Be Still / Be Grateful - Happy Thanksgiving

It was 1979; I was in a human physiology lab, when a fellow student was electrocuted and flew about 10 feet, landing under a table.  Another classmate and I started CPR, and before the EMT team arrived his heart started back up.  I remember climbing out from underneath the table, and just sitting, wrapped in the moment.  A life had stopped and started up again, and I was lost in the stillness that surrounds such experiences.  Our body-mind-spirit existence requires “still life” moments to nurture and grow.  Today, on Thanksgiving, take a still life moment, breathe, let go, be still, be grateful, and practice just being.   

Nudged into Wholeness

Last Saturday, I had a sunrise walk on the beach with a close friend and I can’t think of a better way to start a day.  It’s not so much what is said, but the experience of seeing, sensing and sharing the presence of being and its possibilities.  Special friends nudge us into deeper places and energize our wholeness in new ways.  The house had a black wrought iron picket fence with a tangle of deep green and smiling white flowers.  Nature and close friends slow us down when our lives become too caught up in the race.   This holiday take a nature walk with a friend, and be nudged into wholeness.   // Whole presence / Feelings the color of soft blossoms / Opening at sunrise.

Reflections and Life Energy

Friday, at the Del Coronado, I’m watching the sunset after a long day of introspection, grappling with emotional processes and mental maps that have given me the strength to persevere through the death of loved ones, war, a broken back, and advanced cancer. After taking the picture I realize the reflections from the chandeliers, like beads of energy are racing back to the setting sun. And I feel the energy of life through my connections, and for just a moment I bow my head in prayer. Today let your heart connect to the life energy of the universe.

Marshall Goldsmith Forward Feedback

Last Thursday, clouds covered most of the nation, so flying into San Diego; what usually is a beautiful landing over a rich blue ocean was cloud covered with just a thin line of blue.  The Helm Society was holding a Mastermind leadership workshop with Marshall Goldsmith and Srikuman Rao, both executive/personal mastery coaches. One of the lessons learned was receiving and giving feedback, Marshall calls it “feedforward”, or focusing on the future and not the past.  Feedback on a past we can’t change, has limited value, whereas suggestions for our future can catapult us forward.  The key is for us to listen, take notes, without critiquing the suggestions – this is all about people helping us to be right and not proving we have been wrong.   

Marshall Goldsmith Forward Feedback

Life Lessons

The first was a box turtle named Ben, and then there was our family parakeet that lived 17 years. He was the family member we’d all talk to when no one else would listen. My daughter and I wrapped our tabby in a soft towel, she held him as I drove to the veterinarian. The veterinarian was also a Vietnam era vet, and had a presence that instantly made you feel like everything was going to be okay. But that day we took our tabby home wrapped in the same soft towel, and buried him under the live oak that he loved to climb. The pets in my life have given me so much unconditional love, a life lesson I’m still trying to learn, how about you?

Summer on One's Own

It was the summer before I started graduate school and we decided to take a vacation and head west.  I had an old long bed, slime green Chevy pickup that we loaded with our camping gear, and covered with an old army tarp.  It took one long day of driving to get to El Paso, and I remember as we lay by the fire and watched the embers glow against a starry backdrop we laughed, “Where would we drive to, tomorrow”?  We roamed for several weeks, camping in Monument Valley, became entranced by Navajo art and crafts, and picked cherries in a very wet Washington State.  It was a summer we flourished being ourselves, as e. e. Cummings suggests, “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else.”  Who will you be today?

Einstein and Miracles

Most are in a box at the lake house, but there are mornings these pictures become mixed with my dreams in a surreal kind of way.  It was the early 50’s and I could hear my mother calling as my babysitter and I crawl out of the foxhole.  When we get to the top, she brushes the dirt from my clothes, takes my hand and we turn toward my mother’s voice.  Was this a memory from my first years of life on Tachikawa Airbase Japan, or a reminder from deep inside not too stay in the foxholes of gloom too long.  It’s a choice we all have every day.  Einstein said, you can live as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle. I can’t wait to see the next miracle happen today, how about you?

Sleeping Dragon / Cancer is so Limited

Saturday night I rode the tail of my sleeping dragon in my roles as cancer survivor and cancer caregiver.  We’ve all been there, when life feels overwhelming.  I drove my scooter along the bayou where I watched the full moon dance between the cloud cover, and then drove to where the dragon sleeps – MD Anderson.  Shift change was in progress as I walked to the chapel, I sat, cried, kneeled, than prayed.  After a little over an hour I walked out, but a handout at the chapel door caught my attention, What Cancer Cannot Do.  “It cannot cripple love”, I thought of my wife, kids, and friends, “It cannot shatter hope, or corrode faith”, I thought of how my faith and hope have grown, “It cannot invade the soul or conquer the spirit”, I smiled and felt my passion for life – “cancer is so limited!” 

Life Stories - Life of Excuses

We all have life stories, some hidden deep inside, some that are recurring nightmares, some moments when recalled make us smile. What’s important is what we learned from these experiences, and how we apply it to our life journey. Our newest neighborhood homeless man is Mr. Evers. His home is two wheelchairs, one chair carries his food/clothing, and the other chair is where his life happens. When you talk to Mr. Evers, you immediately realize he is fully engaged in his life on the corner of Holcombe and Greenbrier, he just happens to live in two wheelchairs. Most of us will never experience Mr. Evers life restrictions, but most of us also are not as fully engaged in life as Mr. Evers. What is your excuse?

Engaged Living

I’m guessing close to 50 students from University of Houston Clearlake attend my lecture last night on engaging in the “Work Life Journey” through resilience.  We can’t be actively engaged all the time, there are moments or maybe even days that things just don’t go as planned or life gets in the way.  But through engaged resilient living we are aware of our choices and connect to ourselves and others in ways that bring harmony, gratitude, and joy.  Life becomes an art and each day is an opportunity to experiment with different brushes, techniques, colors, and materials.  We become the artist of our lives, creating it, instead of just consuming it, or being consumed by it.  What will you paint today?

The Wall

I woke up yesterday dreaming of The Wall, one of the most visited memorials in Washington DC. 246 feet 9 inches long with its highest tip 10.1 feet high, tapering to 8 inches at both ends with 58,272 names etched in stone. Its reflective qualities bring past and present together and remind every visitor of the ultimate sacrifice soldiers have paid for our freedom. 1st Year, I could see it in the distance / like a coiling snake, but its soundless cries kept me away // 2nd Year, as I walk through the tree line / all I could hear was Johnson’s cries and feel Frank’s cold hand // 3rd Year, I really tried / but I couldn’t find my way / there were too many tears // 4th Year, I walked the mall till dusk / finally stopped at the flags around the Washington monument / and waited for the comfort of darkness to cry alone // 5th Year, “Mister” / she was wiping my tears / “come with me and talk to my dad” // Too many tears / she takes my hand and walks me to the wall / past thousands of names // We stop / “I come every year; just to tell my dad / how proud I am for what he did” // She takes my hand / and runs my fingers across her dad’s name // I am now a part of the wall and the wall is now a part of me // - Captain William B. Baun, Army

Work Life Journey

“It’s not what you achieve, but who you become (The Only Way to Win, Jim Loehr 2012).  I’m 65 years into my work life journey or story – where are you?  All of us have will have moments in our life stories that become the memories that define who we are, how we will respond to life, where we are going.  I remember the day I held the first soldier to die on my command and feeling the deep burden of leadership.  We all have life stories, some hidden deep inside or recurring nightmares, others when recalled make us smile.  What’s important is what we learned from these experiences, and how we apply it to our life journey.”  These are my opening words I jotted down for a talk I give this week, after viewing the sunrise Saturday morning and experiencing the birth of a new day.  How well do you live your life story? 

Rainbows and Rain

I woke up in a spin. Everyone on the ground was looking up, frozen in place as we watched what we thought we’d never ever see happen, a parachute that was not opening and looked like a long cigarette roll. Like all of us he was just a kid. A tall, thin kid, who wore glasses, and had a funny laugh that made you smile. Frozen on the ground we watched him fall at a rate of 22 ft. per second, and there was nothing we could do. As a passion driven person, one of the hardiest lessons I’ve had to learn in life is to step back at times and just let life happen. Was it John Lennon who said, “To see the rainbow, you have to put up with the rain”? Some days I have to remind myself it just not my turn to drive.

Listen to Your Heart

It was the summer after I graduated from high school and I was working at a summer camp in New Hampshire for boys from the Boston ghettos. All came with real life issues, some in handcuffs, some in wheelchairs, and many without parents. I had my own real life issues - my mother would die of cancer the next year, and I had friends that were fighting in Vietnam. The day I got the letter, I had just worked through a mild seizure with a wheelchair bound epileptic in my cabin. My stress level was high, and then I read the letter, a friend had died in Vietnam. I walked to the camp office and immediately punched a hole through the wall. The camp director took me for a walk, listened, and then said, “Billy, life is going to happen, learn to let go of your anger by listening to your heart.”

Weed Pulling

In 1968, 4 of us headed out to Washington to work in a Green Giant Pea factory.  Two really didn’t really need the money and had only come along for the ride, but Teddy and I needed the money to help pay for college.  On our days off, Teddy and I would sit on the steps of the country store in Dixie Washington, and farmers would stop and hire us for a 10-12 hour day at $100.  It was usually hard and dirty work, but some days we walked the wheat fields and just pulled weeds.  This morning, I woke up having a soulful, introspective moment pulling weeds that were starting to choke out my daily joy.  Do you have some weeds that need pulling today?

Far Far Away

Saturday, I flew to Las Vegas to be a speaker at the Medical Tourism conference.   The trip started with a window seat where I could watch the landscape change as we flew west, and in a way that’s where I stayed.  My room was in Caesars Palace and opulence does not go far enough to describe the six towers, casino, pool, food, and conference areas.  But my mind never left the grandiosity and natural wonder of the Grand Canyon formed 70 million years ago, and to get lost in its wonder, look beyond seeing, and grasp for things beyond my reach.  Lao Tzu, father of Taoism, said “Wonder into wonder, existence opens”.  I took a trip to Vegas on Saturday, but ended up far far away. 

Stories that Inspire 1st Steps to Sustainable Change

The sunset, after the rain storm yesterday, stirred up memories of the first time I saw the red rock cathedral like towers and steeples in the Garden of the Gods. A few hours of hiking and climbing around in these massive structures gave me memories that have become a part of my internal story I’ve relived a thousand times. Internal stories inspire and influence our actions and when shared, the actions of others. He told me his 23 year old daughter had been diagnosed with lung cancer, I asked, “how long had she smoked”, he cried and finally said, “she never did, I was the smoker in our family”. I looked around the room, many were thinking about how their choices affect others, maybe, just maybe my story would help someone take a first step to sustainable change.