Joy and Sailboat Dreams

I grew up with daydreams created from books like Kon-Tiki. There were times in the Army when my only escape from war was sailboat dreams.  I’d never sailed, but when I got out of the service I looked for a small sailboat to buy.  One weekend I found two small boats for sale.  The first boat was an old Sunfish, I told the man I wanted to check out the second boat.  The second boat had been sold, and when I got back to the Sunfish someone else was ready to buy the boat.  The seller asks me if I still wanted the boat.  I took him aside, told him I had no money, but I wanted to buy the boat.  He told the other man I was buying the boat.  I’ll never forget when the other man pulled out his wallet filled his $100 bills, but the seller said it was my boat.  We shook hands on the deal and he thanked me for serving my country.  I paid him $50 a month for a year.  Life is about passing on our joy to others.    

Feed the Hungry Nourish Souls

Chef in India Feeds the Hungry & Nourishes the Souls

Yesterday, I was at the Houston Food Bank as a member of the Shape Up Houston Steering Committee for Faith Communities. We have been working on a project in collaboration with 400 Churches that serve meals to the hungry in their communities to provide more nutritious food and information / classes on how to prepare healthier meals and takes steps toward healthier living. During my inline skate last night, I couldn’t help but pause in wonder on how these churches were feeding the hungry and nourishing souls. Maybe you remember the CNN report about the chef in India that quit his job to feed the hungry and nourish soul? What steps have you taken in “your” community?

Hope a Loving Whisper

Walking through the hospital yesterday I watched a greeter talk to a young mom pushing her daughter in a wheelchair.  The little girl was hugging a straggly long eared stuffed dog whose name was embroidered on his chest – Hope.  You could see it in the young mother’s eyes, and feel it in the way she stroked her daughter’s hair.  We’ve all been there, expecting the best from life, even when the evidence suggest differently.  Psychologists tell us willpower is the driving force behind hope, and way power are the mental plans or road maps guiding our hopeful thoughts.  But my experience suggests that it is my spiritual connection deep inside that has become a loving whisper and keeps me believing in life.

Looking for Joy

One of my favorite early morning activities is tinkering with the edge of my reality through meditation, reading, and escaping to past and future moments.  This sounds so counter to my mindfulness practice of being present, but these solo early morning adventures connect my DNA with the sands of time.  A liberating experience where the flow of life and all its imperfections fade away and I experience raw joy.  My dad died unexpectedly years ago during a weekly cancer treatment, but as he lay dying he asked a friend that was sitting with him, “Do you hear the angels singing?” and then he died.  I have no doubt he was experiencing pure raw joy.  Remember, joy is a gift we give ourselves through love.  Looking for joy?  I like the stories in Melody Beattie’s Journey to the Heart: Daily Meditations on the Path to Freeing Your Soul.

Journey to the Heart: Daily Meditations on the Path to Freeing Your Soul

Dance with the Solitude of Your Soul

It was my last summer at LSU and I was working as stage manager for the LSU Summer Dinner Theater. Before opening night, one of the doctoral students that guided our work threw a get-together at his house. He was an artist and I remember being captivated by his painting showing a man climbing inside a mirror to get a look at the other side of himself. I scratched out this poem that night: “most of my poems / are written inside out / they are tiny windows into my soul / sentence fragments never spoken / words linked in odd ways / reflections of feelings and emotions / imprints of memories long forgot / who I am when I am not / a way to dance with the solitude of my soul”. Dance with the solitude of your soul today.

Enjoying the Journey

I can still hear her voice, and feel her smile as she tells the story of my first swim test as a 5 year old at the Huey P. Long pool that sat below the Indian Mounds on the LSU campus.  She watches a big group splash and lots of little hands and feet paddling across the pool.  But where is Billy?  She runs over to one of the instructors, “Where’s Billy?”, and the instructor answers, “There he is”, and points to a little shadowy image swimming underwater, “Billy prefers to swim underwater, and is the only child that can swim the whole width of the pool underwater.”  My mother smiles, “he always has to do everything a little different and make it just a little harder than it really needs to be.” But mom, I have so enjoyed the journey. 

Everyone Matters

Yesterday, I watched a youtube clip that Lee Coffee, a soldier soul mate at MD Anderson, had sent me from the group Everyone Matters.  It’s the kind of clip that digs deep within your soul.  This morning I found a new homeless person residing in my neighborhood.  These experiences became embedded in my feeling from two days of training a group of U.S. Army Resiliency Coordinators who care for the healthcare providers caring for our soldiers still at war.  Were these just coincidences or as Robert Johnson, popular Jungian author would suggest, a meaningful synchronicity experience unfolding the unique life of my soul.  Be open to the synchronicity in your life.

Everyone Matters

Team Resiliency

Resiliency, we think of it as an individual’s ability to “bounce back” from challenging times and to grow stronger in the process. But, a recent article in Academic Medicine by Epstein & Krasner (2013) suggests resilience interventions should also build community. Just like patient safety is the responsibility of the community of practice, so is the health and well-being of each individual on the medical team. Enhancing the resilience of team members increases the quality of care, reduces errors, burnout, and turnover. Teams need to be resilient together and that takes practice and a supportive environment. How is your team’s resiliency?

Healthcare Team Resiliency

Tears of Blue

Yesterday I received an email from an employee about a mother’s battle with cancer and how it shaped their life dream to become an employee at MD Anderson Cancer Center and the story stirred my dreams last night.  My sister’s bedroom was right off the living room and painted a sunny yellow, the trees that had provided shade were lost several hurricanes ago, so it always had sun.  It was my mother’s last bedroom in our house.  I had brought her a camellia and found her crying as she sat in the rocking chair by the window.  Today I opened my 50 year old poetry journal, and found what I had written that day.  // A vision I can’t erase / blue sky reflected in your eyes / caught in tears / rolling down your face // A flower / held against your cheek / soft petals, lick tears of blue // A vision I can’t erase

Greek to Me

I attended University High School on the LSU campus from 4^th – 12^th grade, so as a freshman at LSU it felt comfortable.  My sister had been a Tri Delta, so I thought I understood the Greek scene.  I pledged, but between ROTC, all morning classes, and work with the football team 6-8 hours after lunch, I didn’t have much time for pledge activities.  My fraternity big brother said, “That’s okay Billy, just bring some football players our way”.  Rush week things changed when he told me I needed to dress better, and they were embarrassed I rode a 10-speed bike and not to bring it to the house or leave it around the back.  When I saw my dad that week, he could tell something was bothering me.   After I told him he said, “Billy, you have to be the best of who you are, not what someone else thinks you should be.”   I dropped out of rush, I didn’t fit.  Today be the best of who you are!

Name Calling

Throughout our lives we get called all kinds of names. William was of course morphed to Billy, and then in the 4th grade riding my first school bus with kids of all ages, I was called “other” names for the first time. In Boy Scouts the adult leaders called me Sweet William and the scouts called me Trees for I was always climbing. It wasn’t till the Army that I heard Bill, “hey you cop”, and again “other names” by really ticked off drug dealers, drunks, and women of the night. Yesterday, I wasn’t ready when my grandson, who is just learning to talk, yelled out “GRANDPA”. For a man who has incurable metastatic prostate cancer, the cheerful tears came quickly and just as quickly disappeared as my grandson climbed into my lap. Call someone today a name – out of love! My Grandpa and I

Yesterday – Time Being Me

Yesterday, as I was sweeping out our garage a marble rolled across the floor, and immediately I was back in Highland Elementary playing marbles.  My favorite game was dropsies, where you dropped a marble from belt level into a hole in the top of a shoebox, hoping to win another marble.  The Hawkins lived across from the school, and Mrs. Hawkins always carried a small monkey on her shoulders. Behind the school was a baseball field, Nelson Drive, one row of houses, and open fields that at some point lead to more neighborhoods, and the Winn Dixie where I had my first job requiring a social security card. Time being me, images of past moments and reflections, as a marble slowly rolls across the garage floor. 

Embodied Health Practices

Minded Institute's Blog

Wednesday, I attended a lecture on “How to Preserve Your Well-Being”, given by Tait Shanafelt, MD a leading researcher on physician well-being. Tait and I had worked together in 2011 on a webinar for Stanford, and my short visit with Tait this week renewed my passion for passing on mindfulness and meditation practices through my wellness coaching. A recent study from Boston School of Medicine showed increases in self-control, compassion, and mind-body skill confidence for medical students after an 11-week Embodied Health course. Working at MD Anderson, where caring is our #1 value, we know the importance of empathy, compassion, and connecting with patients, families and peers, but there are days we forget to take care of ourselves, so we can be at our best to take care of others. This weekend consider your daily health practices, maybe they need a little tweaking.

Power of Expectations

http://tclf.org/pioneers/robert-reich/biography-robert-reich

I’ve been reading the book Mind Over Mind, by Chris Berdik (2012).  Research into “mirror neurons” suggest that our brains accumulate action ideas that keep at ready, and when cued give us a glimpse of the future.  Dr. Robert Reich, or Doc, established the landscape architecture program at LSU and also attended my home church.  My acquaintance with Doc was short, but I now realize he significantly influenced the way I approach creativity and innovation.  The year before I left for the Army, and immediately after my Army tour some Sunday’s I would get up early, meet Doc at church and assist him in creating the altar flower arrangement from the flowers, grasses, branches and leafs he had gathered.  I’d ask him, “What’s it going to be”, and his answer, “well let’s just wait and see”, and then somehow a work of art would magically appear.  Sundays with Doc taught me the power of expectations, as I watched his hands create, the confidence in his face, and the twinkle of magic in his eyes.  Thanks Doc for the life gifts you gave to so many. 

Presence makes all the Difference

My mom was a kindergarten teacher, so it felt natural when my kids were little to volunteer to teach Sunday school.  When my kids left for college, and the senior men’s class was looking for a teacher, we decided to try it, and again my wife and I stayed for many years, gaining lessons about life we could never teach.  Some of the men had served in WWII; others had grown and / or lost businesses, and families.  Most of the members were 30 to 40 years our senior, and the sharing of their life experiences changed forever how we would view our own aging and the life we strive to live together.  Take the time to walk in another’s shoes, and gain life lessons that will change your life forever. 

Strength of the Universe

It was a German farming community with rolling hills, and many mornings I’d start my day with a run to watch the sun rise. I was a Lieutenant in the 558th MP Co.; we protected and delivered nuclear weapons throughout NATO. It was a tough time to serve with Vietnam tension at its peak, Nixon’s impeachment proceedings, and the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group striking depots in Germany. Each morning I breathed in the golden dawn rising over the hillside and live the Hopi saying, “Take the breath of the new dawn and make it a part of you. It will give you strength.” Try it, and ground yourself in the strength of the universe.

Moments of Awareness

I woke up early Sunday in the late 70’s, my orthopedic surgeon had just cut off my body cast, made a joke about the smell, and then told me to hold still as he pulled the stainless steel wire that had served as sutures. I stood by the bed, just like I did over 35 years ago, and contemplated my first step. This weekend I worked my way through Helen Marshall’s book of poems called Moments of Awareness. In her poem, Only Inches Away, she writes, “Life is measured by inches / By steps taken one at a time / Not by the height of the peak we seek / But each little rise we climb.” Slow life down this week, feel each step and find joy in each little rise you climb.

http://www.amazon.com/Moments-awareness-Helen-Lowrie-Marshall/dp/B0006BV0UC

Centering - Fly a Little

Yesterday, I was in one of those all day meetings and today I woke up wondering if my comments were as disconnected yesterday, as they feel today. And then I remembered the words of Joy Harjo, Native American poet, “The saxophone is so human, its tendency is to be rowdy, edge, talk too loud, bump into people, say the wrong words at the wrong time, but then, you take a breath all the way from the center of the earth and blow. All that heartache is forgiven. All that love we humans carry makes a sweet, deep sound and we fly a little.” I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, flew a little, and then started my morning prayers / meditation. http://www.joyharjo.com/Poetry.html

Whole Person Living

Are you also a morning sky watcher like me? August 11-13 the Perseid meteor shower will be in our sky from midnight to dawn, and all you need to watch it is patience. Patience, it takes patience to live a whole person life. Yesterday, I led an interactive session with 300 Head Start teachers about the power of engaged resilience and living a whole person life. Whole person living is about living a life of happiness, engagement, and meaning. As we talked about life goals many proudly talked about completing their education, others tearfully talked about getting rid of their diabetes. Life goals are important, but living a whole person life everyday isn’t about goals, it’s about having the patience with ourselves and others to be fully engage in the happiness and joy that surrounds us and gives our lives meaning.