Opportunity Knocks, and Knocks

“The one thing that all of us have in common is that everyone wants to be happy.”

– David Steindl-Rast

Opportunity Knocks, and Knocks

Andrew Solomon told me that when he was in Rwanda working on a genocide recovery project one of the local leaders said, “We’ve had a lot of trouble with Western Mental Health Workers.”

Andrew was surprised and said, “Oh! What kind of trouble did you have?”

The Rwandan Project Leader replied, “Well, they would do this bizarre thing.  They didn’t take people out into the sunshine where you begin to feel better.  They didn’t include drumming or music to get people’s blood going.  They didn’t involve the whole community.  They didn’t externalize the depression as an invasive spirit.  Instead, what they did was, they took people, one at a time, into dingy little rooms and have them talk for an hour about bad things that had happened to them. We had to ask them to leave the country!”

David Steindl-Rast also just left Africa.  But, he didn’t leave because he was asked to go.  He felt that even though he had gone to Africa to be a teacher, he had learned a critical truth there that he wanted to share with the rest of the world.

David looked out at me and said, “The one thing that all of us have in common is that everyone wants to be happy.  We all know people that have everything they need to be happy, yet they are not happy. We also know people who have lots of misfortune, but they are happy.  So, it is not happiness that makes us happy.  It is gratefulness that makes us happy.”

He went on to explain that true gratitude has to come from something of valuable.  It has to be a real gift.  It has to be freely given.  This is how gratefulness comes to us.  You haven’t earned it; you haven’t brought it about in any way.  “The most valuable gift we all have is the present moment.”

It is most valuable because you have no way of assuring there will be another moment given to you.  And yet, each moment is the most valuable gift that can ever be given to any of us. 

David taught me that each individual moment contains opportunity and that if I didn’t have this present moment I wouldn’t have any opportunity to do anything or experience anything.  Each moment is a gift moment.

There’s an old saying, “Opportunity knocks only once.” 

David showed me that this saying isn’t true at all.  He caused me think about opportunity from a new perspective; every moment is a new gift.  New moments occur over and over again.  If you miss the opportunity of this moment another moment is given; and another; and another.  It’s a new view of gratitude I never considered before.

“We can avail ourselves of this opportunity or we can miss it. And if we avail ourselves of the opportunity it is the key to happiness.  We possess the key to our happiness in our own hands.”  He taught me.

I thought more deeply about my own life experience while David was speaking.  I’ve been rushing through life and the rushing makes it so I never see most of the offered opportunity.  The richness of life comes from the abundance of opportunity.  So, what can we all do to increase the richness of our lives?

David says, “Stop, look, go.”

How often do you stop?  Are you rushing through your life as well?  If so, make sure you take time to get quiet.  Build stop signs into your life.  You can find your own stop signs.  Just leave it up to your imagination.

Look.  Open your eyes and open all your senses to the wonderful richness that is all around us.  That’s what life is all about; enjoy all that’s been given to you.  When you open your heart to the opportunities, your heart will invite you to do something.

That’s the third thing – go and really do something.  Do whatever life offers you at any given moment.  David says, “Mostly it is the opportunity to enjoy.”

Stop, look, go, is such a potent seed.  Try it and you’ll be surprised at the wave of gratefulness that will appear all around you.  It will change your world.  Gratitude changes everything about life.  It will make you happy.

Fortune Telling

“An invitation from the past.”

Fortune Telling

I don’t get many letters on paper any more.  So, when I received a hand written letter from California on the postmark with an address I didn’t recognize I was a little surprised.  There was no name written on the envelope, with the return address, so I had no clue who it could be from.  I know lots of people in California so I was a little perplexed that I didn’t recognize the address.

I know many people in California because I lived in Southern California in the late seventies and have done a lot of business there.  In fact, I survived the blizzard that paralyzed Palm Springs in 1978!  I still have vivid memories, and photos, of my friend Juan, a postal carrier, as he delivered mail in the snow.  As it turns out, the letter I received was from a friend I met and spent quite a bit of time with while living in Palm Springs at that time.

I opened the letter and was thrilled when I began to read because I recognized who it was from immediately.  You see, this particular friend was having some personal struggles at then and we spent a lot of time discussing her beliefs and what she wanted for herself and her family in the future.  To make a long story short, over the ensuing twenty-five years we had lost touch with each other and I hadn’t thought about our talks for a long, long time.

As I read the letter memories of our time together in 1978 and 1979 came flooding back to me and I could remember everything in much greater detail than I thought I could.  The written word filled me with a warm glow as my eyes devoured it.

“I will be visiting Utah within the next couple of weeks and would love to see you again.” My friend wrote.  “Here is my phone number.  Please call me so we can make arrangements to meet.”

When I finished reading, I picked up my telephone and touched the numbers I could see on the paper in front of me.  We had a great conversation when she answered and made an appointment to get together when she came to town for her daughter’s wedding.

When the day arrived I drove my car to the appointed place with a little apprehension.  It had been so long and I knew the other people there would not know me at all.  I would most likely be lost and alone, I thought to myself.  But, I bolstered my courage and made the drive.

When I arrived at my destination and knocked on the door I was greeted by my friend warmly and was invited in.

“This is my family!” She crowed.  “I wanted you to meet them so you could see the results of your kindness so many years ago.  You needed to know that the time you spent with me has made an impact far beyond me.  It will be felt for generations to come!”

I remember standing there in front of her lovely family without being able to speak one word!  What type of woman is kind enough to give me credit for doing nothing more than spending time talking with her so long ago?  “A true and caring friend!”  I said to myself.

We had a celebrated time together and when it ended I could feel the warmth of our friendship lingering for days afterwards.  As I recall it today, telling you this story, I feel its glow again and am reminded that small things done today can make a huge difference for people many years into the future.

I had no way of knowing that the woman I was helping in 1978 and 1979 was a fortuneteller, but she was.  She revealed the future to me in an amazing way and it’s made an impact on our lives, and the lives of our loved ones, more than a quarter century later.

You can make the play the same role in someone else’s life.  Contact a friend that made a difference in your life long ago and connect with them by revealing their contribution to your life.  When you do, you’ll see that being a fortuneteller in this way is far from fraudulent.  It is a way to reveal genuine love in an astonishing way.

Sheep Aren't Stupid

“I've learnt in life—you just have to be whatever you feel you are, and then you will do well. If you remove the hang ups that hold you back you will do things to the best of your ability.”

Kate Stone

Sheep Aren’t Stupid

The sun was filtered through gray, thin clouds when I got up and out this morning.  The temperature was very similar.  It was a morning in winter, it wasn’t a real bright day, nor was it a real cold day.  But no matter, my animals were doing what they do every day.  They were huddled together, near their feeding station, waiting for me to provide them with food.

I threw hay into the manger and then began to fill their water tank.  As the water gushed into the metal container I began to think of lessons I’ve learned from being a rancher and more specifically thought about what Kate Stone taught me about her experience as a sheepherder on a large station in Australia.

Kate reminisced, “I ended up on a farm with about twenty-two thousand sheep.  It was about one hundred degrees there all the time! The sheep were the most important thing.  We’d go out to gather them up, to bring them back to the homestead.  We’d do this using horses, using motorbikes and building fences and the sheep would make it all the way back to the shearing shed for the different seasons.  What I learned was, I thought at the time, like everybody else that sheep were pretty stupid because they wouldn’t do what we wanted them to do, what I realize now, looking back, is the sheep weren’t stupid at all.  We put them in an environment where they didn’t want to be!  And, they didn’t’ do what we wanted them to do!  So the challenge was trying to get them to do what we wanted them to do by listening to the weather, the lay of the land, and creating things that would let the sheep flow and go where we wanted them to go.”

The water continued to flow from the hose held in my hand.  My animals were munching on their breakfast.  My dog was doing what she always does; run up and down the fence line barking at the cows and horse on the other side of the fence.

Her barking didn’t change the behavior of the cows.  They were doing exactly what they wanted to do.  They were eating! They knew the dog couldn’t get through the fence to nip at their heals!

Kate’s message continued to nip at my mind, “Another bunch of years later I ended up at Cambridge University doing a Ph.D. in physics. And, my Ph.D. was to move electrons around one at a time.  I realize it was pretty much the same as moving sheep around.  It really is!  You do it by changing an environment!”

My largest steer was standing right in front of me.  “I couldn’t push him out of the way if I tried.” I said to myself.  He weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of two thousand pounds right now.  But, I’ve changed his environment by giving him food so he’s moved himself.  I could never force him to move anywhere he didn’t want to go!

Kate went on in my mind, “That’s been a big lesson to me.  You can’t act on any object.  You change its environment and the object will flow.”

I was standing in the middle of one of the most important learning moments in my life.  Yet, I wouldn’t have even taken note of it had Kate not said to me, “A lot of my learning came from being on the farm.  Because when I was working on the farm we had to use what was around us.  We’d have to use the environment.  There was no such thing, as something can’t be done.  Because you’re in an environment where if you can’t do what you need to do, you can die and I’d seen that sort of thing happen.”

I thought back to last winter when my largest steer, a real mean son-of-a-gun, had me and my daughter Kilee leaping up and over the fence on several occasions to save our own lives!  We were trying to make him go in a corral he didn’t want to go in.  It took me several days before I was smart enough to put hay where I wanted him to go so he would take himself there!

Kate went on in my mind, “It’s like going back to the farm.”

I stood, hose in hand, thinking,  “It’s about how to let myself become the person I want to become rather than trying to force myself into something I really don’t want to be.  I need to make sure I put myself in an environment, and with people, that will allow me to flow into the person I really want to be naturally!

Kate said it best, “I've learnt in life—you just have to be whatever you feel you are, and then you will do well. If you remove the hang ups that hold you back you will do things to the best of your ability.”

Meaningful Stress

“Over the last ten years I’ve turned stress into the enemy, but I’ve changed my mind about stress. I ran across a study that made me rethink my whole approach to stress.” 

-Kelly McGonigal

Meaningful Stress

I’m having another sleepless night.  My mind is racing.  There is so much to worry about!  Then, I add one more worry to my list.  “If I don’t get some sleep tonight I’ll never be able to get everything done tomorrow.”  I toss and turn my way through the night.

Have you ever had the same or another stress related experience?  Has it impacted your mental and physical health?  I look in the mirror and see the results of stress over my entire body.  I even got to the point not long ago where I was ready to yield.  “I’ve lost the war!”  I said to myself.

That was before I ran in to Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist teaching at Stanford University and specializing in the mind-body connection.

“You just need to change the way you think about stress.”  She taught me.  “Rather than focus on what damage stress is doing, focus on the good things it does for your body.  Think, ‘my body is helping me rise to this challenge’.”

She went on to explain the biology of stress and how the body creates a hormone that makes us seek social interaction by motivating us to seek support.  “Tell someone how you feel rather than bottling it up. Notice when others around you are struggling.  Surround yourself with people who care about you.  The built in mechanism for stress resilience is human connection.”

Kelly went on to tell me that every major life stress experience increases the risk of dying by 30%.  “But this isn’t true for everyone, people who spent time caring for others showed absolutely no stress-related increase in dying.  Caring created physical and mental resilience.”

So the good news is that the harmful results from stress on health are not inevitable.  How we think and how we act can transform our experience of stress.  When we choose to view our stress response as helpful, we create the biology of courage.  And when we choose to connect with others under stress we can create resilience.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t necessarily ask for more stressful experiences in my life, but the science has given me a whole new appreciation for stress.  Stress gives us access to our hearts. 

Kelly says, “The compassionate heart finds joy and meaning in connecting with others and yes your pounding physical heart works hard to give you strength and energy.  When you choose to view stress in this way, your not just getting better at stress, you’re actually making a pretty profound statement.  Your saying that you can trust yourself to handle life’s challenges and you’re remembering that you don’t have to face them alone.  So, go after what it is that creates meaning in your life and then trust yourself to handle the stress that follows.”