Did you know that an adult Hummingbird’s size is almost equivalent to a leaf on a Crepe Myrtle tree?  It’s that time of the year again when our back porch becomes the Hummingbird depot for various flocks and varieties of Hummers sporting ruby throats, emerald green bodies and spots of black and white.  If you’re not familiar with Hummingbirds, don’t let the docile paintings that you see in various arts and crafts stores fool you–these are feisty mammer jammers and they mean business!

The President of my Toastmaster’s club, Patrick Hansen, began a speech with the song from the sixties, “Feeling Groovy”.  Of course it was trapped in my head for the rest of the day, which was not an unpleasant thing considering some of the jingles that sneak up in there without my awareness’s!  Someone taught me awhile back that we should pay attention to those songs that get caught in our heads because they may be trying to tell us something. Granted, if we have some raging punk song in there–it’s hard to slow down the tempo to grasp the lyrics–but that could be a message in itself.  Needless to say, the line that kept circling in my head from Patrick’s speech was, “slow down you move to fast”.

Much has been written and talked about “Affirmations”.  Every day we are assuaged with negativity from our radios, televisions, newspapers, internet, the way we treat each other, and from our own brains.  Some of us have extremely sensitive nervous systems and “feel” all this negativity on all of our conscious levels, some–not so sensitive–but still receiving the negativity.  Any way we look at it, countering all the negativity with affirmations can only help us.

This morning my husband and I spent about an hour and a half filling in a budget for ourselves. We’ve never really done that before.  Not both of us. Not together.  Thanks to the inspiration of the financial guru, Dave Ramsey, we’re motivated to get ourselves out of the usual cycle of spend-spend-spend and run-run-run from debt.  As many of you know, I left my cushy IT job of ten years at the end of March this year so that I could focus on a career as a Professional Life Coach.  It’s a very humbling experience to step from the steady paycheck into the unknown and to trust that our needs will be cared for and cared for well.

It’s finally out! The book that my friend Michael Blair has been compiling interviews for from across the State of Texas called, “Amazing Faiths in Texas” which is full of heartfelt stories and beautiful photographs.  As the Lakota say, “Ho! Mitakuye Oyasin”  – “We are all related.” Michael and Ginger Blair have been two very influential people in my spiritual life.  When Ginger and I met way back in 1990, she would “feed” me books that introduced me to new perspectives and ways of thinking about life.  One of these books was, “The Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramahansa Yogananda–had been given to me before almost a decade previously– but I wasn’t ready to grapple with it’s meaning. 

Consultants from around the world coming into Austin, I can see where my friend may have had a point.  We are each diplomats of our own country. More importantly we are diplomats of the human race.  Through the years I’ve come to know many peoples from India and have queried them (as much as they would allow!) about their experience being Indian. What does that mean to them?  How has being born in different areas of India impacted them? What are their beliefs?  Same with people from other countries such as Pakistan, China, Australia, New Zealand, England, South Africa, Viet Nam. The list is endless. The questions are too!  The most valuable gift I received from a Cultural Discrimination class was to ask people their experience of being them–don’t assume you know, because you don’t.

Consultants from around the world coming into Austin, I can see where my friend may have had a point.  We are each diplomats of our own country. More importantly we are diplomats of the human race.  Through the years I’ve come to know many peoples from India and have queried them (as much as they would allow!) about their experience being Indian. What does that mean to them?  How has being born in different areas of India impacted them? What are their beliefs?  Same with people from other countries such as Pakistan, China, Australia, New Zealand, England, South Africa, Viet Nam. The list is endless. The questions are too!  The most valuable gift I received from a Cultural Discrimination class was to ask people their experience of being them–don’t assume you know, because you don’t.
Over the past several months I’ve had the blessed opportunity to meet many people from countries that I had not been exposed, namely Uganda, Iran and Afghanistan.  Thursday evening I was invited to the home of one of these women for a gathering of the Board for Act Women in Austin Texas.  One of their members has been living in China for the past 18 months and had slides and stories to share with the group. Many of the women gathered are of the Baha’i faith.  What I was most impressed with was their loving kindness and beauty (both inner and outer).  I also met photographer Peggy Kelsey who had a selection of beautiful photos made into cards from her Afghanistan Women’s Project.  If I had relied on the broad sweeps that are made in the media about these countries, I may have allowed my fears to get in the way of finding out for myself how some of the people are from these countries.
In reflecting back to the idea that business will be the vessel for world peace, I know that many successful business people have learned over time the necessity of understanding and being able to communicate and relate with the cultures in other countries.  I’m sure we have offended many times in our ignorance much less in our politics.  One of my favorite questions to ask people from other countries, once we’ve established a rapport, is how “we” Americans from the U.S., come across to them.  Sometimes I’m very proud of whom we are and other times, not so much.
Expanding our horizons through getting to know other ways of being both internally and externally is always a good practice.  It causes our thinking to deepen and our opinions to become more flexible.
 How are you going to expand your horizons today?  It can begin with one conversation.
Because my father was a diplomat and my mother loved to explore and understand different cultures, I was exposed to many ways of being from a young age.  I’m so grateful that I was given this gift of horizon expansion and the realization that my family’s way of being was just one way of being. Not THE way of being.   Because of this paradigm expansion, I believe today that there are always more than three options to any one challenge.   
A CEO friend from long ago told me that he believed that world peace would be obtained through business.  After my own experience of meeting numerous IT Consultants from around the world coming into Austin, I can see where my friend may have had a point.  We are each diplomats of our own country. More importantly we are diplomats of the human race.  Through the years I’ve come to know many peoples from India and have queried them (as much as they would allow!) about their experience being Indian. What does that mean to them?  How has being born in different areas of India impacted them? What are their beliefs?  Same with people from other countries such as Pakistan, China, Australia, New Zealand, England, South Africa, Viet Nam. The list is endless. The questions are too!  The most valuable gift I received from a Cultural Discrimination class was to ask people their experience of being them–don’t assume you know, because you don’t.
Over the past several months I’ve had the blessed opportunity to meet many people from countries that I had not been exposed, namely Uganda, Iran and Afghanistan.  Thursday evening I was invited to the home of one of these women for a gathering of the Board for Act Women in Austin Texas.  One of their members has been living in China for the past 18 months and had slides and stories to share with the group. Many of the women gathered are of the Baja’s faith.  What I was most impressed with was their loving kindness and beauty (both inner and outer).  I also met photographer Peggy Kelsey who had a selection of beautiful photos made into cards from her Afghanistan Women’s Project.  If I had relied on the broad sweeps that are made in the media about these countries, I may have allowed my fears to get in the way of finding out for myself how some of the people are from these countries.
In reflecting back to the idea that business will be the vessel for world peace, I know that many successful business people have learned over time the necessity of understanding and being able to communicate and relate with the cultures in other countries.  I’m sure we have offended many times in our ignorance much less in our politics.  One of my favorite questions to ask people from other countries, once we’ve established a rapport, is how “we” Americans from the U.S., come across to them.  Sometimes I’m very proud of whom we are and other times, not so much.
Expanding our horizons through getting to know other ways of being both internally and externally is always a good practice.  It causes our thinking to deepen and our opinions to become more flexible.
 How are you going to expand your horizons today?  It can begin with one conversation.
 

One of my greatest strengths is my ability to walk into a room full of people and, at least most of the time, have a good sense of where most of the people are “coming from” so that I can act in away that allows the people that I meet to feel comfortable and safe.  This ability is also a double-edged sword because I can slip deeply into a vague way of communicating without being aware of it.  In other words, I water down who I am so that I can be perceived well from many view points.

What does being on purpose mean to you?  How would you feel if you were living on purpose? How would you know that you were on purpose?  For me, it’s a “knowing” inside of me. The knowing feeling is like a warm feeling throughout my tummy.  There is also evidence of my being on purpose through feedback that I get from the Universe via friends, associates, clients even perfect strangers.  My purpose in life is to help others so that they can help me so that we can help everyone else.  I realize it is very broad, but for me and my brain, it is an easy purpose for me to check in so that no matter where I am or what is going on. I can simply ask myself, “am I on purpose”?

One of my greatest fantasies when it comes to living the life we really want to live is that if we all were working in the jobs of our heart’s desire then we might end up in such a blissful state of being that we’d just bink on out of this life and Earth would end as we now know it.