meaning – World Stage Coaching https://worldstagecoaching.com Helping women find their voice and claim their world stage Fri, 17 Mar 2017 00:07:05 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.1 Love Is the Answer https://worldstagecoaching.com/2016/06/17/love-is-the-answer/ Fri, 17 Jun 2016 19:22:54 +0000 https://yourworldstage.wordpress.com/?p=836 When I think about the recent shooting at the gay club in Orlando, all I can think of is how often we get it wrong in understanding violence in our country.  Even though it’s true that gay people were targeted this time, three years ago it was school children in Newtown, and 20 years ago it was high schoolers at Columbine.  In reality, it doesn’t matter who was in the club– they happened to be largely gay hispanics, but the fact is that they were people laughing and having a good time, and then shot down for no reason. It doesn’t matter who the gunman was– he was Muslim and originally from Afghanistan.  But the reality is that he was mentally imbalanced and had easy access to guns, just like the killer at Newtown and the killers at Columbine, all of whom were white.

It scares me that we live in a country that might elect a man who wants to build a wall and shun all Muslims.  Do we not remember our history, the fact that people of Japanese descent were imprisoned here in our country during World War II even though they were American?  Or the Jews rounded up in Europe to be killed just because of their religion?

It seems almost trivial to think about finding your passion and living it when so much of the world seems at war with each other, and when terrorist attacks have become so commonplace that we barely notice anymore.  And yet, finding your world stage is essential for the world, because if you’re doing your life’s work, then you radiate a joy that can’t help but create a light for so much darkness.  We need more people standing up for what they believe in and living a life committed to helping the world as an antidote to hate.

I wrote a song once in which the lyric was:  Love is the answer/Joy is the way/To finding meaning/In every day.  I wrote it as a wedding song, but really it’s more apt as a counter to the world’s violence. The more we can live with love as the answer to any problem and choose joy on our path, the more meaning we will find, since there is no meaning in violence and there is no meaning in watching the Kardashians or trying to keep up with the Joneses.  The meaning comes from being true to ourselves and stepping up on our world stage so that we may be a light for others.

Love is the answer.  Now go prove it.

 

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]]> Simplify https://worldstagecoaching.com/2016/04/15/simplify/ Fri, 15 Apr 2016 16:55:00 +0000 https://yourworldstage.wordpress.com/?p=407 Our lives have gotten so complicated these days, with the constant demands of social media and email.  Is it any wonder that we are feeling stressed by the onslaught?  The fact is, we were not designed to handle this level of input.  Professor Theodore Roszak, famously quoted:  “A weekday edition of The New York Times contains more information  than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth-century England.” Even though we have access to more education today than a few hundred years ago, the quote is chilling.  How can we not be distracted by all the demands in our lives? I often wonder how much geniuses like Mozart would have accomplished if they were constantly distracted by texting.  How many plays would Shakespeare have written if he had spent a few hours every night catching up on Facebook?

Henry David Thoreau, even in the 1840’s, felt that he needed to simplify and get away from the hustle of Concord so that he could think and write. It did help that Thoreau did not have to do a lot of chores, since he regularly walked into town for dinner and conversation with friends (he was not in fact a hermit) and that his mother did his laundry!  (One way to simplify definitely is to delegate chores to others if possible.)  But he realized how important it is to slow down, spend more time in nature, and have time to reflect on one’s life: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

How many of us are so scheduled that we are doing a lot but not really living?  The fact is that our in boxes will still be full someday when we die.  Do you really want people to remember you for how much you jammed into a day? All of us want meaning in our lives and yet, in the day-to-day hustle, it’s easy to forget.

In order to clear the path to your ideal life, one important step is to build in time for silence and reflection, even if it’s just a few minutes per day.  Make time to be outside, to play with your kids, to do something creative.  These are the moments you will remember, not plowing through your to do list.  Every day, ask yourself, “What can I let go of?  What doesn’t really matter to me?” Doing this clears a path to what does matter.

 

 

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