Short post today as I was busy this weekend getting ready for the next Frisbie St. Art Show. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area come check it out next weekend. The theme is Still (in) Motion featuring photography by women.

What are you working on this week? Is there something that you are preparing for?

Notice as you prepare how your ideas and the situation change and evolve. Preparation is creation. And sometimes this process requires abandoning what we thought we would need or what we had planned for.

The more flexible we can be with ourselves, others and external conditions as they shift and change – the more synergy and alignment is possible with what is naturally evolving. Often we fight what is happening because it is not what we prepared for.

Just because we think something is going to work, doesn’t mean it will.

Be prepared and be willing to abandon your preparations. Nothing is ever wasted. Just evolving in the process of creation from one moment to the next.

I went to a fundraising dinner on Saturday night where more than $45,000 was raised in less than 10 minutes.

I also went to the mall on Saturday to buy a top to wear to the dinner. The mall was Christmas-time packed with long lines in every store I entered or walked by.

Even in “these economic times,” there is money. People are buying things they want and giving to causes they care about.

There was no lamenting over the economy during the dinner program. Every speaker focused on core mission and impact.

Personal stories were shared highlighting:

1. the need/problem
2. the solution
3. what had been accomplished so far (because of our support)
4. the continuing need
5. how this need was going to be met (with our support)

Given the challenge “Are you in?” from a dynamic speaker, the stage was set for the fundraising ask. And people responded. $10,000, $2,500, $1,000, $500, $100, $25 gifts were enthusiastically made and gratefully received.

There is money. We might not be raising as much as we did last year – but people are still willing to give.

Adjusting to change, especially change we don’t particularly want and didn’t ask for, can be difficult. We can become myopically focused on what used to be or what we wish was.

Babysitting for a friend this week, I watched her five-year-old daughter dissolve into total misery when she couldn’t have what she wanted. We were eating lunch and she had her food, but wanted it in a blue bowl (which her sister had.)

She became fixated on what she didn’t have, refusing to eat. All she could see was the blue bowl she wanted – not the food that was in the purple bowl she had.

We’re like this sometimes. We focus intently on what we can’t have or what we wish we had and stubbornly refuse to enjoy what we have because it’s not exactly what we wanted (or what we see that someone else has.)

The person who led the giving spree came by our table afterwards feeling discouraged. “I didn’t get any gifts at the $5,000 level.”  Focused on what wasn’t received, he was disappointed.

When the need is great, we can easily slip into seeing only what is lacking. Step back for a minute. What is in your bowl?

Happy Tuesday!

My mom said to me this past weekend, “How many times are you going to have to do this?” as she watched me cutting fruit for the Frisbie St. Art show.

Her question reminded me of how often we live in the future instead of the present. How often our thoughts and actions reflect a belief in the myth of “The End.”

We create a finish line and then focus our attention on it.

“Once this is over…”  “When this is done…” “After this happens…”

In our minds we are always heading toward completion. What is valued is the task being over – not the task itself. Our actions are performed for some future fulfillment.

And do we ever arrive? At “The End?”

I never have.

Life is in continual motion.

Our daily lives are made up of countless activities we perform over and over – sex, cooking, taking a shower, going to the bathroom, reading email, writing a fundraising letter, meeting with a donor, talking with a friend on the phone, washing the dishes.

I don’t mind cutting fruit. I like preparing for an event and watching how numerous little steps knit together to create a temporary experience.

So it is with everything.

Can we enjoy the process?