True Path/New Path

Follow your bliss. Joseph Campbell

What you choose is your destiny. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Nine doors will close in your face before the tenth one opens. Mr. Fishel

Midlife is when you reach the top of the ladder and find that it was against the wrong wall. Joseph Campbell

God loves you just the way you are, but He loves you too much to let you stay that way. Angus MacLachlan

A few months ago I spent alot of time pondering the areas in my life in which I am stuck. I was in a serious writer's drought and after much contemplation, I realized I was creatively stuck. After much meditation I discovered that I wasn't allowing my creative energy to flow. I had been so busy with the nuts and bolts of my daily life that I wasn't nurturing the creative energy I so desperately need to move on with the plan in my life. I then started asking myself what I needed to get more creative energy and I realized it was very simple-- more play, more long walks, less concern with budget and more concern with getting what I need.

As you work on your path, when you encounter roadblocks within yourself, try spending a few minutes or hours just meditating on what is blocked and what needs to be released. You'll be surprised at how wise your soul is.

Right now I am reading an amazing book, The Breaking Point, about women's midlife crises and how they are transforming our society, especially as the Baby Boomers hit middle age and beyond. The author is very candid that not all change at midlife is positive, but can be explosive and life altering. This book has plenty of inspiring stories and quotes.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805077111/qid=1125324462/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-5128072-0683042?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Have you discovered Sudoku? It is my new addiction. It's a grid game in which every digit from 1 to 9 must appear:
In each of the columns,
in each of the rows,
and in each of the nine boxes.

It's a great brain teaser, but it can also be viewed as a metaphor for living life to the fullest. Really. Stay with me here. Some of the squares are filled in very logically. It is obvious which is the correct number. But other squares require a leap of faith that you will choose the right number. Sometimes you do. Other times, you keep working the puzzle until it becomes obvious that your original guess didn't pan out. But never mind. By diligently backtracking and getting back to the point where you made a different choice, you can erase and start working forward from that point with new data.

See what I mean?

http://sudoku.com.au/

When I feel my enthusiasm and drive flagging, I read one of Mark Morford's best columns:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/07/08/notes070805.DTL&nl=fix

I hope you find it inspiring too.

After a month of excitement, it's time for me to get back to work. It feels like it's been months since I've worked on my plan and it's difficult to regather the threads of my efforts. Right now I am keeping a list of small steps I can take to keep things going-- printing up more business cards, writing up a few more outlines, making phone calls. It's like going back to the gym after not working out for a while-- I feel rusty and out of shape.

Have you ever learned a new word and then suddenly it pops up all over the place? Or you buy a new car and suddenly you see its twin everywhere? Something like that is what happened to me this weekend. It seems like all of a sudden, I am surrounded by people who found their true path in life, ranging from a man who's chance encounter in a thrift store lead to finding his calling, to a woman who let nothing stand in the way of her dream of establishing a nationwide lost pet assistance network. And then I received this month's Oprah magazine to find excellent articles on figuring out the next step in life. I was feeling pretty tired after all the excitement of the past month, but these little synchronicities revived my energy and got my brain whirring again. I highly, highly, highly recommend picking up the September issue of Oprah for inspiration.

My friend Dave refers to the Internet as "the repository of all human knowledge". That it may be, but it gets a little daunting, all that information out there.

I rely on http://artsandlettersdaily.com/ to give me a digest of what's worth reading on the Web. There are links to book reviews, opinion pieces and interesting articles. It's worth checking out.

It's been one of those weeks, lots of work challenges and house projects going on (workmen are ripping out my roof even as I type-- the noise is so unnerving that my shoulders are up around my ears-- I'm convinced one of them is about to come through the ceiling!). It's just life, but it makes tackling anything other than sheer day to day living daunting.

How can it be done? How can I continue to move toward something new when most nights I come home from work too tired to do more than cook dinner, tackle a chore, call a friend and then go to sleep? I use my time as efficiently as possible, but I still find myself spending several hours of the weekend just sitting, staring into space, willing energy back into my body so I can face the upcoming week.

Some days I feel like I can't pursue my own projects unless I quit my job or at least take a sabbatical. I know that is unrealistic and often I start to get depressed, feeling like I'll never get a chance to do something more in my life and five years from now my life will be much the same as it is now.

I try to tackle little projects each day, a phone call here, some research there. I hope that it becomes like a snowball, that each step leads to a bit more momentum so that at one point moving will be easier than standing still. . .

Alot of times, when I talk to people who want to do something different with their lives, I find that while they yearn to make changes, they often don't know where to start. As I suggested earlier, getting one's personal life balanced and clarified is a helpful starting point. But for the next step, there are some terrific resources. Here is one worth checking out:

http://lifeonpurpose.com/index.php?page=1

A few months ago a friend gave me a book on astrology. I have always been interested in how the movement of the stars correlates with the cycles of human life and this book clearly explained the principles of astrology. Several years ago I bought some software for calculating natal charts, so I built my own chart.

What I found in my chart wasn't surprising. Clusters of planets in a particular House of the heavens corresponded very closely to the areas I am looking to redirect my life to. There was something very heartening about seeing the very map of the heavens at my birth pointing to the passions I am directing my energies toward. I have since cast natal charts for friends and family. Some charts show a very clear path, others are less direct. If you are looking for some heavenly direction, here are some websites that will cast free natal charts:

http://www.astro.com/

http://www.alabe.com/freechart/

http://www.chartplanet.com/html/natal_charts.html

Another useful tool is the Myers-Briggs personality profile. Again, I didn't learn anything new about my psyche, but it was helpful to read about how I can best work with my particular personality to acheive success:

http://www.personalitypage.com/

For the past four years I have been involved with a website that allows books to travel the world. You can register a book, get a unique ID number that is then noted in the book, which is then released "into the wild". Hopefully a like-minded individual will find the book, go to the website and enter the ID number, allowing you to track the book's wanderings. One of my books ended up in Bakersfield, another ended up in Germany! BookCrossing is trying to turn the world into one big happy library! Check it out:

http://bookcrossing.com/home

It's been a crazy week, with houseguests and my Story Corps project and an unexpected feline emergency. I've done very little work on my plan and couldn't even get to posting a resource yesterday. But it has been good to talk with friends and family about what I am working on-- the feedback has been overwhelmingly favorable, even from the people who usually counsel caution and security. I hope that wherever you are on your path, that you are getting lots of good support from those around you.

I took Monday off to attend to chores and hang out with my mom, who is visiting until the end of this week. Now I have to go back to work and I DON'T WANT TO!!! These are the days when I wish I were further along a new path and no longer needing to work at a normal corporate job. It doesn't help that I have a whole mess o' problems waiting for me at the office, including a bunch of meetings and tons of paperwork.

I guess that these kind of days are good in that they strengthen my resolve to do something different, something I can be excited about and work into my life instead of having work be this monolithic structure that sits apart from my life. So I am taking a deep breath, going into the office and determined to fit a few minutes in during the madness to doing something toward my real goal and mission.

When I talk to people who are considering a different and new path in life, many talk of writing books. As I mentioned last week, writing and publishing are an important part of the strategy for the next part of my life.

I am very fortunate to have a terrific resource to help me build this strategy. If you live in Southern California and are interested in publishing your own books, I highly recommend taking one of Belma Johnson's courses through area community colleges and adult education programs. Belma has gone both the traditional publishing route and self publishing and he is an enthusiastic proponent of publishing one's own books. His workshops are fast paced, engaging, full of practical information and incredibly inspiring. Once you have participated in one of his workshops, you are then part of the "DreamNet" circle and eligible to attend various workshops Belma offers throughout the year. There's nothing like being in a room of other aspiring authors and publishers to renew the enthusiasm and get the energy flowing again!

http://www.belmaj.com/

This weekend I am interviewing my mom and a dear friend as part of the Story Corps Story Kit project. Story Corps is an organization that works to capture the stories of ordinary Americans-- their lives and loves and philosophies (you may have heard snippets of interviews on NPR). On a recent business trip, a friend and I stumbled across one of the Mobile Story Booths. I interviewed her about her life in the apparel business and the interview evolved into a discussion of our friendship, its history and its evolution.

http://storycorps.net/

I'm still working out the details and how I'm going to get there, but the general outline of My Plan is this:

1. A selfpublishing company specializing in interactive journals and publishing local authors
2. Consulting/freelance projects in my industry
3. Writing projects, especially novels. I currently have a "chick lit" novel in progress and outlines for half a dozen more.
4. Increased community involvement, especially with the local libraries.
5. And the biggie, the most daunting part of my dream-- a used bookstore/community center. If you have ever been to any of the Bookman stores in Southern Arizona (http://bookmans.com/) you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

Part and parcel with changing my life path is working on simplifying my life. Looking at life beyond a weekly paycheck means I need to analyze my resources and work on being more mindful of how I use those resources, especially my money.

I am currently reading a revolutionary book Your Money or Your Life. The author, Joe Dominguez, spent a long time analyzing how much energy goes into that paycheck we get from our jobs. His story is pretty amazing-- he was a stockbroker who decided he wanted his life to be more than his job. By careful use of his resources, he was able to retire in his early 30s and by the end of his life, he was living on $3000 a year. He is one of my new path heroes!

Check out the website devoted to his work:

http://www.simpleliving.net/ymoyl/default.asp

As I mentioned yesterday, five years I drafted a new plan to help me cope with my life. The story, though, goes back even further. In 1997, two years after a wrenching divorce and being stuck in a job that I knew would eventually go overseas, I started working on something I have come to call "The Life Project". Every few years I look at all aspects of my life, usually with an eye to make changes. At that time, I contemplated becoming a consultant while continuing to write and perhaps developing some products I could sell. I took on some freelance projects and quickly realized I had alot to learn, especially with computers.

Then, out of the blue, a job came my way. It was in a related field and the one area of the apparel biz that was experiencing growth here in the States instead of overseas. It was a big enough of a stretch to give me insomnia and make me sick to my stomach every morning for the first month, but I have learned so much and have grown, despite the craziness.

The moral of all this is that even when the path doesn't go in the direction you design, there are still opportunities that ultimately put you in a better position to make bigger changes down the road. In these past 8 years I have met people who have pointed the way, learned about the bigger picture of how businesses work and gained a clearer vision of how I want my life to look. It's been a worthwhile "detour" from my original plan.

Five years ago I was burned out and desperate for some change in my life. I loved my job, but it was so overwhelming that it was making me ill. I didn't want to leave, but I knew I couldn't keep going the way I had been.

I started reading self help books, looking for strategies to help me get my life back and draft a new plan for the next few years. One of the most helpful resources was Cheryl Richardson, a life coach who has written such books as "Take Time for Your Life" and "Life Makeovers". Her advice and recommendations were practical and her books featured quizzes and checklists that helped me pinpoint the areas that needed action the most. I realized that before I could dream big about a new path in my life, I had to come from a position of strength and clarity, not exhaustion and desperation.

The changes I made were fairly subtle, but enabled me to make the next big decisions in my life: to buy a house and stop allowing my job to suck every bit of energy out of me. Making those two decisions work then allowed me to consider the next steps in my life. For anyone contemplating a significant life change, I highly recommend tackling this project first.

http://www.cherylrichardson.com/