Many North Americans would say that striving is a good and noble thing.

But even though it might be taking you places, striving is actually a never-ending cycle that keeps you from ever feeling good when you get there.

If callings are the ”have to’s” of the soul, then strivings are the “have to’s” of the ego.

 Striving mostly comes from a feeling of “not OK unless_______”, “not OK until______” or “not OK without _______”.

And most of these “not OK” messages are the same ones that gave rise to your emotional needs and all the striving and strategies that go with getting those met.

The funny thing is… although this works for your ego, this is a source of motivation that your deeper self tends to resist.

Your heart and soul know that the “not OK” message is a lie.

You’ve always been OK. You’re completely OK right now, just as you are in this moment. And you always will be OK, even if you never do another thing in your life. Truly!

 So any internal message that flies in the face of this knowing, however motivating it might seem, can leave you feeling resentful and resistant.

And even if you buy the lie and get motivated and accomplish something, it still leaves you with a “not OK” hole that needs filling. And so, the cycle continues….

Now you may be thinking:

“But if I stop striving, I’ll never get anything DONE!”

To your ego, that always feels like the truth. But a while ago, I pulled down the veil around that “truth” and looked behind it and found something startling.

I did my first experiment with non-striving in the summer of ’99.

A big part of me was convinced that if I just stopped altogether, I would lay around on the couch all day and never start anything again.

But in just a few days I noticed something that changed my mind for good:

Without putting any pressure on myself at all, I found myself naturally wanting to move forward in a more engaged and authentic way than before.

Instead of languishing on the couch as my ego had predicted, stopping had actually created just enough space for the true desires of my heart to come to the surface.

Your true motivation is often hiding just underneath your striving.

And when I say “true” motivation, I mean the kind that isn’t based on the lie of “not OK”.

True motivation comes from a place in you that always, already knows you’re OK and yet still sees a greater possibility for you, your life and your world.

We could call this heart’s desire, longing, calling or purpose.

Whatever we call it, it’s the most long-burning, sustainable fuel you have and its well worth making space for it to surface.

When you stop striving all the time, you open a space for joy to come in.

Let’s face it, striving all the time can take the joy out of anything, even your truest desires and the things you used to enjoy.

It tends to be tinged with urgency and panic, because your ego really believes you won’t be OK if you don’t get there.

And you can be doing the very things your true desires are calling you to and yet miss out on all the joy in them because they’ve been buried under an urgent layer of striving.

Here are a few clues that your striving may have taken over:

• that “hampster wheel” feeling like you can never get off
• growing resentment that you “have to” do anything at all
• daydreams or fantasies of escape – whatever your particular version of “run away and join the circus” is
• emptiness or lack of satisfaction when you complete something
• difficulty winding down at night or on holidays
• a constant feeling of internal pressure
• a sense that you’ve forgotten WHY you’re doing the things you do

When you start to see this pattern for what it is, you’ll start to realize that its completely OPTIONAL!

Then you can begin to challenge your ego’s list of “have to’s” so that your heart’s “want to’s” have some room to move again.

Summer is a perfect time to take a holiday from your striving!

Things are moving at a slower pace anyway. Many people are away and the rest are pretty forgiving if you let your email, or something else, slide for a few days.

Here are a few ways to experiment with non-striving this summer:

1. Make a list of your “have to’s”. Question each one and what your underlying motivation for it is. Then see if you can let it go for a while, delegate it, outsource it or at least give yourself a break from it.
2. Give yourself anywhere from an hour to a day of non-striving and keep reminding yourself that you’re completely OK in this moment right now. Allow and notice any discomfort that arises and just breathe with it and reassure it that its OK.
3. Choose a period of time, like a few hours or days – maybe the holiday you already have scheduled – and do ONLY what you really WANT to do. This will call you to start asking yourself what you REALLY want, and that’s a wonderful habit to get into. You might even surprise yourself with your answers! (If nothing comes at first, just keep asking over several days and weeks and answers will come.)

So even if you don’t get to have a month off this summer, you can still create the same kind of peace and relaxation by just letting some of your striving fall away.

What’s your experience been with striving? How does taking a holiday from it sound to you? Hard? Easy? Let us know in the comments.

Happy Holidays!

This post is dedicated to the lovely Ann Moller at Diva of the Word, in New York City.

We met last Wednesday evening and I discovered that she’s a dedicated actor who, like all of us that care about our craft, experiences doubt about her talent and her potential to master her chosen field.

As we were talking, I knew it was high time to share with all of you, as I shared with her, one of the best quotes I’ve ever heard on the nature of self doubt. It’s this:

When you doubt your talent…that IS your talent.

It might seem a little puzzling at first, but let me ‘splain.

The person I’m quoting was a writing coach and he helped beginning writers find their voices and develop their talent.

And he noticed a common theme:

The bad writers never worried about the quality of their writing.

Only those with actual talent ever worried about whether it was any good.

So the talented writers who had the potential to become really good were the ones obsessing over their writing and doubting their talent.

The really bad writers in his groups tended to think they were great! They had no concept of the difference between their own writing and really good writing.

And because they couldn’t see the difference, they couldn’t really do anything about it to close the gap and improve their own abilities.

This, he realized, was the essence of what made them different.

Those with talent could actually see the difference between bad and good and great in their chosen craft.

And what’s more, they cared deeply about the craft itself.

It was this caring that called them to obsessively measure where they were on the scale of bad to great.

And it was this same caring that drove them onward to constant improvement in the hopes of attaining mastery one day.

So their self doubt, he realized, was actually a by-product and even an indicator of their talent!

In fact, if self-doubt was absent, it meant that they were less likely to improve because one of the crucial ingredients of awareness, caring or ability was missing.

I’ve come to understand in the years since that what he really meant is this:

The very senses and abilities in you that know what good work is, are the same senses and abilities that are doing the doubting.

They’re the same thing.

Talent leads to study.. which leads to awareness… which leads to caring… which leads to aspiring… which leads to doubt… which leads to practice… which leads to improvement.

So let’s return again to this quote and read it with this new understanding:

When you doubt your talent…that IS your talent.

So when you worry about whether your own work is “good enough”, it means fundamentally that you care AND that you actually have the ability to know quality in your craft.

And that’s talent!

Let that move you into aspiring and practicing and improving.

Now help me find the author!

I have to plead for your help, now, in tracking down the source of these golden words. My husband read this quote to me about 3 years ago from a magazine article that’s long gone to the recycling bin. I’ve Googled it in quotes several times and come up empty-handed.

If I’d had any idea then how deeply supportive these words would turn out to be in my life, I would have paid better attention to the author!

I have a hunch it might have been from Richard Carlson, the author of the whole “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” series. So if you can deny or confirm this, please tell me below so I can finally express my gratitude.

How does this quote strike you? What has your experience been with talent and self-doubt? And has self doubt been motivating or limiting for you?

I’d love to hear your stories and impressions below!

“Oh, well. I guess it’s back to square one.”

This is a phrase I hear a lot in coaching sessions and I heard it again from a client just last week. It’s almost always said with frustration and regret.

It means that all our good progress has been ruined by a missed action and now we have to start all over again, building our step-by-step pathway from scratch.

I spent years thinking this way and here’s what I say to that now…

Hogwash!

No progress is EVER wasted

When I really GOT this concept, it was the hugest relief to me. I had spent most of my life feeling like I was always going back to square one because I could never seem to stick with my intentions for very long.

And when I look back now at those times, I realize that the story I was telling about starting all over again was actually more damaging to me than any of the missed actions were.

What I wish I knew then was this:

Every action wires up your brain for the next one
(no matter how long that takes)

We often use this “square one” idea as a way to give up on something that we said we’d keep doing for a while. We miss one day of our diet or our writing and suddenly we’re ready to throw in the towel and abandon the whole thing.

But the first thing you need to know is – every time you took action you actually created or strengthened the pathways in your brain and nervous system that would help you to take action the next time.

In a very real way, every time you take an action, you’re physically one step closer to being the person who can do that all the time, effortlessly. You’ll just keep accumulating more brain wiring and better pathways until it’s not hard anymore.

And that wiring does NOT go away just because you miss a day. It’s right there, waiting for you to use it again.

The second big thing you need to know is:

Every choice to go forward digests a little chunk of your resistance

I’m a big fan of celebrating the power of the tiniest choices.

And the choices you make to go towards your dreams and desires really do add up, but it’s hard to see that from day to day.

You see, in the moment when you manage to overcome a doubt in order to take an action, you’ve quite literally transformed the energy of that doubt into the energy of your action.

There is now just a little less doubt, not just in you, but in the world as a whole!

That’s pretty cool!

AND it adds up.

You won’t suddenly feel all your doubt lifted tomorrow. But if you keep acting in the face of your doubt or fear or anxiety, etc, you will very definitely look back in a few weeks or months and realize how much they’ve decreased and how much your power over them has increased.

Our resistance loves to cut and run

I think a big part of why we use this all or nothing way of thinking is that it’s really vulnerable and humbling to fail at something we said we’d persevere with.

We get scared that we won’t have what it takes or that our efforts won’t really get us where we want to go.

That’s a vulnerable place and it tends to bring up past failures, too. And our safety brain would do almost anything to keep us from feeling all that bad stuff.

So it distracts us with anger, frustration and “Never mind. It’s all ruined now. Back to square one.”

So now you can listen to that and say “Thank you for sharing. But my brain is all ready for step 7 now, so I think I’ll do it!”

How has this concept shown up in your life? I’d love to hear your comments and questions below.

And I also want to let you know that I had great fun contributing one of the bonus interviews for the Engaging eCourses progam presented by Kelly Kingman of Sticky eBooks and Pace Smith of the World Changing Writing Course. You can see what all the fuss is about here: Engaging eCourses

When you decide it’s time to really step out and do something great, it usually brings some fear up, right?

And you probably think that fear is about what’s outside you – what will other people think?, will they like it?, will they judge me?, will I be approved of?, will it be any good?

But most of what we’re really afraid of comes from the inside first.

We start judging and doubting and tearing our own work down WAY before anyone else has a chance to.

We run all our ideas past a gauntlet of tests, critiques and invalidations before they ever get to see the light of day.

Did you know that the only outer criticisms you’re ever afraid of are the ones you worry are true?

Think about this for a moment. When someone tells you something negative or even constructively negative, and you’ve never heard it before – you’re surprised right? And maybe even grateful to hear it, saying “Wow, I never even knew that!”

But when someone tells you something you’ve heard in your own head over and over again, you react. It’s already got a huge charge on it and it’s not like you NEEDED to hear it again. You’re  defending yourself against it on the inside every day.

So how safe are you making it for yourself to risk and create and express?

Everyone says in order to succeed and gain attention in this crowded world you’ve got to “be revolutionary” and “do epic shit”. And I agree.

But how safe is that when you’re waiting for the hammer of inner judgment to fall?

Now at this point, a lot of people will defend “judgment” saying it’s not really negative in and of itself, we all need to “discern” good from bad and right from wrong.

OK. I’m not talking about discernment here. Yes, that’s a good thing.

I’m talking about anything you say or think to yourself, about yourself, that’s the slightest bit unkind.

And for me, unkindness is as much about the “tone” you use with yourself as it is about the words.

It’s about how you treat yourself every day.

If you had a friend that spoke to you in the way that you speak to yourself, would you stay friends with them?

That’s a really good test for the quality of your inner dialogue.

Every single interaction you have with yourself makes your inner relationship better or worse. Every time you speak to yourself, you set up an inner expectation of what the next interaction will be like.

You have the power to leave yourself with a safer, more encouraging place to play, anticipating kindness and support.

Or you can leave yourself in a slight atmosphere of dread, waiting for the next unkindness or harsh word.

And, just like a 35 year marriage, these constant interactions and their quality add up over time to create a space for you to bloom in or not.

So if you want to step out and do something big, something you’ve never done before, your inner world will need to be safer than it’s ever been before!

Risk requires support. A place to fall back when we fail – where someone will say “There, there,” and help us console our hearts and lick our wounds.

And the very first place we can create huge support is inside ourselves.

When I was getting ready to step out in 1997 as a coach for the first time, I found myself completely unable to do it. And then my own coach at the time pointed out that I had no community or outer support system and that I would really need that first in order to get out there.

But what neither of us realized then was that support was entirely missing in my inner world too.

When inner support is missing, we go looking for support in our outer world. But in a cruel irony, we’ll often assume that we’re going to receive the same kind of support from others as we’re receiving from ourselves.

And if by chance someone lovely and truly encouraging happens to stumble into our circle, we’ll go ahead and project our inner judgment on them, telling ourselves a story about what they must be thinking about us.

It’s really crazy making isn’t it?

No wonder we have such a hard time creating and expressing and stepping out as our true authentic selves!

So if you’re getting ready to take a risk and be bold and revolutionary…

…take some time to lay a foundation of inner support and encouragement.
You’ll need it.

What’s your experience with risk and inner support? How do you make it safe for yourself to step out? I’d love to hear in the comments below.

You WANT to be taking action on your true desires, but you just can’t seem to get past that invisible wall that’s got you stopped.

Maybe random things just keep getting in the way. Maybe you’ve been telling yourself you’re too busy – but that doesn’t make the longing stop.

Or maybe you KNOW you’re sabotaging the very thing you want the most and judging yourself for that is becoming one more reason to avoid it.

Whatever your resistance looks like, you know you simply must get past it if you’re ever going to get to where you really want to be in your life.

And if you’re anything like me, you’ve found that willpower doesn’t work long term – it’s just tiring – and forcing yourself takes all the joy out of something you want to love and not hate everyday.

Get the Skills and Knowledge to Go Past Your Invisible Walls

The Wisdom of Your Resistance is a 5-Week Teleclass program that shows you step-by-step how to track your resistance and enter into a compassionate dialogue with it so you can immediately end the tug of war you’ve been having with yourself.

Your resistance patterns, and all parts of you for that matter, are incredibly wise and with the right training, you can start finding out WHY they’ve been getting in your way so you can give them what they need to get on board and work FOR you.

You’ll be building skills in 6 distinct areas and learning practical techniques you can use anytime, anywhere, to make new choices and keep resistance from taking over.

Plus, you’ll be unlearning a lifetime of judgment and inner criticism and learning brand new positive, heart-centered ways to stay connected to your motivation and desire.

The program includes 5 weekly teleclasses, mp3 recordings and transcripts in case you can’t be there live,  a community support forum, weekly worksheets and pdf guides, a copy of the 15 Minutes to Outsmarting Your Resistance kit and one personal Discovery Session with me.

And you won’t have mountains of homework! This is about doing tiny things through your day that completely transform your inner experience. Our resistance loves to make tasks look like big barriers, so everything will be bite-sized and do-able!

No matter what your obstacles are, you’ll find effective ways to see through them and transform them into good fuel, for progress you can feel great about.

And the brilliant thing about this process is that it’s designed to work even if you’re resisting the program itself!

Personalized Coaching

Whenever you’re dealing with resistance, it’s good to remember that things are being actively hidden and kept buried in your subconscious in order to keep you safe and happy.

That’s why I’m including direct, personal coaching time with me, so you can get straight to the bottom of what’s been blocking you and save yourself years of hunting and struggle.

AND, you’ll have a half-price discount on additional coaching hours for the duration of the 5-week program and for one month after, as well.

Community Support

One of the favorite and most common strategies of resistance is “divide and conquer”. That means your resistance likes it when you’re isolated, cut off from support and thinking you’re the only one who’s feeling this way.

So one of the things I’m the MOST excited about is the community forum that will be a part of this teleclass program.

You’ll be able to get direct feedback from me, but when you get a taste of the support available from the rest of your fellow students that will probably become even more valuable to you.

Together we’ll create a resource for each other filled with wisdom, camaraderie, insight and laughter.

And I’m going to keep it open for an additional month after the program ends so you’ll have a transition time before you start “flying solo” with all your new habits and skills.

Plus, YOU Get to Help Design the Program!

This is the first ever offering of The Wisdom of Your Resistance Teleclass program. And because of that, I’m going to be seeking your input and advice on what you need, what order to do things in and what formats will work best for you.

So you get to help me create the program that will work the very best for you!

What’s the Free Offer?

This is actually a moment I’ve been waiting a long time for. I struggled so long with my own resistance that I had moments when I seriously thought I would never really accomplish anything.

And I know from intimate experience that one of the areas resistance likes to go after is money – making sure the resources are never there to get what you need to move forward.

Now, finally, I have the chance to take that limitation off the table for you.

That’s why I’m offering three scholarships to the readers of this blog. The three lucky winners will get the entire program absolutely free. Winners will be notified two days before the course opens to the Early Bird List that they have won their spot in The Wisdom of Your Resistance teleclass program.

How Can You Get in for Free?

To enter to win a free scholarship, here’s what you need to do. At the bottom of this page, add a comment, and tell me:

• What’s your biggest frustration around dealing with resistance and obstacles to your goals and dreams?
• Where would you like to see yourself after The Wisdom of Your Resistance Teleclass program? (You don’t have to give specifics if it feels pretty personal – just tell me in a general way.)

Do you have questions about the Wisdom of Your Resistance teleclass? Please let me know those, too! I’m happy to answer them.

Tell All Your Friends

Do you know someone who could benefit from The Wisdom of Your Resistance Teleclass program? Click on the Share button below to share it on Twitter and Facebook and wherever you like. You can also use the Retweet button to tweet it out to your peeps.

Remember, you just need to tell me:

• What’s your biggest frustration around dealing with resistance and obstacles to your goals and dreams?
• Where would you like to see yourself after The Wisdom of Your Resistance Teleclass program?

And if you have questions, let me know about those, too!

Best of Luck!

Our contest is now closed and congratulations go out to our 3 lucky winners, Eva, LaVonne and Sang-Gye. Thank you all for your participation and comments! For more program info, previews, discounts and access to a FREE Intro Teleclass July 27th @ 8 pm Eastern, just put your name on the Early Bird List.  I’ll also be sending the mp3 recording of the teleclass, entitled “7 Sources of Resistance and How to Make Friends With Them, to everyone on the list!

Or “What I learned about success while shoveling my walkway.”

Thank goodness this is NOT my sidewalk....

An insight like this might sound silly but, when I got it – in the hush of a rural Nova Scotia night with the snow still falling softly – it was actually kinda profound.

First of all, shoveling is far from my favorite thing to do. And here in Atlantic Canada freshly fallen snow turns quickly into a wet, heavy cement-like substance that doesn’t want to come off the shovel when you go to hurl it to one side of the path.

To say that I had many moments when I wanted to quit is rather an understatement.

But in the end, I finished it and felt the lovely puff of pride when my husband (bless his heart) stopped in the front doorway to admire the fine job I did. (He KNOWS he’ll never get help with it again if he nitpicks….smart man!)

And the reason I finished boiled down to 3 things, which I realized apply to just about everything else we might want to quit, so here they are:

1.  Doing it faster to “just get it over with” only made it worse.

I kept getting exhausted by the sheer volume and weight of the snow and it was definitely making me grumble more about the whole thing. It was when I slowed down to a more enjoyable and sustainable pace that I noticed the hush of the night and the beauty around me and got just a little more grateful to be outside after all.

2. As long as I’m committed to finishing, taking a rest is OK.

And I took lots of them. And at first, when I was grumbling, every rest I took I thought might become my stopping place. And when we don’t want to do what we’re doing, it’s so easy to label any true need for a break as avoidance, resistance or procrastination.

In fact, we can get afraid to stop just for fear that we’ll never start again. But then, at some point, I fully committed to getting it finished, all the way up the steps. And after that, a rest was just a rest. And it was good!

3. When I wasn’t sure I could do it, I would turn around and see how much of it I had done already.

And it surprised me what a great motivational boost this was, but even when I first started and there was WAY more yet to do than what I had completed, every time I looked at the finished bit, I felt great.

And once I figured this out, I just kept looking back at the ever increasing amount of evidence that I could do it and just kept on doing it and pretty soon…it was DONE!

And then I thought how curious it is that, when we get so focused on “moving forward” with something hard, it seems counter-intuitive to look back.

Yet,  all the evidence for how far we’ve come, even if it’s just a tiny increment, is behind us.

In writing this, I remembered a friend who doesn’t write to do lists, she writes DONE lists. Now I can see why!

So the new “prescription” I’m going to be playing with this year is:

Slow down
Rest when needed
Be inspired by what’s already done

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Where do YOU draw your inspiration from when you want to quit?

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Calendar from Linda & Harriet

Happy New Year!

And with the New Year comes the inevitable  reviews and stats on how well we generally do at following through on our New Year’s resolutions!

Generally, the stats say we don’t do so well and, in my experience, there’s one big reason for that…  we haven’t dug deep enough to find out WHY we really chose our New Year’s resolutions in the first place.

Some resolutions seem so obvious.

We KNOW that we’re 25 pounds over our healthier weight, or we KNOW that the smoking or junk food is bad for us – so OF COURSE we should resolve to do something about them.

In this case, too, we’re often making the obvious resolutions for the benefit of someone close to us. We say we’ll do it because it makes THEM feel better and also gets them off our back for a little while.

And sometimes we pick a resolution for someone else’s benefit.

We may choose a resolution because THEY picked one and if you live in the same house it’s a lot easier to BOTH quit smoking or eat healthier.  And, of course, you want to be supportive…

The downside is this :

That isn’t always the truth of our own heart and it sets us up for a lot of inner struggle, defeat, self-judgment and maybe their judgment too, when we don’t succeed in staying with it.

There’s a much more powerful and satisfying way to go about this and it requires a little digging – into our desires.

With resolutions a “good idea” just isn’t good enough.

You see, all the kinds of resolutions I listed above seem like perfectly good “ideas” – but that’s the problem, they’re just ideas. They’re in the mind and we haven’t brought them down to heart level yet.

The heart level is where all the power is and the fuel that will keep you going even when you want to quit, and even when your spouse or room-mate quits!

Let’s say you’re faced with the obvious choice that resolving to lose 20 pounds would be really good for you – and everyone else in your household thinks so too. That’s a fine and healthy and well-intended choice – but lets take it deeper now.

5 questions to ask about your resolution to find the desire behind it:

Take some time and sit down in a quiet space, maybe first thing in the morning or last thing at night, and simply watch your breathing for a minute or two as a way to quiet your inner world. Notice your body relaxing just a little bit and just breathe.

Then take a few minutes to reflect on WHY you would want to make that resolution this year. Next you can ask the following questions in any order you want and see what comes up for you:

1. What feels important about this for you? Why?
   (And when you get an answer, you can ask Why? about that, and so on, peeling layers into your heart as you go)
2. Is there something happening in your life right now that makes this choice more important than before?
   Maybe you tried this and couldn’t follow through. What’s different now?
3. Is there a longing behind your resolution?
   Is there an ache for something that you’re missing in yourself or your life? And how does that longing relate to the resolution you chose?
   (Hint: longing is GREAT fuel for staying motivated.)
4. Is choosing this a way to stop feeling badly about something?
   Is there an underlying desire to simply feel good again, with or without the change? If that’s the case, find a way to come to a deep acceptance of where you are now, first, so you’re not in reaction to feeling bad at the same time that you’re trying to change.
5. Is choosing this a means to something else that you desire even more?
   For example, someone might be choosing to lose weight in order to find a relationship. If so, what’s the desire that’s even stronger than your current resolution?

Write down whatever comes up for you in the process. You might even want to do this over the course of several days in a row – sometimes we hold back a bit the first time, because we’re a little scared of what we’ll find. This definitely gets easier as we go along!

This could change things….

Based on what you discover, you might choose a different resolution all together, deepen your motivation for your original one, or decide it’s not the right time to make one at all.

No matter what you decide for this year, you’ll be a lot more honest about it, a lot more motivated and a lot more likely to succeed!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this or on New Year’s Resolutions in general. Share your comments below.

(And if you enjoyed this post, go ahead and subscribe to receive free updates by email or in a reader.)

What to do...what to do....

I’m just starting to get into exploring the whole “blogosphere” and finding like minded others to read and hang out with. And I found a gem today that I want to share with you.

Briana at Blisscovery wrote a funny and insightful post about the dialogue she had with a personal trainer trying to pressure her to commit to a contract after a free session, and also about the inner dialogue she had with herself about her right to take her own sweet time.

Take a look here:  I can make broccoli an unhealthy decision.

Then come back and leave me a comment below  and let me know if you enjoyed this.

And if you’re enjoying these posts,  go ahead, treat yourself and subscribe to receive free updates.

There’s a pretty good chance, if you’re sitting in a house, with a computer, reading this in an email or on a web browser, that you have all your basic needs of food, clothing and shelter met, with some income left over to pay for internet and pay some attention to things beyond your own backyard.

This “luxury” we have, of having the time, space and money to pay attention to what we want to is not available everywhere in our world. And the gift of our awareness plus the availability of so much global information is showing us things we never even knew we wanted to change.

And if we’re living from our hearts to any degree at all, the plight of others and our world as a whole provokes a response in us – a desire – to help, to console, to soften the pain or address the need in whatever way we can.

But what to do from there?

Andrew Harvey, a modern day mystic, writer, teacher and student of the worlds mystical traditions,  offers a handbook for answering that very question.

I’ve been following Andrew for a long time, ad his book The Son of Man opened my eyes to the mystic essence available within the Christian tradition and helped me shake some of the dogma I was still locked into at the time.

I actually haven’t read Andrew’s new book, The Hope. It only just released on September 15th and I just ordered my copy online, so I hope it gets here soon!

I heard a portion of a talk he gave played on cassette years ago and just a few minutes of listening to him absolutely set my heart on fire!

And I believe it was Andrew who talked about becoming a “radical radioactive nuisance for love”, a term that has stuck with us in The Way of the Heart community.

So if Andrew has written a handbook for what he calls spiritual activists, I have no doubt that it will be passionate gasoline for any fire in us that wants to change the world.

Mercedes Sosa 1973

This past Sunday, October 4th, a great light went out in Latin America and in our world.

Mercedes Sosa had one of the most powerful female voices I have ever heard and she became a voice for the longings of her country and her people in a time when they desperately needed one.

Born in northern Argentina, she began recording, performing and touring in the  mid 1960′s, starting mainly with Argentine folk songs and widening her repetoire to include songs from across Latin America.

She supported Perron in her youth and was a key figure in what was called the “new song” movement in Argentina, a movement that captured the change embodied by the 60′s.

In 1971, she recorded a tribute album to the Chilean poet Violetta Parra, which included a cover of Parra’s song, Gracias A La Vida, or Thank You To Life, which became one of Mercedes Sosa’s signature pieces.

In the 1970′s, as Argentina became more and more oppressive under the military dictatorship, the voice of Mercedes Sosa began to be seen by the authorities as too powerful in it’s heartfelt honesty and in 1976 she and her entire audience were arrested and searched at a concert.

Mercedes was only released through international pressure, and she was then banned from Argentina and would not return until 1982, just months before the military government fell.

I first heard her voice on one of the world’s best radio stations, CKUA, in Alberta, singing Gracias A La Vida from the recording of her homecoming concerts in Beunos Aires. I was captivated by the great power and deep love for humanity I heard in her and I’ve been listening to her ever since.

I wanted to share with you this You Tube video of her singing Gracias A La Vida and I managed to track down a lovely English translation of the lyrics, which I’ve re-printed below, which you might want to read first and then watch the video.

Mercedes Sosa has become my icon for the power of a single female voice and what it can embody in and for the world, and this song has become my favorite gratitude song of all time.

I sincerely hope you enjoy this and as always I would love to hear your comments below.

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me two beams of light, that when opened,
Can perfectly distinguish black from white
And in the sky above, her starry backdrop,
And from within the multitude
The one that I love.

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me an ear that, in all of its width
Records— night and day—crickets and canaries,
Hammers and turbines and bricks and storms,
And the tender voice of my beloved.

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me sound and the alphabet.
With them the words that I think and declare:
“Mother,” “Friend,” “Brother” and the light shining.
The route of the soul from which comes love.

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me the ability to walk with my tired feet.
With them I have traversed cities and puddles
Valleys and deserts, mountains and plains.
And your house, your street and your patio.

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me a heart, that causes my frame to shudder,
When I see the fruit of the human brain,
When I see good so far from bad,
When I see within the clarity of your eyes…

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me laughter and it gave me longing.
With them I distinguish happiness and pain—
The two materials from which my songs are formed,
And your song, as well, which is the same song.
And everyone’s song, which is my very song.