iAm very happy with my iPhone. But iAm disappointed with my carrier – it doesn’t give me any bars when iMost need them. And sometimes, iAm dissatisfied with my iPhone battery – it runs out of juice just when iNeed it. And now, iThink iShould discontinue this mixed case blogging because iMight iRritate and iLose you 🙂
OK, back to normal English now. So what do you do if your phone is low on juice? Maybe you can turn off 3G, or disable Bluetooth. Or just plug the dang thing back into the power outlet. If you’re super-cool, you may have one of those wireless charger thingies where you can just place your phone on a mat to charge it.
And what if the bars on your cell-phone disappear? You could apply the “Jobs Solution” and hold it the “right” way. If that is not the problem, you could either wait for iPhones to become available on Verizon, or ditch Apple & AT&T altogether for some other smart phone.
And now the real question…How do you figure out that there aren’t enough bars in your life? Or that your soul is running low on juice? How do you recapture your mojo once you realize it’s gone? And does it even matter? Here’s my story…
It was a Saturday morning, a few years ago and I was on my weekly call with my Life Coach – Joy Perkins. On the surface – I had a great job with a great pay in a great company. But I was not happy – something was missing and I couldn’t quite figure out what. The bars on my life were low and my soul was almost out of juice. I had asked Joy to help me with the enquiry into getting a better reception in my life and recapturing my mojo. Joy thought I might find some answers in the book – Awakening the Heroes Within by Carol S. Pearson. I did.
I love the way Carol starts her book…
‘Some people, we say, have “soul”. They have loved, they have suffered, they have a deep sense of life’s meaning. Perhaps most important, they know who they are.
Other people seem to have lost their souls. They may have material possessions – the right house, the right car, the right job, the right clothes; they may even have a stable family and be religious. But inside themselves, they feel empty. Even when they go through the right motions, it is movement without meaning.
Still other people love and suffer and feel life intensely; but they never really get their lives together. They cannot seem to find work or personal relationships that truly satisfy them, and so they feel constantly constrained. Although they may be connected to their souls, they feel cut off from the world.
Saddest of all are people who never learn how to make their way in the world or how to be true to their own souls. Their lives are empty and unrewarding – yet unnecessarily so: virtually all of us are capable of finding meaning and purpose in our lives and in the life of the human community.’
Which category would you place yourself in? And how would you shift yourself if you wanted to?
At the time I read the book, I felt I was in the group of people who had all the right material possessions but were disconnected from their soul. I needed some help with redesigning my life so I could be true to myself. But you cannot control what you do not understand. So before I could recreate my reality, I had to understand it. Carol’s book helped me with both.
In this teeming world with increasing needs and decreasing resources, we are often taught that life is an endless battle to fight for what we desire, lest it be consumed by others who get to it first. Whether it is beauty, intelligence, fitness, talent or power, we are constantly trained to measure up to some pre-existing standards, winning some well-respected trophy, leaving behind no time or energy to figure out if that is truly what we want, or if our happiness lies elsewhere. All too often, this all-consuming, relentless race leaves us so depleted that there is no fulfillment even when the trophy is in our hands. But what if there were a different way to look at life?
What if each one of us was a Hero, sent to this planet with a unique mission to accomplish? What if each one of us had a unique gift to offer the world? A gift we could only discover by undertaking a unique journey that yielded a profound lesson created just for us? Life, then, would not be about running a mad race along a pre-created route, trying to measure up to some pre-existing standards. Instead, it would be a thoughtful journey about recognizing our special mission and discovering the unique gift we have to share with the world.
I liked the way Carol shifted the context for living in five pages of her book. Suddenly, I found more peace and dignity in the journey of life. It was no longer about measuring up to some pre-created template of success. Instead, it was an open ended journey of discovery to find my truth and build a life around it. Before I could summon the courage to act on my vision, however, I needed some more clarity about what it was and how I would implement it. That will be the topic of my next blog. Until then, I would like to leave you with some questions…
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