Those of us engaged in social change must ask ourselves, how do we help others see the new world we are trying to create?

It’s easy to get stuck in telling stories of what’s wrong. Yet, while telling stories that show the problem is very important because it helps to wake us up, limiting ourselves to telling those stories won’t get us where we need to be.

That’s why we say, you have to be the change you want to see in the world. . . being the change provides living examples that others can see and then replicate. Even better, be the change and tell the story of how you got there.

I was reminded of the transformative power of being and telling different stories when I saw my dear friend’s new book, Prickly Cactus: Finding Sacred Meaning in Chronic Illness.

I met Concha 9 years ago, when we were taking a writing workshop together. We were both writing non-fiction narratives – mine described my experience with my mother as Alzheimer’s took her memory. Concha’s was called Dancing Still and depicted her battle with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

Here was a woman whose life had been a challenge from the time she and her family emigrated from Mexico. She’d struggled with a new language and culture, battled racism, and worked tirelessly to become an advocate for other immigrant families and children seeking fair and equitable access to education. Plus she was a high-performing professor of anthropology and education. Yet, the disease threatened to take it all away. There were times when she was unable to get out of bed because of the insidious and painful toll that that lupus was taking on her body.

Concha and I would meet and share our writing with one another, pointing out places that didn’t work well in the texts and encouraging each other to keep going. I learned so much from watching Concha as she worked on her book. She refused to give up! She’d submit the book to publishers, and get rejected. She’d consult with other writing professionals, and get advice on how to change it.

She’d rewrite the book, finally rewriting the whole thing at least 3 times, and sections of it many more times. Throughout the process, which took at least 10 years, she continued to transform the pain and discouragement — of the illness and the rejections — until she published Prickly Cactus, a beautiful, life-affirming narrative, this year.

In Prickly Cactus, she describes learning how to turn chronic illness into a doorway for achieving wisdom and building community. She talks about the incredible pain that racked her body, finding a way to create a supportive and respectful medical community, and seeking and finding spiritual guidance. She talks about the challenges of day-to-day living which included redesigning her work habits and life so that she could still earn a living. She describes learning how to rest – for the first time in her life! And she tells a lovely story of dating again, and creating a loving, long-term relationship.

Both the process of watching Concha live the lessons gained as she navigated this journey of chronic illness and reading her book, in its newest form, gives me a sense of joy and hope. Her illness was not just an end, but a beginning.

She says, “We need to speak about illness, about potential for healing, and about building supportive communities around us to transform our lives.” Her narrative of discovery and transformation helps to remove the fear of disease by drawing a map for living with joy, engagement and significance, no matter what.

Happy Monday!

I don’t have much to say today beyond the Quote of the Week.

These words from Scott Sanders book, Hunting for Hope have followed me for many years. Cropping up every time I start to feel overwhelmed by my to-do list.

A reminder that my stress is a by-product of an ambitious mind that believes more can (and needs to) be done than my physical body and time capacity allows for and can handle.

I heard someone say recently, “When you say no to something you are saying yes to something else.”

This obvious statement was and is beautifully profound to me. Mostly because I don’t like saying no, especially when what I am saying no to is something I really want to do or for a person or a cause I care about and want to support. Yet with every no, I am saying yes to my workable territory.

What about you? What are you saying no and yes to? What is your workable territory?

Happy Monday!

Giving advice is always easier than living it for our selves.

We can clearly see what other people need to do to solve their problems but often act shortsightedly when it comes to our own lives.

I’m feeling quiet this week, reflective and in need of time outdoors, away from the computer.

So I’m following my own advice to Take A Break.

Have a good week. Don’t forget to take some breaks. See you next Monday.

When I was getting ready to start this blog – my dad said to me, “What for? Aren’t there enough blogs already?”

I laughed and replied (defensively, to be honest), “Sure, there are. But that could be said about almost anything. Aren’t there enough people in the world already? Enough cars? Enough books? Enough art?  Enough music? Enough movies?”

And, we could add, enough mission statements and tag lines and articles written about how to raise money for a cause.

How many times do we need to repeat something?

Some of our favorites: “Love your neighbor as yourself” or “Let justice roll down like water” or “All we need is Love.”

And of course we can’t forget the guy we quote endlessly in an automatic fashion for everything, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

Yet even as we say, “There’s nothing new under the sun” we keep creating art, stories, music, and babies. We keep thinking, we keep watching, listening, talking, writing and reading, we keep working over and over again the same ideas, the same themes, repeating the same patterns.

I’ve been fascinated with this the past few months, picking up “old” books and reading through them to see how, or if, our ideas have changed or “evolved.”

Cleaning out my office before I left my last job I sifted through all of the articles I had saved, the notes from various fundraising conferences and trainings I’d attended over the years.

Of course I also had that ever-present stack of more recent, unread pubs and had to sort through that as well. The comparison of these – the incoming information with the saved information – produced one of those “aha moments.”

Reading through my old notes I could see that it was all there – all that I needed to know the very first time I heard it or read it.

But I needed the repetition, to take what I was learning into my own lived experience.

Like picking up a book you’ve read before, watching a movie again or talking with a friend about a subject you’ve previously hashed out and in this re-visiting, seeing or understanding something that you missed the first time (or the second time, or the third time, etc.)

What has changed? Something in you. Your perspective has shifted.

That is what matters. The movement inside yourself.

It doesn’t matter what someone else said or did or when they said it or did it (e.g., can you love your neighbor?)

Where are you now? What are you learning now?

Keep repeating, keep going until you don’t need to anymore. Until you’ve absorbed what you need to absorb and learned what you need to learn.

“Live your way into the answer.” (Rilke)

Happy Monday!

There is another guaranteed way to discover abundance in time: let go of trying to control what happens.

This is a hard one because our daily lives center around creating order to reach goals and to manage and respond to what is happening with our selves (body, mind, emotions), with each other (same list) and in our environments (natural, social, work, economic.)

Control is a tool that has served us our whole lives:

• Control is how we face the unknown.
• Control gives us a sense of security and assures us that we are in charge of everything that it is possible to be in charge of.
• Control is power to make things happen.
• Control is a way to get people to do what we want.
• Control helps us eliminate undesirable factors and predict and prepare for the future.
• Control enables us to manage what is happening – so that things don’t get out of control.

Control is such a useful behavior, why would we want to let go of it?

Because contrary to our belief – control actually limits our ability to freely live our lives, to creatively respond to what is happening and to relax, to be stress free, to know abundance in time.

Our desire for control causes sickness and tension in our body, anxiety, shortness of breath and stress in ourselves and in those around us.

Why are we so busy – why is there not enough time? Often it is because we are trying to manage and control things that are not within our ability to manage and control.

What are the things that you try to control? How does this impact your life, your relationships, your health and your perspective of time?

We all have our own idea of what should happen. And we carry these ideas into every interaction, every situation. This habit often leads to frustration when people around us and/or what is happening in our environment does not fit into our timeline or behave the way we want them/it to.

Letting go of control doesn’t mean that you don’t plan or have goals – it just means that you don’t become rigid in your plans or in your mindset. As soon as control sets in you shut yourself off from the infinite possibilities that are alive in each moment.

When you try to control what happens, you narrow the possibilities to only what you can conceive – to only what you think matters and what is important to you.

What often happens in planning ahead or in trying to predict the unknown is that our idea of what might happen or what we want to happen becomes our only view.  Our idea becomes what should happen – what must happen.  And here is where our desire to control steps in and becomes a trap.

Letting go of control doesn’t mean you don’t act or respond. It simply means you remain open in every situation to what is happening.

You allow your self, other people and your environment to have the freedom to be – whatever they want to be – instead of trying to conform everything to your limited, controlled view.

Control is an illusion – a mirage.

As much as we try to order our lives (with time, and other systems) the unknown element always remains. We’re reminded of this every day. (For example, will the stock market rise or fall?)

Notice this week when you become tense, or stressed or upset. Can you see how your idea of what should be happening is determining your response and affecting your emotions and your body?

Don’t limit yourself or the world to only your idea of what should be happening.

Let go of trying to control and let yourself ride the wave of possibilities.

(This post is #4 in a 5 part series on Time)

Happy Monday!

What’s on your schedule this week?

Does it matter, with everything that needs to get done, that time as we know it and live it is only a mental construction?

Sure, some say that time doesn’t actually “exist” but the social and economic fabric of our global society (and all of our technology) runs on our collectively built and individually maintained concept of Time.

With our calendars and clocks, our PDAs and watches – our appointments, deadlines and responsibilities – of course time exists. Because we created it, and live our lives by it, time exists for us.

The clock helps regulate each hour of the day so we can plan our lives.

We can schedule when things need to happen and organize our thoughts, our actions and our relationships accordingly. With this system we know when to work and when to sleep and we can communicate, travel and trade locally and worldwide within a commonly understood context.

Yet, even inside this fixed structure (though we’ve created UTC and universally agreed that this is “The Official Time”) we still have various cultural and social understandings of time. We each move within our own personal time zones.

Robert Levine, in A Geography of Time, documents his travels around the globe researching the wide diversity of lived clock time in different countries.

John Boyd and Philip Zimbardo in their new book, The Time Paradox, design six categories to describe (from a Western point of view) individual time perspectives and offer a test you can take to discover yours.

Reading about the history of clocks and calendars reveals the elaborate fashioning of our time definitions. And scientists posit various theories and equations for time and debate their implications but there is not one unified, agreed upon theory.*

Our modern day understanding of time is built on an intricate web of mathematical calculations, scientific theories, economics, marketing, national laws and international agreements combined with our cultural and personal definitions of time.

Time appears solid because we have organized our internal and external lives on our definition of it.

Why does any of this matter when you have a million things to do today?

You don’t really have time to think about time.

Which is exactly why your perspective of time matters.

Notice how often your view of time keeps you circling. You always end up at the same place: with not enough time.

Knowing that time is only a mental construction gives you the freedom to create and navigate your own time zone.

Suddenly, where before there was only one choice, now there are options.

Recognizing the porosity of time opens a door in the busy, time strapped mind.  Here is a way out of one-view thinking into a wider realm of infinite possibilities.

So before you launch into your week, take a minute (which, without your watch doesn’t really “exist” anyway) to examine your personal time zone. Remember that your position and perspective are changeable. You can be flexible.

Time, as we know it and live it, is just a mental construction.

Enjoy the freedom.

(This post is #2 in a 5 part series on Time)

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(*) Books on Time: The History of Clocks and Watches by Kenneth E. Welch; Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks and Cultures by Anthony Aveni; Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar by Duncan Steel; The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature by Ilya Prigogine; and Time: A Travel’s Guide by Clifford A. Pickover.

(Of course there are hundreds more. These are just the ones I’ve read.)

Happy Monday!

Today is a holiday in the U.S. Are you working? How often do you work on your holidays, your vacations, and your weekends?

Are you always working? Why? What’s so important?

We all know from experience that the to-do list never really ends: one thing is crossed off and another fills the space.

Repeat.

One thing is crossed off and another fills the space. Repeat.

So we live, day by day.

Yet, somehow, even as we replicate this pattern over and over, we believe that we will come to the end of our to-do list and then we’ll rest. Then we will have time for whatever it is we are putting off until we have time for it.

Are we there yet?

We also have the tendency to think that we are the center of the universe. Have you noticed that? How important we think we are to whatever is happening or to whatever we think needs to happen?

We can’t take a break right now because then, whatever we think needs to happen won’t happen, and it needs to happen and we need to make it happen. Suddenly everything relies on our action, on our doing. The world needs us.

So the story in our mind goes.

Our thinking can get a bit delusional at times with the sense of our own importance. Reality checks are necessary.

Take a reality check break today. You already know your list isn’t going anywhere, so Relax. Turn off your computer and go outside into the world. Look around.

See how much is happening without any effort at all on your part.

Pause. Notice something that you have never noticed before. Talk to someone you have never talked to before. Listen to what they have to say.

Watch the sunset and stare up at the night sky. See the billions of stars and galaxies stretching into the unknown. Remember how small you and your thoughts and your to-do lists are in the universe of all that is.

Laugh at the absurdity of your own sense of importance. Repeat.

Welcome to Know Abundance!

A new positive thinking blog for fundraisers – and anyone else looking to supplant scarcity mentality with abundant living.

Delivered fresh every Monday – just when you need a dose of positivity to get your fundraising act in gear.

Know Abundance is living and working from the awareness that there is nothing you need that you don’t already have.

This blog is for you if:

• you worry about how to raise money to support your organization
• you stress about how to get everything done
• you wonder how to manage donor (and your own) fears about economy

Posted every Monday, Know Abundance is:

• fundraising from plenty and gratitude
• positive thinking to help you navigate your work week
• perspective to widen your outlook beyond daily headlines

Know Abundance is a shared journey. I, like you, am learning to live and work in new ways. To shed the thought patterns and beliefs that keep us trapped in a never-ending scramble for time, money, resources, and market share. To embrace the mantra, “Everything I need I already have.”

I know how hard you are working to bring into reality your vision of a better world. Know Abundance is for you. The weekly posts offer tools to see your worry, stress and fears in a different light, to know abundance even in the midst of scarcity.

Coming up in January:

Jan. 12 – Why think positive?

Jan. 19 – Live Your Dreams Today

Jan. 26 – Scarcity as Reality is Relative

I welcome your comments, questions and participation as we learn together.