Archive for the ‘Clarity’ Category
Managing Clarity
“In the end, life lived to its fullest is its own ultimate gift.”
-Jim Stovall
He is a national champion Olympic athlete, author, speaker, investment broker, entrepreneur and founder of the Narrative Television Network that provides movies and TV accessibility for America’s thirteen million blind and visually impaired. He has become one of the great Humanitarians on our planet. Jim Stovall is his name.
Jim visited Orange County last week speaking at a program hosted by Henderson Financial in association with BNY Mellon Wealth Management. Possibly, you know Jim because of his book, The Ultimate Gift, which was made into a major motion picture.
Jim’s remarkable personal and professional journey is framed by blindness that occurred in his early adult years. On the day Jim awakened to find his eyesight gone, he believed his life was over. Soon, he retreated into a small room where he thought he would live out his life in isolation from a world he believed he could no longer encounter with meaningful purpose.
After months of isolation, Jim met his moment of life changing clarity that would not only take him from the room of self-imposed incarceration into a trust-driven journey to help others unearth and reclaim the bedrock decision that moves every individual from victim to creator…the power to choose.
Those words are not new to you. They certainly are not for me. More to the point, it is likely that just reading them triggers a thought…Been there, Done that! Don’t need to hear that message again. To be candid, I appreciate that viewpoint. Just how often do we need to be re-informed about how to manage our life as we interact with others? I have discovered a blunt answer…very often!
There are times when people come to us to reframe and explore big ideas with such visceral clarity, that it retools our understanding of an idea’s power to re-energize us. That was my encounter with Jim as I returned to the fertile ground of choice making with what I like to call Beginners’ Mind.
If the power to choose…again… is the holy grail of self awareness, then it is the golden key that unlocks all other life mastery tools. For Jim it was many years of renewed choice making before he wrote… in a five day burst of inspiration… The Ultimate Gift that engagingly presents the treasure chest of life actions that can emerge from conscious choosing.
Mission Integrity Action
Today, I take on Beginner’s Mind thinking as I retool the lesson of choosing what shall matter today and tomorrow.
Appreciating you on the ethical edge!
Russell Williams, Founder/President
Passkeys Foundation/Ethical Edge
www.ethicaledge.org
Managing Clarity
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
- Winston Churchill
In the 20th century no leader served with greater moral courage and clarity than did Winston Churchill when he spoke and lead with bulldog optimism in the darkest hours of World War II. There is no doubt that the clarity of his leadership was firmly rooted in his psyche, having resolved a basic life question: How will I handle tough times…the times when bad things happen?
This question needs our personal attention if we are to live with emotional, intellectual and spiritual creativity. Why? Because the tough times come to all of us in three different places…at home, at work and in the community, no matter how we may personally define community.
After three-score-and-five, it is clear to me that if we don’t have a life affirming answer to the question of how to handle the tough times, we will become the victim of circumstance, people and events.
In his stellar book, Why Bad Things Happen To Good People, Author Harold S. Kushner provided the clarifying answer to the question when he wrote, “In the final analysis, the question of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened.”
Having spent countless hundreds of hours over my professional lifetime helping people explore the management of tough life moments, I have found encouragement and wisdom in Kushner’s words. They speak to me about the heartbeat of character development and emotional-spiritual maturity.
Kushner’s words command us: When faced with a mountain of personal or professional peril experienced as discouragement, disappointment, or uncertainty…stop asking, Why and start asking, What do I do now? Asking this morally courageous question persistently will open the door to creative decision making and action. When we ask this healing question, we open a window in our awareness to see beyond the pain of the present moment.
Mission Integrity Action
This week I remember the secret of managing the tough times. I move beyond asking, Why, to inquire, What do I do? I throw open the window of renewed clarity as I encounter new people, new ideas and new opportunities reminding me that the optimist always looks beyond the present problem.
Appreciating you on the ethical edge!
Russell Williams, Founder/President
Passkeys Foundation/Ethical Edge
www.ethicaledge.org