Is the universe trying to tell me something?

I saw this quote in a blog and it stuck with me through the day…

“I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.” Frank Costello in the movie ‘The Departed’

Then I saw this on a poster in a shop window…

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Then I heard this in a TV programme…

Father to daughter, “We either define our fate, or we are defined by it.”

Hmmm…

Once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, three times?

I came up with my own version…

“If we don’t design our fate, then we give fate the right to design us.”

Is that the message?

Another use for passion

Most of us could be far better listeners than we are… me included 🙂

We speak with passion and want to be heard. Do we listen with passion when others want to be heard?

When was the last time you listened with passion?

Now that you have thought of a time, what were you doing that made your listening passionate?

How do you do ‘listening with passion’?

Notice how you listen to someone this week when they are speaking passionately.

Here’s a few more tips on listening, and a lovely quote from Nancy Kline on listening and leadership.

Are you busy, or just have a lot to do?

I hear it all the time… “I’m so busy!”

But busy is a state of mind. It is the frantic and sometimes jumbled thoughts whirling in our head about all the things on our list that we think we must do. That mess of thoughts causes stress, and paradoxically, detracts from our ability to tackle the list.

Are you busy? Or do you just have a lot on right now, and that’s OK?

Take a moment and say to yourself, “I’m not busy, I just have a list with quite a few things to do, so I better get on and do one of them.”

How does that feel? Notice how the feeling changes as you change your thoughts about the situation. We live in whatever feeling is created by our thinking.

It can be useful to have tools and methods to help structure our thinking, so here are 10 tips for your to-do list.

The solution to our problems lies elsewhere

Einstein is reputed to have said, “No problem can be solved by the same kind of thinking that created it.”

That’s a bit disheartening. Does that mean we can’t solve our problems?

We think, and enjoy the fruits of our thinking, but if that fruit is a problem, what then?

Einstein tells us that the one place we can’t find the answer to our problems is inside our own thinking – in what we already think, and what we already think we know.

He is not telling us what to think, but he does give us a good idea of what is not worth thinking. We need difference, not sameness. We need thinking beyond our own boundaries. How do we do that?

The more we sequester ourselves away from others ‘not like us’, the less likely we are to be exposed to thinking unlike our own, and therefore to solutions to our own problems.

This week spend some time with someone ‘not like you’ and, with simple non-judgemental curiosity, listen to their view of the world.

When reflecting on the conversation ask yourself, “What must be true for them to think that way?” and conversely, “What must be true for me to think my way?”

Here’s a question… Is your truth any more valid than theirs? Why?