Head, Hands, and Heart

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>SIMPLICITY and SUCCESS:
Creating What Matters MOST in Life & Work
Vol. 5, #4, February 20, 2007 All rights reserved.
Bruce Elkin: Personal/Professional Life/Success Coach for 20 Years
http://www.BruceElkin.com
Sent to confirmed subscribers only. List is never shared or sold!
>View current & back issues of my full newsletter on my blog at
http://createwhatmattersmost.blogspot.com/
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"Those who do not create the future they want
must endure the future they get.
-- Draper L. Kaufman, Jr., in Systems One

Hi ,
It's a sunny day here today, a break in series of small storms sweeping in off the Pacific. I can't keep from glancing out the window at blue sky above just-budding poplars in the park across the street.

First I hear it, then I see it.

Perched solidly on a dead branch at the top of a 60-foot poplar tree that is just beginning to bud is a large, male Bald Eagle.

He sits perfectly still, except for occasional almost imperceptible moves of his head. Then, suddenly, he spreads his awesome wings, drops from the branch, and powers out of view. Wow!

The power, grace, and beauty of eagles always moves me. It gets me thinking about personal power, and it's expression through creating.

Yesterday, I watched a video of a conference to inaugurate the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education in Vancouver, BC. In it, a group of First Nations Chiefs and Elders performed a ceremony to welcome His Holiness, the Dalai Lama to their traditional territory.

In the ceremony, they said the Eagle was a sacred bird in their culture, "the messenger to our Creator."

They stressed how important were the qualities of the Eagle, it's power, soaring high above the Earth, expressing hope and vision.

Then they complimented the Dalai Lama for his gentle, "feet on the ground" kind of power. Attached to Mother Earth, and to all beings, "all our relations."

In this welcoming, the leaders stressed two of the key elements in creating almost anything.

1. Vision: the capacity to let your imagination soar, and the willingness to stretch for what is most important to you.

2. A solid connection to current reality: the capacity to keep your feet on the ground, and to know where you are, even as your heart soars.

When you hold a vision of a desired result and the current reality of that result in mind at the same time, a useful creative tension arises out of the gap between them.

Creators use the energy in that tension to make choices and take actions in support of their desired results.

By bringing these 3 elements--vision, current reality, and action--together, in this integrated way, creators bring their heart, head, and hands together, and their whole self into play.

Working with current reality and the forces in play, much like an eagle works with wind currents and updrafts, creators greatly increase their chances of bringing into being their desired results.

So, why not let your imagination soar. What matters to you? What do you want to create? What would bring you fully alive and engaged?

And, at the same time, emulate the Dalai Lama's gentle, feet-on-the-ground mindfulness. Accept reality as it is. See reality as the raw material out of which you create desired results, and your life.

Then, working with the framework--the container, the possibility space--of creative tension, make choices, take actions, learn from your experience, and gradually shape the result you envision.

Doing so, you will--like creators in all fields--find that special place where your head, hands, and heart come together. And, from that place, you will be much more likely to bring into reality results that you would truly love to see exist.
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==============================
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> A GREAT NEWSLETTER BY AN EX-CLIENT OF MINE:
If you are interested in Health, Environment, and Negotiation,
please check out the eNewsletter HEN. Written by Julia
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> FR.EE VALUES and HAPPINESS ASSESSMENT:
Martin Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness, offers an
excellent way to support you in creating happiness in daily life.
Go to www.authentichappiness.org and do his Values-in-Action
Signature Strengths Survey. it will help you increase your
authentic happiness. I do it. It works.
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> THE LAST WORD: QUOTABLE QUOTES
=============================
"One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar."
- Helen Keller

"To be successful, have your heart in your business and your business in your heart."
- Thomas Watson

"Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."
- Louisa May Alcott

"If you are serious about your goals, drop the conditions. Go directly to your goal. Be your goal! Conditions often disguise strategies for escaping accountability. Why not just take charge and create the experience you are looking for?"
-- Eric Allenbaugh

"Don't wait for a light to appear at the end of the tunnel, stride down there and light the bloody thing yourself."
-- Sara Henderson
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> THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
==============================
THANKS for forwarding my newsletter and short posts. New
subscribers keep the newsletter thriving. So please keep forwarding
them to friends and associates. I appreciate your support.

If you received this from a friend, please sign up for your own sub
at http://www.bruceelkin.com/newsletter.html
You'll also get 3 fr.ee gift.s!

All the best! Peace and hope!
Bruce

***************************************************
>BRUCE ELKIN: Personal/Professional Results & Renewal Coach
Author:- Simplicity & Success: Creating the Life You Long For
- Emotional Mastery: Manage Your Moods & Create What
Matters--With Whatever Life Gives You
> http://www.BruceElkin.com 250-388.7210 Skype Me!
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All material herein is copyright (c) Bruce Elkin, 2006.
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A Dancing Wombat. Check it out!

Thanks to Charles Holmes for sending me this neat little dancing wombat with a message about Global Mind Shift. Too cool.
And very insightful. Check it out.

Check this out... very cute:
http://www.globalcommunity.org/flash/wombat.shtml

Love the Earth As Yourself

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"SIMPLY SUCCESS" - SHORT POST - February 13, 2007
=======================================
>Helping You Create What Matters MOST in Life and Work
Bruce Elkin: Life/Work Renewal Coach
Personal - Professional - Organizational
http://www.BruceElkin.com
Sent to subscribers only. Names are never shared or sold!
**************************************************

Hi All,
Happy Valentine's Day to you. A great time to express your love to others, and to reaffirm your love for yourself. Don't forget the latter!

Due to a lingering, nasty cold/flu combo and time needed to prepare to deliver two workshops at an international Appreciative Inquiry conference in Vancouver this Wednesday to Friday, this week's short post will be very short.

I just wanted to follow up last week's piece on climate change and our responsibility to help ameliorate it with these two timeless pieces of advice about loving the world beyond our self, and our own.

First, Albert Einstein suggests:

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

"This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

And ecophilosopher Arne Naess echoes this idea, when he says:

"We need environmental ethics, but when people feel they unselfishly give up, even sacrifice, their interest in order to show love for nature, this is probably in the long run a treacherous basis for ecology.

"Through broader identification, they may come to see their own interest served by environmental protection, through genuine self-love, love of a widened and deepened self."

So, this Valentines, love your loved ones, love your self, and love the whole of "nature in its beauty."
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> ARE YOU DOING WHAT YOU LOVE?
Would you like to create what truly matters to you?
===========================================
>Would you like to be:
* Clear about what you want to do and create?
* Focused, free, and able to do more with less?
* Create desired results -- in spite of problems & adversity?
 If you would like my fr.ee 7-page info package, e-mail me with "Coaching Package" as subject at Bruce@BruceElkin.com
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>THIS WEEK'S QUOTES:
====================
"Lord, grant that I might not so much seek to be
loved as to love."
-- Saint Francis of Assisi

"You are not here to love the world, you are here to be love in the world."
- Grace Johnston

"Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get, only with what you are expected to give... which is everything."
- Katharine Hepburn

"When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to
be alive -- to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love."
- Marcus Aurelius

"It is not how much you do, but how much Love you put into the doing that matters."
- Mother Teresa
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Thanks for forwarding my newsletters and short posts to others. Your help is invaluable. Have a great Valentine's.
Bruce
**************************************************
> BRUCE ELKIN:
Personal, Professional, and Organization Renewal Coach
>Call: 250.388.7210 www.BruceElkin.com Or Skype Me!
**************************************************

Internal Test

Just testing something re accounts and postings. Sorry for the interruption.
B.

Simplicity, Success, and Sustainability

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"SIMPLY SUCCESS" - SHORT POST - February 6, 2007
=======================================
>Helping You Create What Matters MOST in Life and Work
Bruce Elkin: Life/Work Renewal Coach
Personal - Professional - Organizational
http://www.BruceElkin.com
Sent to subscribers only. Names are never shared or sold!
**************************************************

Hi ,
Warm but grey here on the island. Typical February weather for us.

That's a relief after all the "atypical weather" we've had this year. Unusually hot and dry fall. Unbelievably rainy and snowy early winter. And 3 times as many major storms as usual. What's going on?

As you may have heard, an International Intergovernmental Panel of Scientists issued a much-awaited approach on climate change in the past week. Here's what Grist magazine says about it [grist@grist.org]:

" The news is out! The world's scientists say there's a 90-plus percent chance that humans are causing global warming! They say by 2100, temperatures will likely rise 3.2 to 7.1 degrees Fahrenheit, and sea levels will rise 7 to 23 inches, plus another 4 to 8 inches if polar ice sheets keep melting. This is the real deal -- and it's a conservative deal, since it required a 154-country consensus.

"Anyone who would continue to risk inaction on the basis of the evidence presented here will one day in the history books be considered irresponsible," said Achim Steiner, who heads the U.N. Environment Program. Even the U.S. sorta admitted the report has legs, with a White House science and technology policy staffer saying it "will be valuable to policymakers."

That's good news. We all care about clean air, clean water, green, wild places where our children can take their children years from now. But what can we do to help avoid the worst effects of climate change?

We can simplify our lives, and work. We can cut out the waste in our daily lives, which will save us money, which will allow us to work less at jobs that do not fulfill us, and more on creating what truly matters to us.

As many of you know, my approach to simplicity focuses on embracing life's messiness as the raw material for creating the life we long for. As a life/work renewal coach, I work everyday with folks who are trying to create a simpler, yet more successful life--for themselves and their children.

Every day, I hear stories from people who, after years of wondering about it and fearing their families' reactions, have decided to downsize or simplify. Almost always they are surprised at the positive reaction from family members.

I think that many of us, even the kids--especially the kids?--have subtly realized the current North American way of life is neither sustainable nor satisfying. And, recently, that subtle realization has become stronger and more conscious.

Reports such as the one above, movies such as Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and scores of articles, books, and TV programs on climate change and global warming are causing us to realize that we're all in this together.

And that each and every one of us has the opportunity and responsibility to do their part in creating a new kind of world, in which we live well yet simply, focused on creating the kind and quality of lives--and world--we most want.

I think one of the most profound things we can all do is ask ourselves, What truly matters to me? What do I most want to create? To paraphrase the singer/songwriter, I think our challenge is to, "Find something you really care about -- and create a life that shows it."

And not just to think about our own lives, but our children's children's lives, and the world they will inherit from us. Creating a simple, successful, and sustainable life for ourselves may well be the best inheritance we can provide for our children and their children. If not us, who? If not now, when?
------------------



> ARE YOU DOING WHAT YOU LOVE?
Would you like to create what truly matters to you?
===========================================
Yes? But…
- Feeling stuck? Stalled? Drifting?
- In transition? Not sure what to do next?
- Thinking about simplifying but don't want to go live in a tent?


I work with capable people who struggle with complicated life/work challenges, and help them develop the SKILLS, STRUCTURE, and SUPPORT to make the complex simple.

>I can help you clarify what you love--and create a life that shows it!

If you would like my fr.ee 7-page info package, e-mail me with "Coaching Package" as subject at Bruce@BruceElkin.com
---------------



>THIS WEEK'S QUOTES:
====================
“Tell me, what will you do with your one wild and precious life?”
-- Mary Oliver

Take good care of this moment.
Immerse yourself in its particulars.
Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed.
Quit the evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble.
It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you
happen to be in right now.
- Epictetus

"The world is not to be put in order, the world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order."
-- Henry Miller

"Changing lifestyles does not mean sacrificing or denying oneself. Nothing is forced. . . . Practicing (simple, successful) lifestyles is a process of rediscovering what is essential, what is important and meaningful in our lives. "
-- Patricia Mische

"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends to do otherwise."
-- Aldo Leopold

"Design Criteria For Simple Yet Successful Living:
1. Does what I own or buy promote activity, self-reliance, and involvement, or does it induce passivity and dependence?
2. Are my consumption patterns basically satisfying, or do I buy much that serves no real need?
3. How tied is my present lifestyle to installment payments, maintenance and repair costs, and the expectations of others?
4. Do I consider the impact of my consumption patterns on other people and on the Earth?"
-- The Simple Living Collective of San Francisco
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Thanks for forwarding my newsletters and short posts to others. We surpassed the 750 subscribers mark. Your help is invaluable.
Have a great week.
Bruce
**************************************************
> BRUCE ELKIN:
Personal, Professional, and Organization Renewal Coach
>Call: 250.388.7210 www.BruceElkin.com Or Skype Me!