So, This Is

Every post on this blog starts with the phrase, “So, this is what I want to tell you. . .”

Now, I have been writing for a long time and have learned that phrase tends to block the lead,  so I edit it out, but it is what I have been doing here for a decade, saying what I need to say in the world.

I encourage you to take that phrase to heart.   What do you want to tell us?   What do you need to hear said out loud in the world?   What do you want to think through and make clear?   What do you need to share so you can move on, move up, and find better?

If you had an audience for five minutes, what would you tell them?

For me, that’s a very TV question.  I like fresh and fast, a kind of host chat as Regis would call it.   For you, it may be a very different style, something polished, something poetic, something with a story.

Nobody grows up just by listening.   You can’t just read a book, attend a seminar, do a workshop and learn, really learn and internalize what you need to get past your blocks and into your next possibility.

We learn by doing, by practice.   We try and we fail and we see how we might do better and we try again and again and again and again. . .

It is surely a lifetime work, this learning to be a good human.

Your journey is your journey.   It’s great to have good role models, excellent support and deep mirroring, but that just helps.   It doesn’t replace the requirement for you to do your own work.

Everybody heals in their own time and in their own way.   Even you.

It would be nice to be able to fix people on your schedule and to your specifications, but they are people.   Nobody works that way.

Growth takes effort.  “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

We need skills, polished and disciplined skills to invoke change in our life.   Building those is the basis.

For me, one of the primary skills is learning to hear your own voice.  It’s easy get lost in our own noise, just mumbling without being able to pick out the priorites we need to address.

When you have to speak for yourself, rather than just to comment on someone else, you have to know what you believe and what you value.

“So, this is what I want to tell you. . .”  is always the start of that process, at least for me.

It’s your life, your work, your stories.   There are no shortcuts to your journey.   Sure, learning from the journeys of others is always good, but in the end, you are what you make of yourself.

The privilege of a lifetime is becoming who you are.   Your journey is the only way to move beyond expectations and discover yourself, your strengths and your weaknesses, your fears and your love, your power and your grace.

It’s not easy to stand up in front of an audience and say “So, this is what I want to tell you. . .”   but if you want to reveal what lies inside, exposure is a key part of the process.

Unpacking the junk you have been carrying around isn’t easy, but it is the only way you can know which baggage is really yours and which stuff is just crap other people piled onto you.  Getting clear means getting naked, in group, in writing, in life.

You write your own story.   For me, that always starts with “So, this is what I want to tell you. . .”

Figure it out.  Make it yours.   Share it with pride and grace.

And if you do that, it will be good, valuable and beautiful, I guarantee you that.