In most cases, to do this we have to let go of something. This ‘letting go’ of the familiar is one of the biggest challenges. To me, the contrast between the farm boy who wishes to know where his next meal is coming from, and the visionary who wants to best serve his community illustrates the struggle of letting go. Above my desk is a picture of a very ordinary looking guy hanging in mid-air. He’s wide-eyed, with arms stretched out as if he’s about to catch something. On closer inspection, it is a picture of a trapeze artist flying through the air. A sea of anxious faces looks up in anticipation. Will he catch the bar? The picture acts to remind me of how necessary it is for us to let go of the familiar so that we may move on. A leap of faith starts with facing a difficult question. Peter Block, author of The Answer To How Is Yes, refers to the difference between asking: “What would work here?” and “What matters here?” Where do we begin this process? Ask yourself if your life right now reflects a commitment to what you know to be most important in life? Or is it based purely on practical survival? It can be so tempting to be satisfied with addressing only the questions related to practicality, rather than the ones related to the bigger question of vision, meaning the things that really matter. Psychologist C.G. Jung put the dilemma this way: “The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me.” When I look around for answers, I find many others who have had the courage to try to answer that question. Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, and Gandhi to name a few. In reply to the question, Gandhi didn’t live his life by focusing on the creation of fame or fortune. He lived knowing he had to provide for his family. However, he did this at the same time as he pursued his vision for a new India. Are such selfless acts only to be found in the behavior of Homo sapiens? On the contrary, they are common in nature. Take the example of the common honeybee in which we see an attitude of ‘hive-mindedness’. This modest insect strives constantly in service, placing the hive’s care before its own. The hive, in turn, provides a home, a haven, and a future for the bee and the entire swarm. Would our society be different if our approach were similar to the humble bee? Observation has taught me that the types of questions people are willing to ask themselves have a profoundly impacting effect on their own lives and those with whom they share their life. As Peter Block would have it, “Good questions work on us, we don’t work on them.” Consider the word ‘question’ itself. The first part is ‘quest’. Ultimately, we are all on a quest for meaning, the meaning of our own life. The quality of the questions we are willing to entertain determines how much we are able to find out about ourselves. Those questions will also determine what we find out about our responsibility toward ‘community’. Once you realize where that quest (and vision) leads, it is essential that you let go and hang in mid-air, reaching for the trapeze bar. The act of letting go may seem of little significance to others, but it becomes the act of choosing life for you. Life requires that we let go and stretch. Stephen J Joyce runs Zenergy PD - a training organization devoted to helping people tap into their 'peak potential'. He is a certified NLP Trainer & Consultant. Stephen may be reached at 403.912.5210 or email: change@zenergypd.com website: www.zenergypd.com |