Start Your Next Chapter Now Weekend Workshop Aug 11-12
For the vast majority of my career, I have worked on projects and endeavors on my own because I a) felt that what I wanted to convey was deeply personal and had to be expressed as my unique expression, and b) needed to feel a deep connection with whoever I collaborated with, because without it, I would lose connection to the inspiration that motivated me to share my offerings initially. I can count on one hand the people I have collaborated with over the past ten years, and it has been a while since the last time. I’m happy to announce that it will happen again in a few months!
H I S T O R Y
This paragraph is taken from a page of my great-grandmother’s autobiography, referring to Montreal and Canada approximately one hundred years ago. Read it. We are still a country that embraces newcomers seeking safety, security and opportunity.
Absoluteless
I remember having a discussion with a friend of mine whose daughter was less than 2 years old and asking him what the best part of being a father was. He told me that he loved seeing his daughter evolve, day by day, bit by bit, and seeing what morsel of character or personality she would display. Every day was a new discovery, and with every discovery he got to know who his daughter was turning out to be. Her talents, likes, dislikes, and sense of humour slowly unfolded, and he never knew when it would happen or how it would manifest. All he knew was that every day was a new opportunity to see his daughter’s personality emerge that much more.
Re(s/v)olution
January 1 is always a welcome day for the majority of us because it’s a real day off. Businesses close, the daily grind comes to a halt, and we nest (usually as recovery to the debauchery of the night before). The day itself has a cozy connotation to it, an insular vibe that breeds lounging around and getting the new year off in hushed tones. And, as it goes with that which we deem as easy or beneficial, we create the necessity to stain the calm of the break we get with the need to accomplish something, to produce, to not get to complacent. It’s resolution time.
From Unseeing to Undying
How much time throughout our lives do we spend focusing on, and occasionally agonizing over, trying to keep how we look, who we’re involved with, and where we are in our careers in a place of stability? How many minutes out of each of our lifetimes have we spent trying to avoid change, fearing that with the slightest release of what we deemed as being control, we would be moving closer and closer to some unidentified threat? As a species, and moreover, as Westerners, humans have more or less lost sight of the fact that we carry the divine within us, and it is through that connection to the omnipotent that we need to be living, always maintaining perspective on the daily dramas that habitually take over our lives, leading us into despair or into elation. Because we’ve lost sight of that fundamental touchstone, we have created massive aversions to any circumstances or series of events that bring about change.
Morsels of Inspiration
Like most of the people I know, it took me decades of self-reflection and realization before I came to a place where I felt safe enough to stop playing the corporate game that I was surrounded by and do my own thing…tapping into what made me happy, what I felt was the foundation for the peaceful life that I was periodically getting fleeting glimpses of and that I knew I wanted to make more of a fixture in my day-to-day existence. Making the decision to go ahead and drop everything was obviously petrifying, but it proved to be one of the greatest moves I’ve ever made for myself…here’s why: