Coaching Wizardry

Inspirational quotes: living life on purpose

A selection of inspirational quotes from the archives:

"Find out who you are and do it on purpose" ~ Dolly Parton (read more here )

"The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change.” ~ Maya Angelou (Read more here)

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” ~ TS Eliot  (Read more here)

“If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.” ~ Maya Angelou (Read more here)

"You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.” ~ Alan Alda (Read more here)

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." ~ Maya Angelou (Read more here)

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone." ~ Picasso (Read more here)

“Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep… They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.” ~ Father Anthony de Mello (Read more here)

"Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will." ~ Thomas Carlyle (Read more here)

"Begin doing what you want to do now.  We are not living in eternity.  We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand, and melting like a snowflake..." ~ Sir Francis Bacon (Read more here)

"One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began." ~ Mary Oliver (Read more here)

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be" ~ Douglas Adams (Read more here)

"And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance, I hope you dance" ~ Lee Anne Womak (Read more here)

"Life is no brief candle to me.  It is a sort of splendid torch that I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations." ~ George Bernard Shaw (Read more here)

"Finish each day and be done with it.  You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.  Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." ~ Emerson (Read more here)

"You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming." ~ Pablo Neruda (Read more here)

“I see my path, but I don't know where it leads. Not knowing where I'm going is what inspires me to travel it.” ~ Rosalia de Castro (Read more here)

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." ~ Anais Nin (Read more here)

“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.” ~ Anais Nin (Read more here)

Find out who you are and do it on purpose: part II

One of the most popular posts on Coaching Wizardry is this one: find out who you are and do it on purpose.

It generates lots of search hits on "find out who you are" "do it on purpose" as well as the question: "what does it mean?"  I'm really interested in the fact that so many people are looking for an answer to this question - which is a big one, after all.

One reader commented that she was curious about the meaning of the quote because she'd found it on the mirror of a house she'd moved into.  I thought you might be interested in the reply I gave at the time:

Thanks for the question. As far as I know it was Dolly Parton who first said this. I read it in a newspaper article about her and I've since seen it attributed to her in various different sites.

As to what it means... Well for me great quotes are words that mean slightly different things to different people. We seek and find our own meaning. It might depend on where we are in our lives, what else is going on. Sometimes people find that a word or a phrase 'resonates' with them - is just the word or phrase that they were looking for. Perhaps that's how the words ended up on your bathroom wall? They meant a lot at one moment in time to the person who used to live there.

Living life on purpose comes up in lots of thinking on coaching and self-development (and I think some religion too). A lot of people wonder if there is a purpose to their life, or they want to want to try and find out what their own particular purpose is. Other people feel like they're drifting. Living life on purpose is about making choices as to how you live, each and every day, so the life you end up living is the one you have chosen - on purpose.

Find out who you are and do it on purpose - well to me that's about starting with yourself, so the purpose stems from inside, the unique person that you are, rather than what someone else has decided for you (even indirectly, like pressure to live or think in a certain way). It also makes me smile because - for me - it captures a sense of pride in who you and going out and doing it big style, full of va va voom - which is definitely how Dolly does it :)

That's what "find out who you are and do it on purpose" means to me.  It's only one answer though. 

I wonder what it means to you?

The horizon leans forward

In my last post we were talking about what to do at the road end - recognising that the end of something is always the start of something new.

Looking back I can see that post was maybe a little starker than I intended (under-estimating the power of both visuals and headline) so I wanted to follow up the message with some compelling words and a positive - beautiful, stunning, amazing - image.

The words are from Maya Angelou.  They follow on from the idea that when you reach what looks like the end of something, the most amazing things start to open up in front of you.

"...The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change.”

The picture is from my recent holiday with the islands of Rum and Eigg in far view, sparkling in the evening light. 

Seascapes form the horizons of my imagination - the horizons that lean forward, beckon and call.  I wonder how they look from where you are?

End of the road

Ever felt like you've reached the end of the road?  It's not always a good place to be.  Endings can be hard.  We need to leave things behind.  Let go of good stuff that's gone before.  We might not feel ready to set off on a new path.  Perhaps we can't see the way.  Only a dead end ahead.

But the end of the road is often the best place to start.  Heading off beyond the signposts and highways to the meandering paths beyond.  New journeys to be made, new places to be discovered. 

As T S Eliot wrote, endings are always the start of the beginning.

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”

Whether we like it or not something changes when we get to this sign. 

The end of something is always the start of something new.

The start of a new week

The start of another week.  The start of another Monday. (I hear you sigh.)

How many Mondays, how many days, how many weeks of our lives do we waste wishing we were anywhere but here?  Heart sinking, spirits low, forcing ourselves to do something we no longer 'want' to do.

I often turn to some words of Maya Angelou when I'm in that state of wishing I was somewhere else.  She reminds us that we always have a choice of how to view our Mondays.

“If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.”

Worth a try?  See how it changes your Monday... and then the rest of the week.

Looking for the right path

I don't know if you've ever found yourself looking for the 'right' path?  Wondering if the life that you're living, the choices that you're making are taking you in the 'right' direction, being true to yourself, living the life that you were 'meant' to live?

The search for the path is a recurring theme in poetry and literature, in writings about religion and spirituality, in the world of personal development.  It's something that many people say who come to coaching for the first time - precisely because they they have lost their way.

But looking too hard for the one, true path can create its own problems.  You can find yourself fixed on finding 'the' answer rather than noticing and enjoying where you are.  The path that is unfolding under your feet.  The trail you have left behind.

And it can leave you focused on the path that other people have created, the 'shoulds' of other people's expectations, or the trails that others have blazed, rather than the path that is distinctly yours.  Focused on external pointers and signs, rather than trusting your instincts and intuition to find your way.

Hilda Carroll reminds us today that when we are lost, when we need directions, the answer is to trust our intuition.  One of the people she quotes is Alan Alda, who encourages us leave the path of what's known and allow ourselves to be lost.

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.” ~ Alan Alda

You'll find the same theme being developed in the wonderful 'Monkifesto' that Adam Kayce at Monk At Work has just published.  (The Monkifesto encourages us to apply intuition at work, but the questions would work for anyone looking for that path.  It's based on a series of short, simple statements and questions plus stunningly beautiful photography).

He asks us to:

Imagine you're walking through a forest.
You've got books and maps to show you where to go...
But what do you do when they fail?

The only thing we can trust is our intuition - our sense of connection, our sense of ourselves.  Because sometimes (always?) there is no right path. 

Which takes me back to an excerpt from 'Entirely' by Louis MacNeice.  Pinned up on my notice board to remind me not to get too hung up on the search for the right path.

"And if the world were black or white entirely
And all the charts were plain
Instead of a mad weir of tigerish waters
A prism of delight and pain
We might be surer where we wished to go
Or again we might be merely
Bored but in brute reality there is no
Road that is right entirely."

No right road.  Just us humans, tiptoeing our way through the mysteries of the forest.

Thanks to free-stock photos for the forest photo

A world worthy of its children

I always seem to be looking for quotes on new beginnings at the start of a new month, and July is no exception.  The Edinburgh papers are full of Picasso just now (ahead of an exhibition that's about to open) and this put me in mind of something of his that I read some time back, and has stuck with me ever since.

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone."

And that doesn't just apply to things we want to make happen in our own lives - it's about things that we want to achieve for other people, the legacy that we want to create as we go along, the change that we want to see, (to be) in the world.  Changes that we can make, now, all of us: small changes in the way that we work, and write, and communicate; changes in the way that we teach, and share and learn.

Here's another great quote from Picasso that captures this feeling, this mood, this impatience better than my fumbling attempt to find the right words:

"Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are  a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.”

With such a task ahead of us, why wait until tomorrow?

A burst of music

"The dance" is one of my favourite metaphors for life - or rather for life lived out loud, for the adventure of being alive. 

Every so often I stumble across a quotation that captures that feeling, that mood of the dance of life just perfectly.  Here's a favourite that I came across recently, from the Scottish philosopher, Thomas Carlyle.

"Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will."

I wonder if you can hear that wild burst of music today?  And if you are ready to join the dance?

It's always time for new beginnings

I love the start of a new month.  It's like the start of a new week or a new day, full of promise and possibility, only magnified. 

It's a reminder to seize the moment.  A signal that there's nothing to wait for.  That it's always time for new beginnings.  You just have to decide that the time is now.

With that in mind, here's an amazing quote from Sir Francis Bacon to herald the start of June:

"Begin doing what you want to do now.  We are not living in eternity.  We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand, and melting like a snowflake..."

Not quite enough time?

I'm a little short of time this afternoon (not to mention that the sun is shining and my garden is calling) so I'm going to keep this one brief.  Of course being short of time can have its own benefits -  as Leonard Bernstein said “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time...”

So here are three quick links to some interesting reflections on time and how we choose to use it.

Enterpreneur Tim Ellis talks to Darren Rowse (Problogger) about how to 'fill the void' that can open up once you hit the target of working just 4 hours a week.

Anna Farmery at the Engaging Brand approaches time from the other end of the spectrum and reminds those of us who might feel time poor of what can be achieved in just five minutes.

Finally, Shama Hyder's birthday post reminds us to live in the present rather than the land of the as-ifs... because the here and now is all that we have.  And what an amazing "all" it is.

Now I'm off out to the garden to do nothing for a little while, except think about the wise words of philosopher Bertrand Russell:

“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

The path you are travelling

“I see my path, but I don't know where it leads. Not knowing where I'm going is what inspires me to travel it.” (Rosalia de Castro)

"The journey" is one of the most commonly used metaphors in coaching.  And "the path" is one of the simplest, yet most powerful metaphors that we use in life.  We find references to the path in the writings of some of our greatest writers, thinkers and spiritual leaders: Emerson, Thoreau, Marianne Williamson, Kahlil Gibran, the Buddha.  And it is a metaphor that we can all connect with - be it the path we are on or the path we have lost.  The paths we are determined to find or the paths we hope to create.

I was reminded by Robyn McMaster last week of the value of 'naturalistic intelligence'. (Put simply: go outside and get inspiration from the natural world.)  I realised when I was out walking at the weekend that following a physical path often puts me in mind of the 'other' path I am on.  Times when I have a specific goal in mind and walk, hard and fast, to reach it.  Times when the path ahead has seemed impossible, impassable.  Times when I am happy to meander and see where the road takes me. 

I thought of all the photos I have taken over the years: a winding path up a mountain, a narrow path through the woods, a rocky path strewn with boulders, a muddy path full of potholes that I will have to walk round or squelch through. 

And thought of times when I've lost my way, but always found a path to follow. Even if it's just a sheep track cutting across the moor.  Or the rocky line of the shore.

Mark Twain on coaching without goals

People often ask if they can still 'do' life coaching when they don't know what their goals are.  The answer, in my book, is an emphatic "yes".

Not knowing which way to go next is part of the human condition.  As Mark Twain once said:

"I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life.  The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want..."

In fact a lot of people (myself included) first come to coaching precisely because they can't see the way ahead - but do know that something needs to change.  There are a number of ways that coaching can help here:

discovering the motivation to change - what brought you to here?  how do you want things to be different?

accessing resourceful states - how do you want to feel, to live, to be? eg relaxed, confident, smiling, powerful.  These are things you can have now...

identifying possibilities and choices - there may well be options you want to pursue but are limiting because you think you "can't".  Hopes, dreams, aspirations and desires might become stronger once you realise what's possible...

exploring your values - helping you to identify the things that matter, that are precious to you and that you want to express and enjoy in the future

negotiating the transition - sometimes you just need another person who is completely on your side, challenging, but non-judgemental, to walk with you through some of the toughest stretches of the most difficult periods of change. You might not know what lies ahead - but you know you need to keep on walking.

It's one of the reasons I love coaching through stories and metaphors - it gives you the breathing space to explore possibilities in a less demanding, more creative kind of way.  You might not know what your goals are for the time-frame ahead.  But I'm guessing that you do know you want things to change.  That there's a door you're ready to open.  An entrance you're ready to walk through. 

A different story that's waiting to be told. 

 

If you're interested in coaching - with or without goals! - check out the info on life coaching here.  If you're ready to start the journey now... check out the 'spring into summer' coaching package.

What's a sun-dial in the shade?

I've been bumping into the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin this week.  It started with a great piece by Brian Clark at Copyblogger analysing the relevance of Franklin's pithy sayings for modern day marketing needs.  For example point number 3:

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

Benjamin Franklin was a true Renaissance man, and as a polymath accomplished much in the fields of business, politics and science. In these days of hyper-specialization, it’s ironic that the broader your knowledge base, the better your odds of not only providing remarkable products and service, but also of devising innovative ways to reach out to your target audience.

This post got me writing a piece on another of Franklin's great sayings:  “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing”.  Then I bumped into him again when I was setting up the software to start reading my feeds (prompted by one of the posts in Mike Sansone's excellent 'newcomers guide to business blogging') - it was a news feed reminding us of the anniversary of his death (17 April 1790).

Anyway by this time I was getting intrigued and had a bit of a rummage around the "quotes" sites.  Another connection - I found that the clock inscription on time that I'd written about a few weeks ago was based on a Franklin quote.  Here's the whole thing:

"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of."

And the sun-dial?  Well I'd been thinking for a while about a friend who has a most amazing talent that she's not quite ready to share with the world.  I'd been trying to think of a story or a metaphor that might encourage her to go for it.  And I think this short, straight to the point comment might just do the job:

"Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What's a sun-dial in the shade?"
 
Any other favourite Franklin quotes out there you'd like to share?